Disney wonders if less is more

For anyone feeling overwhelmed trying to catch up with an ever-growing watch list of Marvel, “Star Wars”, and Pixar content on Disney+, there’s at least one person within Disney who agrees.

He also happens to run the company.

According to a CNBC interview aired yesterday, Bob Iger – Disney’s on-again-off-again CEO who’s been back at the helm since November 2022 – believes too much streaming content may be to blame for the studio’s recent box office woes. Disney’s last three releases – Indiana Jones 5, Elemental, and Ant-Man 3 – have all performed significantly worse than expected.

• Over the last few years, Disney has made four shows in the “Star Wars” universe, including The Mandalorian and Andor. It's also made a whopping eight Marvel shows, including WandaVision, Loki, Ms. Marvel, and The Falcon and the Winter Soldier.
• And on the Pixar front, Iger believes the recent run of straight-to-streaming releases of Luca, Soul, and Turning Red has trained viewers to wait for a movie to come out on streaming rather than see it in theaters (paying for one month of Disney+ is significantly cheaper than buying four tickets + concessions at the theater).

So, what’s the solution? Less content. And less sequels, which, to Iger, means only doing one or two sequels per Marvel movie rather than five.

🤝 Zoom out: Besides revamping Disney’s content strategy, Iger hinted at possibly selling the media giant’s linear channels, including ABC and FX.