Disney Deathwatch: The Executions Are Underway
Sean Baily is out as the president of Disney Live Action. I knew someone was going to have to answer for last year’s carpet bombing of the theaters. I’m honestly surprised it was Sean Bailey. He really wasn’t responsible for the disasters that Disney has produced. Although, it’s true that he didn’t stop them either.
Alan Bergman bears a great deal of the blame although Dana Walden bears much more.
David Greenbaum at Fox Searchlight has been promoted to the newly created position of President of Disney Live Action and 20th Century Studios.
That tells me a few things. First of all, Bob Iger ran down the weakest member of the herd.
Whether it’s a poison pill clause inserted by George Lucas or just blackmail, Iger clearly can do nothing about Kathleen Kennedy. It may simply be a matter of Lefty politics. LucasFilm is very hard left which makes them heroes to the C-Suite Woklings at the House of the Seven Dwarves. She has too much backing by people like Dana Walden.
Kevin Feige is so high profile that Bob Iger is simply in no position to fire him yet. A perhaps bigger issue is that Bob Iger is the one that found him toiling away in relative obscurity for Ike Perlmutter and began giving him the kind of freedom to do whatever, that Captial Cities’ Tom Murphy and Dan Burke did the 37-year-old vice president of ABC Sports, Robert Iger. He can’t ax Fiege without repudiating, not just his judgment, but the management philosophy that made him who he is today.
But somebody had to get the chop after last year, and it had to be someone that would be an easy sell to the BOD.
That’s why Bailey got the clipped out. But why did Greenbaum get upped?
Because the head of Fox Searchlight has been delivering a lot for a little for some time and Iger desperately needs someone who can do exactly that. $250 million budgets with another $250 in marketing costs were just fine back when they were routinely delivering billion-dollar-plus results in the theaters. However, the only thing that really did was boost stock value because the costs were so astronomical, that the profits were usually one to two hundred million. However, the merchandising made up for any shortcomings, at least so far as Marvel was concerned they did.
But a film that delivers a worldwide gross of $250 million for a budget of $15 million is the kind of thing that looks really good on a balance sheet. Especially when you are having to make cuts everywhere. Greenbaum has a track record for doing just that.
Bob Iger has clearly accepted that Disney Animation and Disney Live Action are ruined. What do you do when you need to up the performance immediately, you outsource to a company that is performing. Disney Animation to their horror just discovered the existence of a new animation studio in British Columbia with a headcount of 400. Disney Animation is going to be hit hard in the next round of layoffs and they know it.
Disney Live Action never produced a lot of movies anyway. Even when Walt was running things it would only churn out two or three a year. Consequently, turning live action over to 20th Century makes all kinds of sense largely because Disney has not paid enough attention to it to fuck it up.
Bob Iger needs results now. Yesterday there was a very big indication that the institutional investors want changes at Disney and it wasn’t subtle.
Jim Cramer suddenly did a one-eighty and started attacking Bob Iger and the Disney Board of Directors.
Everybody is given to shaking their head in wonder at how often Jim Cramer gets it wrong and still stays on the air, but here is the truth of it. Jim Cramer says the things he does because it’s what the institutional investors want him to say. He’s their public voice.
In and of himself Jim Cramer means nothing but if he’s publicly turned on the Disney BOD it means the institutionals want change now or Nelson Peltz and (so much worse for Bob Iger) Jay Rosulo are going to have those seats in the boardroom.
