More from Everything you need to know about Disney, ESPN, and Bob Iger’s return as CEO
At the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in San Francisco, Disney CEO Bob Iger summarized his gameplan for Marvel and Disney movies to get more butts into theater seats, as reported by Deadline:
“A lot of people think it’s audience [superhero] fatigue. It’s not audience fatigue. They want great films. And if you build it great, they will come,” he said. He noted that has made nearly $30 billion from 33 films. “We got to return to something akin to that. And I actually am confident that we will.”
A string of bad superhero movies certainly isn’t helping, though, even if they aren’t all from Disney.
Disney CEO Bob Iger had previously targeted next year for the launch of a streaming version of ESPN’s main channel (no watered-down ESPN Plus, just ESPN).
Now that the deal for a sports streaming Voltron with Warner Bros. and Fox is sewed up, Iger said to CNBC’s Julia Boorstin that direct-to-consumer ESPN could launch in late August 2025, and confirmed to investors that it will be available in a bundle with Hulu and Disney Plus.
Speaking during the NYT DealBook Summit 2023, he did not blame the actors’ strike and lack of publicity for the film’s performance. Nor did he blame the weird hatred of the film driven by sexism coming from a small and vocal cadre of Marvel fans upset over a film helmed by three women.
He did blame the sheer volume of content being created for making it more difficult to maintain quality and said, “The Marvels was shot during Covid, and there wasn’t enough supervision on set” from executives.
But given that overreliance on executive creative control is one of the things that have driven the Marvel brand to its current nadir... that’s certainly an interesting assessment.
Responding to a DealBook question about recent box office disappointments, Iger says, “we need to get more realistic” about what a hit looks like in the streaming age.
The Disney CEO also says it was a “definite mistake” to increase output for streaming and that an increase in quantity led to diluted quality.
In early 2022, Bob Chapek was Disney’s CEO, and it was “placing its bets on sports streaming and the metaverse.” Those metaverse plans evaporated, Chapek lost a petty war with Bob Iger, and ESPN is up for sale despite still making tons of money.
But the gambling thing — that’s still happening. The more than $1.5 billion licensing deal that will replace Barstool branding on a sportsbook and bring more gambling content to the network launches in force on November 14th.
Subject to final approvals, ESPN BET will go live in 17 states, which include: Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia.
Additionally, ESPN is now using official odds provided by ESPN BET across editorial and other content.
[ESPN Press Room U.S.]
Marvel should be synonymous with a good time, but increasingly, it’s synonymous with bloat, bad VFX, and poorly scripted film and TV.
