Disney to Buy Cocomelon?
I’d put the odds of that happening this year at eight to five.
Candle Media is run by two executives who were at one time or another odds-on favorites to succeed Iger on the Golden Mouse Throne. Tom Staggs and Kevin Meyer were both strong candidates to become CEO at Disney before Iger stacked the BOD and quietly made it known this was a “from my cold dead hands” kind of thing.
Candle Media was founded by these two Disney ex-executives and funded by Blackstone.* Candle Media paid a gigantic amount of money for Cocomelon.
While Disney has officially stated that it is not going to try to merge its way out of the problems it’s got, buying Candlemedia solves a number of headaches Iger has handed himself. The deal maker in him is itching to make a deal happen. Any kind of deal. It’s always been his primary skillset and at 72 he is strongly habituated into falling back on it.
Candlemedia gives him Cocomelon, which gets Disney back into the retail space. Pretty much all of their cash cows have gone dry. But Cocomelon is selling like hotcakes. More importantly, it will let Disney cut ties with Bluey. Bluey is both their number-one show on Disney Plus and a perpetual black eye because they have nothing to do with its production. Exchanging a number one show they don’t own for a number two that they do is a very, very Disney thing to do. Also, they can’t merchandise Bluey but they could Cocomelon if they own it.
It will also give the utterly retarded Wallstreet a reason to get super excited about Disney stock again despite the company’s crippling institutional problems.
And Disney will trainwreck Cocomelon as instinctively as a Jack Russel digs up a backyard looking for moles.
There is one possible roadblock. Blackstone itself. They are the real owners of Candlemedia so the deal doesn’t go through without their blessing. Blackstone is run by George Bush Republicans and they are the ones funding the construction of the new American Heartland Park. The one that hired all of the thirty-year veterans of Imagineering that Disney fired to make room for their diversity hires.**
Your guess is honestly as good as mine about Blackstone saying yes or no.
Developing.
*Not to be confused with BlackRock or Blackwells or Black Trident (which makes amazing holsters that you can’t get in America. I envy my Euro-Darklings on this point.)
** Names and creds of the imagineers in question.
- Steve Hedrick – WDE Disney Executive 22 yrs (TP Industry 40 yrs)
- John Sorenson – WDI Land Planner 30 yrs.
- Tom Turley – DLI Ops Planning & Development 45 yrs.
- Don Hilsen – WDI Ride Engineer – 30 yrs.
- John Polk – WDI Special Effects 20 yrs.
- Tim Kirk – WDI Concept Artist 35 yrs.
- Annette Crump – WDI Planner/Scheduler 11 yrs.
