Disney CEO Bob Iger remains committed to turning the ship around, but in doing so, admits the company has had to make some hard choices and cancel projects the studio didn’t have 100% belief in.
“You have to kill things you no longer believe in, and that’s not easy in this business,” Iger said, speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley in San Francisco on Tuesday (via THR). The Disney chief said the feature film business has “hit on hard times that needed addressing” and then explained how some unnamed projects have been quietly put to pasture.
READ MORE: Bob Iger Says Marvel Will Have “Reduced Volume & Output” & Claims Studio “Lost Focus”
“Because either you’ve gotten started, you have some sunk costs, or it’s a relationship with either your employees or with the creative community,” Iger said. “It’s not an easy thing, but you got to make those tough calls. We’ve actually made those tough calls. We’ve not been that public about it, but we’ve killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough.”
What those projects are unclear, and Iger obviously didn’t reveal what they were. Iger had previously said Marvel and Lucasfilm would be scaling back their output, a sentiment he suggested again. However, the Disney leader also pushed back on the idea of superhero fatigue and audiences being tied of Marvel and said it was “not an accident” that Marvel’s Studios first 33 films generated just under $30 billion at the box office. “And again, the track record speaks for itself,” he said.
“A lot of people think it’s audience fatigue; it’s not audience fatigue,” he countered. [Audiences] want great films. And if you build it great, they will come, and there are countless examples of that. Some are ours, and some are others.”
“’Oppenheimer’ is a perfect example of that. Just a fantastic film,” Iger explained, praising Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb movie. “Focus is really important. We reduced the output of Marvel, both the number of films they make, and the number of TV shows, and that really becomes critical, but I feel good about the team. I feel good about the IP we’re making. I talked about a lot of the projects. We look years ahead, really. And it’s iterative.”
Iger suggested he was heavily involved with the creation process of films at Disney. “Not only do you look at the films you’re making, you look at every part of that process, who the directors are, who’s being cast, reading scripts,” he explained. “I personally watch films three to five times with the team and just create a culture of excellence and respect, which is really important with the creative community.”
Given the continued talk of Marvel and Lucasfilm output reduction (said several times now actually in different forms by Iger), one can’t help but wonder if certain Marvel or “Star Wars” films that were once in development have been discreetly abandoned. The other part of that equation, is the idea that there’s probably tons of Marvel, Lucasfilm or other Disney projects that haven’t been announced yet, but have been killed in the cradle, so to speak.
Right now, it’s definitely unclear what has been inconspicuously nixed, but who knows, maybe some of that will come to light in the upcoming months.