Disney’s 10 Biggest Moments of 2023: Layoffs, Box Office Bombs, Board Fight, DeSantis Feud and More (2024)

For the first time since 2014, Disney had a year without a billion-dollar movie at the global box office (excluding 2020 and 2021, when theaters were largely shuttered due to COVID). The disappointments included “The Marvels,” the lowest-grossing release ever in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, garnering just $84 million domestically to date and $204.6 million worldwide. Epitomizing Disney’s cinema woes: James Cameron’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” — released by its 20th Century Studios subsidiary at the end of 2022 — grossed $283 million domestically in 2023. That was more than most of Disney’s would-be blockbusters, including “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($214 million), “Indiana Jones 5” ($174 million), “Elemental” ($154 million), “Haunted Mansion” ($67 million) and “Wish” ($54 million to date).

A bright spot: Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” pulled in $845.6 million worldwide, a strong showing even if it didn’t break a billion. And this summer’s “The Little Mermaid” scored $569 million globally; however, previous Disney live-action adaptations like “The Lion King” or “Beauty and the Beast” easily topped the billion-dollar threshold.

Amid the WGA strike and on the eve of the SAG-AFTRA walkout, Bob Iger gave workers on the picket lines a new reason to fight by saying the unions were not being “realistic” in their demands, which he called “very disturbing.”

“We managed, as an industry, to negotiate a very good deal with the directors guild that reflects the value that the directors contribute to this great business,” Iger said on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” from the elite executive Sun Valley Conference in Idaho. “We wanted to do the same thing with the writers and we’d like to do the same thing with the actors. There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic. And they are adding to the set of the challenges that this business is already facing that is, quite frankly, very disruptive.”

After stepping back from his fight with Disney and Iger earlier this year, activist investor Nelson Peltz clambered back — and it’s gotten personal.

Peltz’s Trian Fund Management announced it was launching a proxy-ballot battle to get two seats on the board at Disney’s shareholder meeting next spring, saying it would nominate Peltz himself and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo as independent director candidates.

“Disney is one of the most iconic companies in the world with unrivaled scale, unparalleled customer loyalty, irreplaceable intellectual property (IP) and an enviable commercial flywheel. However, Disney has woefully underperformed its peers and its potential,” Trian said in a statement.

In its Nov. 30 response to Trian, Disney noted that 78% of the shares claimed to be beneficially owned by Trian are owned by former Marvel Entertainment chairman Ike Perlmutter. The company also alleged Perlmutter has a personal grudge against Iger, saying he “was terminated from his employment by Disney earlier this year and has voiced his longstanding personal agenda against Disney’s CEO, Robert A. Iger, which may be different than that of all other shareholders.”

Peltz asserts that Disney stock has underperformed its media-industry peers and the broader market over the last decade — and even before that, shares languished since Iger was first appointed CEO in 2005. Trian claims “Disney shareholders were once over $200 billion wealthier than they are now,” referencing the cumulative market value lost between Disney’s all-time high closing stock price on March 8, 2021, and Oct. 6, 2023.

Disney is in the middle of closing a deal with Comcast to acquire full ownership of Hulu. The company this monthpaid $8.61 billion to Comcast, which holds a 33% stake in Hulu but the final price tag could be much higher — that will be based on an assessment of Hulu’s market value as of Sept. 30 by each side’s bankers.

Even before that happens, Disney has started to integrate Disney+ and Hulu, aiming to strengthen the bundle and cut churn and customer-acquisition costs. Beginning Dec. 6, most Hulucontent became available on Disney+ in the U.S. in a “one-app experience” for subscribers of both services. The initial “beta” of Hulu on Disney+ will be followed by the launch of a more integrated version in March 2024, which will coincide with Hulu adding all seasons of ABC’s hit drama “Grey’s Anatomy” (sharing streaming rights to the show with Netflix).

The beef between Disney and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who as of this writing is still trying to win the GOP’s 2024 presidential nomination, continued to wend its way through the courts through the year. Disney angered DeSantis in 2022 when it opposed the state’s Parental Rights in Education bill, known to critics as “Don’t Say Gay,” which regulates classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity and gives parents the right to sue school districts over alleged violations.

Disney on April 26 sued DeSantis in federal court, arguing that the governor illegally seized control over the Orlando-area Reedy Creek Improvement District, which encompasses Disney World. Disney has accused DeSantis and his allies of violating its First Amendment rights with “a targeted campaign of government retaliation.” The case remains pending.

“It seems like he’s decided to retaliate against us,”Iger saidabout DeSantis during the company’s annual shareholders meeting in April. He also referred to DeSantis’ power struggle with Disney as an attempt “to punish a company for its exercise of a constitutional right.”

DeSantis, in his glitch-plagued announcement on X (formerly Twitter) launching his 2024 presidential campaign, alleged Disney wanted to “inject gender ideology” into the state’s schools. Some Republicans who are supporting Disney in its fight with DeSantis “are showing themselves to be corporatists,” the governor said. DeSantis also claimed “nobody made Disney more money than me” because Florida allowed theme parks to reopen during COVID while California kept them shut down for much longer.

What’s the future of ESPN and Disney’s other legacy TV network businesses?

Iger earlier this year separated ESPN, headed by chairman Jimmy Pitaro, breaking out as a separate unit from Disney’s linear TV networks group. That wasn’t to signal that ESPN is for sale, according to Iger — but he later said in a July CNBC interview that the companywas looking for a strategic partner to invest in ESPN and distribute its content. (Disney currently owns 80% of ESPN and Hearst owns the other 20%.) Iger subsequently recruited former high-ranking Disney execs Tom Staggs and Kevin Mayer, co-heads of media roll-up play Candle Media, to help analyze and develop strategic options for ESPN.

Meanwhile, Iger said in the same CNBC interview that ABC, Disney Channel and the ABC station group “may not be core” to Disney’s business — indicating a sale or spinoff might be in the offing. But at the New York Times’ DealBook Summit last month, Iger said Disney’s TV nets were “not for sale.” What did he mean with his earlier remarks then? At DealBook, Iger tried to explain: “Sometimes, when I am looking for a reaction to my own thought process, I like to test that process in public, particularly in ways that I might be able to get a reaction from the investment community. So my thought was at the time that I would essentially be public with that thought process.”

In a dubious achievement, Bob Iger earned the enmity of the world’s richest individual: Elon Musk. The billionaire was furious at Disney and its CEO after the company pulled its ad spending from Musk’s X (the social media platform formerly called Twitter).

The acrimony stemmed from Musk’spost on X on Nov. 15, “You have said the actual truth,” replying to someone who evoked the white-nationalist Great Replacement conspiracy theory that Jewish communities “have been pushing the exact kind of dialectical hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them.”

At the New York Times’ DealBook conference last month, Iger was asked about Musk’s comment. “I have a lot of respect for Elon and what he has accomplished,” Iger said. However, given “the position [Musk] took, in quite a public manner,” Disney concluded that its association with Musk and X/Twitter was “not necessarily a positive one for us.”

Later in the day at the same conference, Musk had a message to Iger and others who had halted ad spending on X: “Go f*ck yourself. Go. f*ck. Yourself. Is that clear?” Musk said. He called out Iger and said, “Hey Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel — don’t advertise.”

Musk wasn’t done fuming. Posting on X earlier this month, Musk cited a report that New Mexico’s attorney general sued Meta and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, alleging that the company’s platforms enabled the distribution of child sexual abuse material and failed to identify alleged predator networks. (A Meta spokesperson said that it uses “sophisticated technology” and employs child-safety experts to share information and tools with other companies and law enforcement, “including state attorneys general, to help root out predators.”) Musk accused Disney of a double standard in not pulling advertising from Meta.

“Bob Eiger [sic] thinks it’s cool to advertise next to child exploitation material. Real stand up guy,” Musk wrote in a post on X, misspelling Iger’s name. The tech mogul said in a follow-up post about Iger, “He should be fired immediately. Walt Disney is turning in his grave over what Bob has done to his company.” Disney has declined to comment on Musk’s remarks.

Meanwhile, Tesla has reportedly removed the Disney+ streaming app from its electric vehicles, in an apparent retaliatory move by Musk.