The Walt Disney Company is moving on without Bob Iger, its CEO of 15 years. Some would look at what he’s accomplished — Disney’s entry into the streaming wars with Disney+; its purchase of Star Wars, Pixar, and Marvel Entertainment; the opening of Disney Shanghai — and say Iger’s tenure was the work of a visionary.
It was anything but.
Back in 2015, Iger knew he’d disappointed George Lucas, the fabled creator of Star Wars who begrudgingly sold his production company, Lucasfilm, to Disney in 2012. Disney had wrapped production on the first new installment in the Star Wars franchise since Revenge of the Sith. Not a soul could get Lucas to commit to attending the premiere of The Force Awakens — not even Kathleen Kennedy, the new head of Lucasfilm, whom Lucas had installed just before his exit in a backhanded play to select his successor before Iger could. Lucas had said that Disney covered no new ground in its addition to Star Wars, finding its reboot “unoriginal” and derivative. The reboot Iger oversaw, in his view, lacked for vision.
Iger had been Lucas’s ally since the former’s days at the helm of ABC Entertainment. It was there that Iger had endeared himself to Lucas after the director’s passion project, The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, failed to catch fire after its first season. Regardless, Iger greenlighted two more runs of the show between 1992 and the summer of 1993. The show never took off with audiences, but Lucas didn’t forget the gesture or Iger’s belief in him. This show of faith in creative talent was characteristic of how Iger operates, but so was a motive that wouldn’t become clear for 20 years. The reserve of good feelings between the two giants was how Iger got Lucas to sit down and broach the subject of handing over Star Wars, his legacy, to Disney. Now the two were impossibly at odds, and in just a few years, the Star Wars franchise would experience an overall decline in its favorability with audiences both young and old and arguably lose its place atop the pop culture hierarchy to another Iger-Disney acquiree, Marvel Studios.
It turns out Iger did not have a vision of Star Wars beyond its addition to the Disney family. It was a trophy on Iger’s shelf, and Lucas knew it. To Disney, Star Wars was a means to an end, whereas to Lucas, Star Wars was an end in and of itself.
In Iger’s 2019 memoir, The Ride of Lifetime, he laid out a blueprint for Disney’s next act that just about any person or company can reasonably learn from. It’s a good read, but Iger blows right past the big questions Disney has had to contend with in an era of mounting public concern over corporations “doing good” versus “doing well.” He repeated again and again in the promotion of his book and in victory laps on behalf of Disney shareholders that a company must “innovate or die.” It’s the clarion call of The Ride of A Lifetime, but in the case of Iger’s business strategy, it has translated into “devour as much rich intellectual property as possible and take it wherever there’s a warm body with money to spend.”
Iger’s exit happened suddenly. On Feb. 25, he announced he’d stepped down as CEO, effective immediately. A successor was named: Bob Chapek, Disney’s head of parks. Iger said he will remain Disney’s executive chairman until the end of 2021.
By any financial metric, Iger’s work at Disney was a remarkable success. Stock worth $25 in 2005 now sits around $128 per share, a 400% increase. Profits are through the roof, up from $2.5 billion to $10.4 billion, and Disney successfully smashed its way into the streaming marketplace with Disney+, boasting subscriber numbers in its first four months that should make Netflix quite nervous.
But the reign of Iger wasn’t without hiccups. Disney has found itself at the center of one controversy after another in its bid to reclaim relevance, ranging from high-profile attacks by the likes of Bernie Sanders over worker pay and the unionization of park employees to the waning brand credibility of ESPN as an objective source for sports news.
Then, there’s China.
Iger made expanding the international reach of Disney one of his top priorities as CEO. As of summer 2016, that mission was accomplished. Iger stood to the side of Chinese Vice Premier Wang Yang for the ribbon-cutting at Disneyland Shanghai. On the content side, Disney has pumped China full of blockbuster films, conveniently edited to appease Chinese censors. The House of Mouse did everything from erasing Tibet from the story of Doctor Strange (2016) to filming entirely new scenes for Iron Man 3 (2013) to feature Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) receiving medical care from Chinese surgeons. The reason? The almighty dollar or, in this case, the yuan.
The source of this moral malleability can be traced back to Disney’s lack of vision. On its website, the vision statement reads, “To be one of the world’s leading producers and providers of entertainment and information.” Can Disney really offer up objective information on sports news if ESPN is deeply involved in lucrative deals with the NBA? Furthermore, how does Disney, the leading family-oriented entertainment company in the world, still not have a vision that speaks to the world they’d like to see beyond merely entertaining it to death?
The answer is really quite simple: “The ride of a lifetime” for Iger looks something like the steady incline of Disney’s stock chart, not like the roller coaster of a disruptive and principled company willing to endure hills and valleys in pursuit of its vision.
Stephen Kent (@Stephen_Kent89) is an entertainment contributor for the Washington Examiner.
