75 employees laid off at Pixar, including the director of Lightyear

[PolymerSkywalker]

So no one has any details on why two high level executives working for Iger have left in a weeks time?

 

[PolymerSkywalker]

I did say ONE of the worst.

I'll admit I didn't see Cars 2, and I did like Lightyear. But I like background movies, which it seems many had a difficult time with it, so kept looking for toy Buzz. And when toy Buzz wasn't in it, automatically hated the movie.

I think for the Cars series and a Dinosaur movie, they are right up kid's entertainment alley. That goes back to Elemental. I don't think it was a kids' movie. But the adults in the theater were highly entertained. Very much which POV you are viewing it with.

I personally believe people also had a hard time believing this was the movie that made Andy become infatuated with Buzz after seeing it. The original star command story they based they game / ride in the park off of, seemed to make much more sense. I just didn't buy it. I had a hard time saying, yeah a kid would leave that movie and then ask for a Buzz toy for their B-day.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

Anyone else thinking it is a little odd that two big wigs at Disney have left in a week off of Iger's leadership team? Both the CFO and the CDO have left in the last 7 days.

Anyone know what's going on?

I’d say that they’re in trouble, they’re being attacked by right-wing/anti-diversity people, they probably know about too much IP, and Iger hates cutting costs.

 

[Jwaire]

So no one has any details on why two high level executives working for Iger have left in a weeks time?

According to the WSJ, McCarthy and Iger were at odds over the current cost cutting strategy. The official stance is she is taking a leave of absence for a family health matter.

She, of course, is known for making the "reducing portion sizes would be good for some our customers' waistline" gaff on a conference call and more importantly was the person that told the board of directors she had lost confidence in Bob Chapek, causing Susan Arnold to reach out to Bob Iger.

Iger likely doesn't trust her.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-finance-chief-christine-mccarthy-to-step-down-3ba5b1e8

According to Variety, Newton, left to join another corporate board and work on her own personal company.

Newton is known for creating the team that ultimately ended up recommending the closing of Splash Mountain and changes to other legacy attractions like American Adventure, Peter Pan and the Country Bears and the "Reimagine Tomorrow" diversity training for employees.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/disneys-chief-diversity-officer-latondra-newton-exits-1235650198/

 

[Elijah Abrams]

According to the WSJ, McCarthy and Iger were at odds over the current cost cutting strategy. The official stance is she is taking a leave of absence for a family health matter.

She, of course, is known for making the "reducing portion sizes would be good for some our customers' waistline" gaff on a conference call and more importantly was the person that told the board of directors she had lost confidence in Bob Chapek, causing Susan Arnold to reach out to Bob Iger.

Iger likely doesn't trust her.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/disney-finance-chief-christine-mccarthy-to-step-down-3ba5b1e8

According to Variety, Newton, left to join another corporate board and work on her own personal company.

Newton is known for creating the team that ultimately ended up recommending the closing of Splash Mountain and changes to other legacy attractions like American Adventure, Peter Pan and the Country Bears and the "Reimagine Tomorrow" diversity training for employees.

https://variety.com/2023/tv/news/disneys-chief-diversity-officer-latondra-newton-exits-1235650198/

the last time I was on Peter Pan's Flight at Disneyland California, they still haven’t removed the Indians.

 

[BrianL]

the last time I was on Peter Pan's Flight at Disneyland California, they still haven’t removed the Indians.

I don't think they will either. The scene as it is in the ride is fine really. Now, in the movie, there is a questionable song, but they don't use that in the ride.

 

[Elijah Abrams]

I don't think they will either. The scene as it is in the ride is fine really. Now, in the movie, there is a questionable song, but they don't use that in the ride.

I also wonder if construction will continue on Tiana’s Bayou despite Newton’s departure?

 

[Smugpugmug]

I also wonder if construction will continue on Tiana’s Bayou despite Newton’s departure?

The Tiana retheme has been a project in production for years now. It is not suddenly being canceled due to a company departure. A few of Splash props have already been sent off to the Disney archives. It will still happen.

 

[mdmost]

I also wonder if construction will continue on Tiana’s Bayou despite Newton’s departure?

Yes, Splash is dead. She's not the only one who wanted it gone and everything's already in motion. Disney isn't going to go back on this.

 

[namelessoracle]

So no one has any details on why two high level executives working for Iger have left in a weeks time?

Disney is in bad Financial straights. Its looking like they arent going to make ANY money on movies this year. (Avatar they were just the distributors). Parks and ESPN make money. Toys are dow. But Parks is making less money after they burned people out and people are looking at Universal as a more serious competitor. They also owe Comcast (who owns their biggest competitor Universal) easily over 10 billion dollars in January. Disney is helping to pay for Epic Universe. Disney plus bleeds money not only in operational costs, but in that they lose out on deals with companies like Netflix, Amazon, Apple TV (they own Hulu now) for streaming rights.

The stock is also at best stagnant and trending down and is likely to stay down, which means stock offerings for leveraged loans or to offer up to Comcast in lieue of payment means greater percentages of the company have to be put up as offerings. (Disney had stock "on hand" to settle debts in their vaults, its worth a lot less now) There are the absolute unarguable facts on the ground. For Disney to pay Comcast in stock is like 6 to 12 percent of the Company to their biggest competitor. if they had kept the stock to 200+ it would been only 3 to 6 percent.

Then we get into rumour that the CFO led the coup against Chapek, which means no intelligent CEO would want her around anymore sense she's a threat, plus the rumor that she led the company to invest into Crypto, plus the rumour that one of the things that spurned her rebellion was Chapek wanting to cut people she wanted protected and those people are likely to get cut anyway..... What CFO would want to stay when the financials look this bad and she is an easy target? The medical leave angle means though that she choose to leave, whether she was "encouraged" is a separate question.

The CDO on the other hand smelled like a firing. When HR person gives the "they are gone" speech for an executive, and its "they are gone" and not "they went on leave". Its a firing. Why was she fired? You could read political stuff, but its also very possible she did more traditional stuff like sexual harassment, embezzlement, et cetra. We will figure out if it was political by who they choose as her successor and what they did.

 

[Jwaire]

Pretty interesting if you believe in Pixar.

 

[Scalemaster34]

Well Dreamworks isn't doing much better than Pixar.... their $70 million to make Ruby Gilman: Teenage Kraken only did $5.2 million on it's openings weekend. Elemental managed to rake in another $11.5 million... but clearly it's not going to break even either.

But the bigger blow for Disney was how poorly Indian Jones did....

 

[Jwaire]

But the bigger blow for Disney was how poorly Indian Jones did....

They're gonna have to go back to Eisner method of singles, doubles, triples and an occasional home run. Why does every film Disney puts out cost 200 million?

Maybe Chapek was right about a few things.

 

[BrightMorningStar]

I hate for anybody to lose their job, especially in this economy. Unfortunately, Disney has been making decisions as a whole that is turning away their fan base and the economy is not doing well, so both of those things together are not helping them financially. Instead of remaking everything and trying to change the original to some degree, they really need to come up with quality movies, quality content, quality attractions, etc that appeal to families that love what Walt started.

 

[Scalemaster34]

They're gonna have to go back to Eisner method of singles, doubles, triples and an occasional home run. Why does every film Disney puts out cost 200 million?

Maybe Chapek was right about a few things.

Problem is even if they decided to make adjustment... with two, three and even four year production schedules means this will take years to really put the changes into effect.

And right now no one knows if this is a residual of COVID, that will wear off? Will the global economic slowdown get worse and keep more people at home? Or where the social/political winds will take the Paying Customers? Or if in two year the Movie business will be better than ever?

But again it's not just Disney Studios.... it is all the Studios and the Streamers doing their own productions that have to tread these turbulent waters of change.

But I do think the days of the Brand (Disney, Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Lucasfilm) being able to guarantee a $1 Billion dollar payday are over.

 

[nancipants]

Interesting article about Elemental’s box office steam picking up. https://gizmodo.com/insidious-elemental-weekend-box-office-performance-1850620102

 

[BrianL]

Interesting article about Elemental’s box office steam picking up. https://gizmodo.com/insidious-elemental-weekend-box-office-performance-1850620102

Interesting how it's hanging in there. The Little mermaid had legs too (ha ha!). They still have some clawing to do, but they are both far from the "disastrous" first weekends they had.

 

[mdmost]

We watched Elemental tonight and really enjoyed it. The animation was pretty spectacular and I'm glad we saw it in a theater versus waiting for it to come out on Disney+. I think people who bad mouthed it without giving it a chance have really deprived themselves of something pretty enjoyable. And the "controversy" is beyond silly given the character was about a 5 second blip in the movie. But again, it really seems people are looking for things to be offended by.

 

[irlandaise]

We watched Elemental tonight and really enjoyed it. The animation was pretty spectacular and I'm glad we saw it in a theater versus waiting for it to come out on Disney+. I think people who bad mouthed it without giving it a chance have really deprived themselves of something pretty enjoyable. And the "controversy" is beyond silly given the character was about a 5 second blip in the movie. But again, it really seems people are looking for things to be offended by.

Thanks for the report, mdmost. Is Lake even presented as nonbinary in the movie, and if so, how?

Also, we need to send BrianL to the corner for a few minutes after that bad joke.

 

[BrianL]

Thanks for the report, mdmost. Is Lake even presented as nonbinary in the movie, and if so, how?

Also, we need to send BrianL to the corner for a few minutes after that bad joke.

Ha! I'm surprised a lot of the box-office sites didn't run with that joke!

I can't even remember the character from when I wattched. I remember they were introducing Wade's family, and I think they introduced a girlfriend of someone, and that's about it. It's blink-and-you-miseed-it ind of stuff.