This Week in Startups - EMERGENCY POD! Bob Iger returns as Disney CEO | E1618

Episode Date: November 21, 2022

Bob Iger is BACK as Disney CEO, and Bob Chapek has left the company! First, Jason and Molly break down how we got here (11:49) before Lon Harris joins to go deeper on Chapek's missteps and join in on some speculation and predictions for Iger's second stint as CEO! (23:25)  (0:00) J+M tee up today's EMERGENCY POD! (1:40) Jason and Molly catch up on some wild news from the weekend: Elizabeth Holmes's sentencing, crypto contagion, and more! (10:21) OpenPhone - Get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://openphone.com/twist  (11:49) Bob Iger is back as Disney CEO as Bob Chapek steps down, Molly's Chapek intuition (21:56) Crowdbotics - Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com/twist (23:25) Streaming expert Lon Harris joins to break down where Chapek went wrong as Disney CEO (32:59) Supergut - Get 30% off with code TWIST at https://supergut.com  (34:30) More Chapek missteps, how he could have handled things differently, theories/predictions on Iger's next big swing FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

All right, everybody. There's only one topic we can talk about Molly. Pretty much. I mean, we're going to beander through some of the news over the weekend, but Sunday night, Disney Axis, CEO, Bob Chepic. Just like that. Boom. Crazy.

And they're bringing back Bobby Iger. My guy is, it's great. Why do they fire Chapik? I think we know the reasons. We're going to detail those. Lon Harris is here for an emergency pod. We're going to talk about EQ, IQ, Parks, Scarjo. Tal management.

Yeah, business. All this stuff. It's like Iger's back, but he's wearing the four or five like Jordan. This is going to be his second time. I have a prediction. I got a hot take, a la Bill Simmons style, about what Bob Iger's going to do this time around. I think it's going to do another three-peat.

It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Open Phone. As a startup founder, a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back, but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them. Open Phone makes it easy to get business phone. numbers for you and your team, right on top of your existing devices. Visit openphone.com slash twist to get 20% off your first six months.

CrowdBotics. Great ideas can change the world, and crowdbotics is the fastest way to turn those ideas into code. Get a free scoping session for your next big app idea at crowdbotics.com slash twist. And SuperGut is the easiest and tastiest way clinically proven to regulate digestion, curb cravings, and boost energy. Get 30% off their delicious shakes, bars, and fiber mix at supergut.com with code twist. Hey, Molly, how are you doing? I'm not crying. I'm not crying. It's okay. It's going to be all right. It's going to be all right. Well, it's tears of joy. I'm not 100% sure that's true, but I'm pretty sure. It's cheers of joy. For two reasons. One, my viewity, my little eyedrops that I take. Yeah. They make my eyes a little red. So I got to take them

long before we go on air because as you can see my eyes get a little bloodshot for the first five minutes of taking these. It feels like you put a little pepper in your eyes. I'm being honest. That's fun. It doesn't sound that fun to me. But then, and I'm not making this a commercial for V-U-I-T-Y, modern medicine, by astrodoctor about V-E-O-T. However, when I use Vuity, my eyesight gets better from an eye drop.

It's very strange. It's pretty amazing. And I will say that I forgot to bring any cute, readers upstairs today so I'm rocking the Magoos and nothing makes me wish that I had Vuity more than the Magoo's. Oh, that's your big thick glasses are big. I feel like Mr. Magoo in these things. It's a look. It's a look. They're my backup. I mean, it is kind of a look look very, and it's a new alpha today, if I may. I look very CEO of Alameda research. I just want to say it's a new alpha today. You look great. It's very autumny. It's very

automa. I mean, we're not so Thanksgiving week. We're on air talent. We're allowed to comment on each others visual appearance. We're allowed to. She's allowed to point out that I look like I'm crying and wearing a stunning blue tea. And I look stunning. Stunning. I got a little salt in the hair. Trying to get a little lift in the hair.

The salt is the jam. Yeah, the salt thing is the jam. Thank you, producer Nick. But I like the gold necklace. And I like the magoos. I think it's a good look. You got a good autumn look. It's on trend.

Thank you. I appreciate it. That's right. Old right. I'm not. I was like, don't say it. I was like, don't say it. RIP my mentions.

Oh, yeah, y'all. It's a long ago. Okay. Let's. I know, totally. Let's just not even ask about that. There's so many emergency pods we could do today.

There really are. Let's do it different. We are so excited to have huge breaking news yesterday that was not about any of the things that you think it's about. Not Trump. Not Trump. Not the T word. Not F.TX even. This isn't even crypto related.

This is straight up good old fashioned. Disney. Disney dish. And we need a little Disney in our lives. After Trump, after FTX, Luna, Terra Luna, Theranos. How about a little chaser? Oh, yeah. God, that's a set and things.

We didn't even talk about 11 years for Elizabeth Holmes. I said five to 10 years is what she would get. Somebody got to pull the tape, but she got 11. I was kind of shocked by that. I'm not going to lie. I think appropriate. People were mad at that lady. Yeah, I mean,

committing fraud at that scale, like Enron or Madoff, those were multi-decade sentences. I believe Jeff Skilling from Enron was 21, and I think Madoff was even more. So I think we are shocked because we don't consider white-collar crime, you know, like as big of a crime as stabbing somebody or, you know, murdering somebody, right? I think, yes, I will say I am shocked

because normally we don't punish white-collar crime. Right. Like, you look at the 2008 clamps and nobody went to jail and the sacklers are still out here, like, with their own personal fortune intact after what is effectively like genocide. Like we don't, you know, I mean, Madoff, yes, got 150 years in prison. But that was multi, multi, multi billions of dollars. And so to me, I was like, people never get held accountable. And relative to that, there was actually kind of small. I'm just glad that we have some of these examples now.

so we can point founders and capital allocators to, hey, listen, crime does not pay. I hate to reinforce this because I felt like I was being, what's the word, you know, I was becoming the turn the music down guy at the party. And I'm like, listen, we do have neighbors. Accounting. Yeah, I'm like, we have neighbors.

We could have a party, but it is 2 a.m. We could turn the music down 20%. We'd still be able to dance to him. People are like, no. play the music hub, it's 2 a.m. We have to go effing crazy. I'm like, but we do have neighbors. And I happen to know that the neighbor two doors down has a new baby.

You know, let's maybe, maybe seven. And then I'm like the guy taking the Sharpie. And you know, there's a guy who puts the Sharpie and he just puts it on the volume thing to say like, that's the volume we can go to. I'm like that. I'm not actually familiar with that, but that's amazing. I was at a party one time. And there was a line on the guy's receiver. That like a parent had put there?

or he had put there? He had put a line that he had negotiated with his neighbors that they would not call the cops if it was at this level. It's an apartment building. That's a New York party, yeah. Ours were more like a big, like branch in the middle of, or like a house, farmhouse in the middle of nowhere. Oh, yeah, go crazy.

Yeah, start a bonfire. And then we had a rule when I was growing up, which is if the cops come in cars, not a problem. But if a paddy wagon shows up, you take off through the back field and you jump the barbed wire, you get away. Yeah. The cars can only take two people each

or maybe they have to put one in each. So you're good. You know, odds are good. If a wagon comes, serious. Anyway, congrats. I think congrats to society. Yeah. And Balwani's going to get worse because he did worse in his trial.

And let it be the return. I mean, right? Like, you're being, all of that is being born out right now. Like being the crabby old guy on the front porch. It turns out has been the right strategy all along. Because every time one of these stories comes up, it starts at the exact same place. No governance. No diligence.

and frankly, no like basic accounting. Suddenly I know what it's like to be Bill Gurley, when Bill Gurley was like, well, maybe we should go public, and I don't know if the unit economics were better, that might be good as well. And people were like, ah, unit economics, go public, screw it, let's go. Masayoshi IPO, we'll just do a Masa IPO. And, you know, I don't know.

You know, my day, we took the company public and we rose and fall with our ability to perform for a wider group of, you know, shareholders and their interest. And people were like, whatever, you know. You fool. You fools. The Masa P.O., you know, great that we got to have early liquidity, but, you know, Uber should have gone public a little bit earlier probably. And people, you know, this really does speak to the wider crypto space, Molly.

You know, again, I was to turn the music guy or I was the I don't get a guy when they put the song on. I'm like, this actually isn't good music. I'm like, no, no, this is the greatest dance music ever. I was like, no, I'm like, no, this isn't the greatest music ever. No, I think if you put on. some classic rock, that could be the greatest music ever, or if you put on some like, you know, Kanye or Jay-Z or B-Small.

That could be the greatest matter. This is not the greatest music ever. They're like, no, no, you're wrong, J-Cal. This Luda, that you can't, you just can't understand Terrell Luna. And I'm like, I can't understand it. Right. So I'm not going to do it.

Is that my fault or? Because I'm not the smartest guy, but I'm not dumb. And I can't understand this. And you can't explain it. to me. Yeah. And I was constantly on the pod like, wow,

this is incredible market cap. How many people are using the product? But when does the product launch? And they'd be like, I'm like, how many developers work on this? That was a question I started to ask in the end. That was a good one. Yeah.

And they're like eight. I'm like eight developers divided into three billion dollars. 400 million per developer? I liked it when you would be like, what does the product do? But what does the value that the product creates in the world. What does it do?

Yeah. No answers. Honestly. Being right about crypto is just, you know, it's bittersweet because I didn't make any big money on crypto. Yeah. And so it's like, oh, I missed the grip. And I don't know.

It doesn't feel like I get some big high five for being right about it, being a giant scam. So, I don't know. I got burned so early that it kind of helped me just never get back. Well, it's immutable, though, Molly. Just always remember. It's in... It's there somewhere.

It's immutable. It's immutable. It's out there somewhere. I'm sorry. Immutability is a... What does that help me? But I'm like, okay, you can't change it. Because that was how the databases used to work. I had to re-do the database.

It was immutable. And then we made them so you could change them. And it was easy to change them. And they didn't go down. Like, it's immutable as a feature? Okay. Anyway, let's do this chaser. Listen, lots of founders are Lucy Goosey with their

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Twist today. Openphone.com slash twist today. Great job. It's a killer product. This news came out yesterday in all caps. And I, frankly, did not actually. believe it at first, but it appears to be true that in one of the most shocking stories in tech and business since at least last week, Bob Chapeck, shout out to Nick on that one. Shout out to Nick and Bob Chapec, we hardly knew you pulling a Liz Trust. He is out as CEO of Disney and Bob Eiger is back in charge. What? And this is one of those where we don't want to brag, but we have literally been covering the story from the Joe. Yeah.

And we'll get to that a minute because I'm also taking a little victory lap on this. Disney stock up 7% on the news, a great day for J-traders. Still down 38% year-to-date. But Eiger is back effective. In case you're wondering if this is voluntary on Chapix part, Bob Eiger is back as CEO effective immediately. And Bob Chackap, Chapik has, quote, stepped down. Eiger has served, agreed to serve a CEO for two years with two mandates from the board.

One, set the strategic direction for renewed growth. Disney's revenue last quarter only grew about 9% year over year and missed expectations. And two, work closely with the board in developing a successor. And by this, I think they mean a better one than the one you chose last time. All right. Remember a couple of things about Bob Jay. He's unlikable. And in a business, and I hate to like be like,

like, I think the kids call this based. But in Hollywood, in my experience, I mean, spent 10 years living in Los Angeles and hanging out with Hollywood people, man, they get glad handled. I mean, if you're a celebrity, man, they treat you really well. And it's a relationship-based business. Got to be super high EQ. You've got to make people feel good,

especially if you're doing the 10-pole stuff that defines Disney across these properties. And so the back channel was, of course, Bob Chapic, you know, running the parks. You know, maybe a little gruff, whatever. But then I knew that he was a little bit out of touch. And we covered it here on the show. We had a little bit of a back and forth. And I kind of agreed with him, but I was like, you'd never say that as the CEO of Disney.

You might remember he said, like, animation is not for adults. Yeah. Kind of thing. And like an adult's not going to, you know, watch two shows in a row or, you know, like. And I was like, um, their kids and then, yeah. Yeah, I was like, I'm going to have to stop you here for a second. That may be true. I am not putting on an animated film to watch alone without my kids.

Not me, not my jam. With the exception of maybe the Disney stuff, I did watch some of the, I'm sorry, the Star Wars. They did a Star Wars like Japanese anime crossover that I did find a delightful. I did watch alone. Yeah. So maybe I'm a hypocrite. But you don't say that publicly as the guy who owns Pixar and Disney. Right, you're not a hypocrite.

I'm like the guy from Starbucks. It's like, this is like who's the guy from Starbucks? Nobody's not coffee in the morning, Howard Schultz. Yeah, it's like Harry Sharks coming out. I'd be like, cold brew, not my jam. You know, coffee gives me the chitters. Only kids eat that. Yeah, he did a lot of that stuff all in a row.

And actually, this might be a good time to go to this video from back in the day, not right the second, but like immediately when he came on, right? It was just misstep after misstep after misstep, most of which seemed to be related to both EQ and maybe a little bit of like ego. And you know that I have been on this guy since day one because I just was like, I don't know why you didn't like him. I don't know why you didn't like them. Because EQ really matters, maybe.

But well, here's why I didn't like him. Here, there's an 85. I'm doing the, I'm doing the J-Cal. I'm having a victory lap about my brightness. Here's an 85 second clip in March talking about. So you remember there was that fallout just as a setup between Eiger and Chap, or Chepek, whatever. We're just going to call him both on the pod to cover each possibility because nobody seems

to even have consensus on how to say his name. But there was that big fallout between Iger and Chappek because like Iger had retired, but wouldn't really leave. And he had postponed his retirement a couple of times. There was a big to do about Scarlett Johansson's pay for Black Widow that he handled very clunkily, right? He was just like, she got paid the same. And then a couple other things all at once.

And here's what I said in March talking about. warning signs. When this starts, I'm specifically talking about this quote to the New York Times where Iger basically was like, yeah, I just, I feel like I should be around to help him. There were a couple ways for Bob Chapick to respond, right? One is, thank God. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I welcome all of the input from the guy who ran this company for 15 years, who's beloved. But evidently, he just could not take this. He was so, I don't know. He got tweaked by it, maybe insecure. Yeah, he got so tweaked by it that there. relationship has deteriorated ever since. Iger, Bob 1, had postponed his retirement three times already.

So if you put this in succession terms, Bob Iger is Logan Roy. And Kendall is there waiting for the job. And he keeps on not leaving. And then on top of that, you have these sort of moves by Chapek where people don't think he has good EQ, where there was that kind of like pretty ugly stuff about Scarlett Johansen and her contract about Black Widow. And then also, and I personally think this is just like a kiss of death move as a leader, the ultimate king move of taking away that P&L from each individual division and centralizing it under one. I mean, that's like business weeds, I know, but having worked at several house of brands, that's a mess. And it makes people furious because you effectively say to a bunch of grownups who are running their own businesses within a business,

sorry, no, we took that all away. It all adds up to a portrait of a guy who isn't that good at people. And what I actually find super interesting, like on top of all that, the cherry on the cake is like Bob Iger picked him. That's his hand chosen successor. Yeah. Yeah, you nailed it. The EQ issue. I like the P&L issue too.

I had forgotten about that. That was a big one too. For people who don't understand this issue, since we're moving pretty quick here, it's pretty straightforward. If you have a house of brands, let's say Condé Nast, and I may have explained it at the time, you know, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair and Vogue had people in charge of, of them, like Radin Carter or Anna Wintor, and they were kind of given their five-tips, right? They're like, okay, this is your world, here's your floor of the building, here's your budget, you go do you, consider yourself the CEO of Vanity Fair.

Consider yourself the CEO of Vogue. Now, if you give people the CEO-ish title and, you know, that is manifested in a budget where it's like, you know, keep the margin at whatever it is, 35%. Spend as much as you want to that margin, but we just need to see the margin be reasonable, and we want the top line to grow 20% year over year, and we're all good here. Here's your outcome we're looking for. And just manage to the outcome

as opposed to manage the minutia. Now, in some businesses, you do want to streamline them and get alignment. In other businesses, you want to get some leader who wants to be a CEO. The perfect example would be YouTube. They put Susan Wojekki in charge of it. She's a CEO.

She runs that as her little kingdom there, and it's far from little. It was $50 billion or more revenue. And then other things, you kind of don't want to have its own P&L because you want to absorb it. So Android or Chrome, you really want those things to be under Google. They serve the purpose of getting more people to search. You don't want somebody in Chrome running amok and saying,

oh, I just sold the search bar to Bing, you know, like not the thing that should have its own, you know, king or god queen. So anyway, really interesting stuff coming out of Disney. in and just straight up blew the place up and killed all his friends. Just like made sure he didn't have any friends left. And that

that's a problem. That becomes a problem. You need to have big political capital to do that. Like to imagine going to the Bob, imagine going to the Anna Wintor or the Graydon Carter, you know, I'm dating myself with this magazine kind of stuff and saying, oh yeah, by the way,

like you lost your keys to the kingdom, you're now the vice president instead of the CEO-ish or however you thought of yourself. And those people have power And then they come for you with all the knives But he was fired I mean that's he was canned They're saying he resigned

But this seems like he resigned like Like they held him over the side of the building And by his ankles and said like You can take the elevator or we can let you go right here Which one? And he said I'll take the elevator Yeah

So he gets 20, 30 billion A 2030 million It is we'll go to lawn In a minute for the dish in Hollywood But I would be remiss if I not point out the difference in board power between, you know, Disney and let's say meta. Like Disney has one bad quarter under Chapek, like a bad one. And they're like, you're out, I'm back, the end. And then Zuckerberg lights all of meta's free cash flow on

fire. And the board's like, we can't really do anything. Can't do anything. Yeah, $300 a share to a 90. Luckily. I see the difference. There was a back stop where everybody just said, we don't have to own your shares. And this is where governance matters. This is what we're seeing in the economy. The party is over.

It's now 10 a.m. Some people are still, you know, drinking, doing shots on lawn chairs at the front of the party. Other people are like asleep. And this is going to be the hangover. It's going to be a couple of years of people trying to figure out how the party got that out of control. And so, yeah.

RIP, Bob Chapic. I wonder if he's going to be like at the Oscars in the in Memorial, in Memorial section. Do they do like dead careers? Murder. Do they do dead careers in Moran? That got cold in a hurry. Oof.

Yeah, I mean, can this guy ever work again? I mean, it's bad. If you are a startup, you know, speed kills. Product velocity is how small tech startups compete with the giant incumbent. So you want to get your product to market faster and you want to do it affordably. and you want to do it with crowdbotics. They are a software platform that enables teams to plan and build custom apps in full code. This allows you to go from your idea to a spec and from a spec to code.

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And get your detailed build plan at crowdbotics.com slash twist. That's crowd, BOT, high-CS.com slash twist. And they're going to give you that free scoping session, which is a really nice thing for them to do for the startups who listen to this week and startups. Well, this is perfect, actually. Because it's an emergency pod, we got Lon Harris to come on. Oh, it is an emergency. Let's talk to him about what in the heck this does mean for Bob and his

career and oh my god, Lahn, oh my God. It's an emergency. What's happening in Hollywood? Are people like running in the streets yelling and screaming in Hollywood? This was crazy. Are scripts flying in the air? I mean, I don't go outside, obviously, so I don't know what it's like out there. But my whole feed on Twitter was, it was amazing how instant the changeover was.

That one moment, it was just normal Sunday night. And then, yeah, the next it was just like, I go back in, check it out. You know, like it was a flood. All of the side. I thought it was a joke at first, but no, no, very real. I did too. I was like, there's no way. I'm like, boards don't act that fast.

Oh, my God. Sunday night, pre-holiday week news dump. Yeah, wow. I mean, they whacked them coming out of church. That's called. Yeah, no, and it is almost every time this happens. Almost every time this happens where a studio dismisses the top person, there's a coup or whatever.

They always have, there's always like some kind of soft landing in the write-up. It's always like, they're going to. they're going to go back to producing or they're going to, they got a new deal secured here. Chapic, nothing. It literally one line and deadline, which was Bob Chepic left the role immediately or something. Like, that was it. And there's like nothing else he's done.

So, yeah, I don't, I don't think he's going to have much of a second act. That seems like this was. I literally cannot stop laughing at Wachtham coming out of church, by the way. Yeah, he walked into the little, that little den with Joe Pesci. where he just goes, oh, no, and then cut to block. Oh, no, yeah. Okay, but so, yeah, is it that bad? Like, is it like, who?

Because clearly everybody hate, nobody, you have no social capital whatsoever if you can get like that as the CEO of Disney. I mean, I think it's part of it, I do think, and you guys were talking about this a little before I came on with the, with the sort of the EQ notion. Like, CEO of Disney more than most companies is not just a CEO job, but also you're a public figure. I mean, I remember from being a kid, what always says that to me, remember when Michael Eisner used to host the wonderful world of Disney. There was that, come on. Yeah, come on. He would come on like Disney. And he'd be at Disneyland with Mickey and Donald. And he'd be like,

hey, I'm Mike Eisner. Here's a great movie that we've got for you. The Ghost of Canterville. Coming right up. And it was like, that's the job in some ways. You're the carnival barker. You're the ring. You're the statesman. You're the ringleader. It's what Steve Jobs used to do for Apple, but you're not, you're not the innovator, the technologist. It's not let me show you what I've invented. It's, you know, here's Dumbo, here's Pinocchio, you know, you're, I don't think. Here's a new story for you. Here's a new attraction for your family. And you're a bridge, right? You're a spokesman, I think is the best way to say it. Like, Iiger is really good at that. He really has that energy. And he's got that that pedigree. He's the guy that brought in Pixar.

He's the guy that brought in Lucasfilm. He's the guy that made all these deals. He's, he's, he's, he's the one that put this Disney together, and Chepik was running his playbook, but I don't think he kind of has that same energy. He's not exciting. I mean, the deal's alone, my God. For the Parks fans, he became immediately public enemy number one because, and I don't think, I will say, I don't think that's entirely his fault. I think Bob Iger probably would have made some of those same decisions. He just might have sold them a little better or couched them in better terms, so it didn't feel so eusurious to people. But yeah, I think that on top of the, you mentioned the Scarjo thing, which was a big black guy right away. And then, you know, I just

think it's a lot of this stuff coming together. He just wasn't selling what they're doing as well as a Bobbiker. Who got rid of the pass? Remember the season pass? They deprecated the season pass. Now, this to me. This is what has made him so hated among like this. Disney adults and the park fans. It's that reservation system. He's tied to that and Parks fans hate it. It made the experience much worse, that Jeannie Plus app too that people don't like.

So I don't know. I mean, how much of that is Iger would have done it differently and how much of it is Iger would have sold it in a way. You know about this? You know about the season past, Molly? You know about this? Yeah. Yeah.

And he got, well, and he got rid of the fast pass reservation, where it's no longer free to just like get there early. And remember when he said that there was like an attendance mix problem at Disney? Like it was this weird kind of vaguely racial overtones. Yeah. I mean, he was like Disneyland's getting kind of trash it. We got to like make it more premium.

Yeah. I mean, he just. So even if Iger had sold it better, it was going to be hard to sell a massive price increase like that right out of a pandemic. Right. But when you basically are like Disneyland's getting kind of trashy, we need to raise prices, like, that's not good. Here's what I would have done with the season pass thing. Because I know these freaks who have the season pass. No offense, Lon Harris.

I don't have a season pass. No, but we have friends at our circle who had the season passes. Yeah. And these people are weird. They are adults who dress up like characters. And they go there because they have no jobs. And they go to Disney Weekly. They go have meals at Disney.

They hit the same rides. They've been on a thousand times. They go to, it's a small world for the 687 time. Sure. It's a little bit strange. It gets a little weird. It's not my thing. I mean, when I was in high school, I grew up very close to Disneyland, maybe 10 minutes away.

And we used to do that. But Tuesdays and passes were, it was like 50 bucks for a season base. You were a teenager. That's true. My adults, by the way, are the bread and butter. Yes. So there's my point. Disney.

You have to respect the nerds. But he cannot. Bob, too, cannot. You have to respect and covet the nerds, the dorks, the dweeps, the fans, the cause players. It's a thing. These are beyond fans. It's a balance. You have to make Disney parks work and accessible and fun for families, but you do also have

to serve the heavy users, you know, like what McDonald's would call the heavy users, the people who are there every day. They will call them the base. in the public parlance. They should have given, very simple. They should have said, how many years out of the past 10 have you had a season pass?

We're going to start with people who are 10 out of 10 and we're going to grandfather you in for the next 10. We'll go with people who are 9 out of 10. Well, grandfather you in for the next 9 out of 10. You can still have a season pass.

But then we're going to start a season pass wait list and we're just going to work off the wait list and we're going to just give it to people who have been the most loyal. We're not going to rip this out from you because people who had the season pass ripped out for them. It changed their behavior.

They used to go there for two hours or three hours. And you can't justify $150 to go there for three hours. I don't care who you are. Yeah, I think that the balance under shape again, again, I don't know who was this his decisions. Was this just the way it was going? Who knows?

But it's tilted in favor of, I think, wealthier Disney adult sort of audiences with more resources. I mean, that's what you heard when like the Star Wars Hotel opened. And it's like, well, this is inaccessible for a lot of what we think of as Disney's core audience of families, you know, people are going to go. for their one vacation a year to a Disney park. How much was that, Molly? Do you remember that Disney thing?

It was four or five grand a night or something, wasn't it completely? Yeah, per person. But you would pay for the whole trip, which was, I think, two nights or three nights. But yeah, it was thousands per person. I mean, it was insane. But then was it, okay, was it only parks that he, because there was also, we talked about him consolidating the P&Ls. He, like, fired some people on the media side, if I recall correctly.

I mean, I certainly don't. I mean, to me, looking at it from the content streaming side, I certainly don't think it was just parks. I don't mean to give that idea. And I also think in terms of content, the spend is outrageous. I mean, Disney's, they lost money last year or last quarter in terms of just revenue on spending because they're spending so much on Disney Plus content. But it's also, I mean, if you think about how they're using, utilizing these brands, you've got Pixar, they're sending most of their projects directly to Disney Plus, they're making, you know, no revenue on some like Luca, you know,

these big soul, these big films that they made. Lightyear came out this year and sort of struggled, which should have been a massive home run, a toy story follow-up space adventure with Chris Evans. We have no Star Wars movies on the docket whatsoever. I mean, we're all loving Andor, but the fact that under Chepec, Lucasfilm didn't have a rogue squadron going, didn't have a new trilogy of movies going. There's some missed opportunities on that side as well, I think, kind of undeniably. Also, Disney animation has a movie coming out like next week called Strange Worlds.

Anyone heard of it? Do you guys know about this? Star Trek? No, because adults don't actually watch animation, so it doesn't really. I mean, I have three kids. I should know about it. I know. You showed 100% know.

They should be jumping up and down waiting to go to see this. Yeah. All right. Listen, the holidays are here. Thanksgiving is coming up in but a few days. And for many of us, this is a hard time to maintain good health. You got lots of eating. You got a little drinking.

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like how he operated the business, how he talked to the public? Like, that really does seem, how big a deal is that to is he ever going to work again? I mean, in Hollywood, that matters. Like, I think more so than most other industries in Hollywood, that matters. Are you a person people want to be in the room with, a person people feel like they can work with. Iger, obviously, 15 years of experience. A presence that Hollywood people are going to be way more comfortable having in the room. And that, you know, in LA, that matters.

It's going to go a long way towards being able to make these deals towards being able to make stuff happen. Towards being able to just get people in the room, get them talking. So I do think that makes a difference. What they should have done with the Star Wars thing, with the galaxy, whatever, where it's five grand. They should not have come out of the gate at $5,000. They should have come out of the gate at more reasonable price. They should have looked at the first year as an investment break-even on it. And they should have had a lottery.

And they should have just made it more accessible. They should have said, listen, you have to take into account your hotel and all your meals are covered. And I would have explained it better. Right. And I would have said, listen, we understand that in order to do something like this, it takes an extraordinary amount of cost. And we also understand that it's not in reach for everybody. So we're going to have a lottery day. Every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday is the lottery.

You can go to that. The price is a little bit discounted. But we want to make it accessible for true Star Wars fans. You can join the lottery. Here's how. Or we're going to have a lineup. There's going to be 10 tickets. Like Hamilton.

It's a Jurassic Park there. That's the lie where they're like, the only rich people would be able to come before Jurassic Park. And the lawyer goes, well, we'll have a coupon day. Yeah, something like that. There's a way to handle it, right? And then with the Scarlett Johansson thing, that's another misstep where they should have just said, Scarjo, you've been so loyal to the franchise. What's the number? We're sorry this happened.

I said that at the time. That's a case where you, that's literally one phone call where you get Scargo's people on the horn and you're like, let's make this, let's make this better. Let's make this go away. And because Disney wants to keep working with it. It's not like she's not going to be a voice in another cartoon in a year. It's not like she's not going to do a Star Wars thing at some point or a Pixar thing. You need to keep those people in the fold. When you have that moment, Molly, that's your opportunity to say, hey, Scarjeum, listen, by the books, we don't believe we owe you anything. But why go to the mat? We have such a great relationship.

Right. And it's how your fault of pandemic happened. Right. And do you have an ask? And she'd be like, well, my ask is $100 million. Okay, well, nobody's ever gotten paid that except Robert Downey Jr. He took the thing. He obviously is a bigger poll than you, but you are so important to us.

How about we go $60 million? And you just agree to do these four extra appearances slash. in this movie. We'll give you $10 million for doing one day's work four more times. It gives us an option to keep the character alive and maybe we can do. Because I think this is probably what you want. You probably want to do a Black Widow too. We'd like to invest in you and invest in the relationship.

I mean, I could be the CEO. He really could be because honestly, you see how I'm making you guys? Look at you guys are smart. I want to invest in the relationship, Molly. That is true. That is excellent EQ right there. I want to invest in the relationship. I think we, don't we both want to see Black Widow become a franchise?

Don't we want to have a two and a three like we did for Ironman? So let's be reasonable here. We have to hit our quarter. It's not good for any of us that the stock goes down. We can't take too much of a hit. Let's just do this quietly. Julio Flores, the chairman brings up a good point, which is that there was concern about setting a precedent about these streaming deals.

That's why you don't pay her. Here's what we owe you from this back deal. No, no, no, no, no. You just say like, let's make a new deal to keep her as friends. It doesn't set a precedent on what happened. with Black Widow, it's just a new deal with Scarlet Johansett that it's a bribe, but it's good business.

Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, on the bribe. You sound like my daughter when I pay to jump the line. Yeah. It's a bribe. It's an understanding. You're coming to an understanding. It's a quid pro quo.

Not even. Not even. I made a mistake. I didn't make a reservation. You work for tips as part of your compensation. I am understanding that I am inconveniencing the restaurant. and the hostess.

Oh, I just drop this 50 here. I hope nobody picks it up and walks away with it. No, no, no, no. It's so much easier than that. I take the 50. I put it in my hand. Nobody sees it. I cut the line and go right to the front.

Sure. I said, I'm so sorry. I'm Jason. I'm sorry. I didn't catch your name, Molly. Molly, I'm so sorry. I thought I made a reservation. I now realize I didn't.

If there's any way you could check, in case I did, it's Jason Calacanus. If you could take a look and I'm really sorry for being a convenience. I got my daughter with me. if there's anything you can do. I mean, she's just, she loves this place. And then I just, now she said, now my hand is on the hostess desk, and I slide the hand over, and you see it a 50. The hostess then puts her hand on top of my hand and says, Jason, let me see what I can do.

Yeah. And she's, just the hand, the move it over. Now you see the fitty. Put the hand, you swipe it. And that's what Scarlett Johansson would have done. I would have said, hey, how about we talk about Black Widow too? Maybe we give you a $25 million into hands. And would you come to the, you know, 75 year jubilee and which introduced me,

and then maybe we could do a fireside chat, that would be really meaningful for me if you showed up for me. And then we just give you the $25 million now as an advance against Black Widow 2. Would that be okay? And then slide it, whoop, 25 millie, and the scarlet your heads and sweeps it.

And everybody's friends again. And the thing is that that is a combination and this is what, Lon, you call him Cheapek? Yeah, I think so. But I'm not sure. But this is where he literally does not understand two fundamentals.

and one is talent management and the other is business. And that is how you get your ass fired. Where's Iger go? What does he do now? Oh, I mean, I feel like, I feel like we were still kind of running his playbook. I'm not sure. I definitely think in terms of the lighting of fire under Star Wars and Pixar and getting them back to where they need to be in terms of producing tent pole content that Disney can sell

and then sell merch on and then put in the, the parks, I would definitely look for that, like more high profile stuff, more sequels, you know, like more content they could sort of wrap their teeth around on that side. In terms of the parks, I think it'll be something to sort of show people like it's a new era. We're going to rethink. We're going to reset. I don't know what that. I'm not plugged in enough on that side to know what that would be.

Maybe just dropping or altering this much hated reservation system. that would be a signal. I feel like that's what you've got to do. It's just a showing people like a demonstration of goodwill. I'm back. We're going to fix this, I promise. Let me get a handle on it. A listening tour?

Yeah. A cultural reset? Right. It's the first step is I'm back and it's not just as superficial. I'm back. We're going to dig in. We're going to make this better. We're going to start to fix things.

And I mean, I think that's a lot of what this was already about. The stock got a big boost this. morning from investor confidence, I think that's as much as the action, this is as much about perception and like making people feel better about Disney because we brought the guy back who knows what he's doing. There have been, apparently Bill Simmons was alluding to Eger coming back and taking a huge swing like a Netflix Disney merger. Wow.

All right. I mean, certainly. What are I think about that? Yeah, Netflix or NBC Universal. I think either would make sense if Comcast was looking to spin off NBCU, because Peacock is struggling so much, I think that would make, that would make a lot of sense to me. Do you get the NBC, ABC of it all? You'd have to figure that out. They can't. One company can own both ABC and NBC. But, but in terms of like, that would make sense. I mean, you hear, you know, you hear the usual suspects.

Netflix or Apple or within these mega deals. I just think the power of Disney as a brand is so, epic, you need to like find somewhere where that really adds value. I don't know if Apple or Netflix, they're already such high profile brands on their own. And Netflix is the only profitable streamer right now, I think, right? Netflix founder, Reid Hastings tweeted last night, Ugh, I had been hoping Eiger would run for president. He is amazing. Does that mean he was hoping he wasn't going to come back to compete? Oh my God, that's a real tweet? Is that at Reed Hastings 45, 6, 7, 8, 9, 17. There's no way to tell anymore, so.

I believe that's the real readout. Oh, my God, that is such a self-aware. I love the fact that people are like, that's a pretty funny tweet. That's read Hastings after dark. I love After Dark. That's like, you know, you got Read Hastings After Dark, Bezos After Dark, Jack, from formerly of Twitter and Block.

I like the After Dark CEOs when they just were like, ugh. It's just super candid. Please don't. Please don't. Please don't come back, Bob. There's no way Netflix would ever get, yeah, there's your, that's how you do it. You just click on the little icon to figure out.

All you have to do is click the whole. Confirmed. Do not. There's no way Lena Con is allowing two of the top three streamers to merge. But there could be something else out here. I do like Bill Simmons's hot take there because he also is plugged into Hollywood. he got good back channels. Bill Simmons a lot of times will do a prediction.

Spoiler alert. He does a prediction and he's got the back channel. So, you know, I say back channel, but I'm going to start going full Bill Simmons. I'm just going to go, I'm going to start calling on predictions. I got like a prediction. I'm not going to call it a back channel. But there might be something in play. I don't know what other things are in play.

They're supposed to buy the other half of Hulu at some point too, right? Well, they're right. That's, yeah. Hulu is sort of theoretically back and forth and, And either, probably Disney seems like the most likely sort of they're going to just swallow it up. And then you get that Disney Hulu ESPN Plus kind of package. I got, I think this might be about also maybe, you know, in terms of dealmaking, they need to get a 10-year deal done with NBA, NFL, and they want to be in the mix for that. Right.

And they just thought, you know, Bob Chapic is not going to sit across the table from Roger Goodell or Adam Silver from the NBA or who, whoever it is, and, you know, convince them that one plus one equals three and that this is a win, win, win, and that instead of doing a four-year deal, they should do a 14-year deal, and instead of doing $14 billion, they should do $7 billion, but then split some upside and get his kids fast passes to, you know, and have an NFL Disney Day. They know Bob Chapix's not going to get those deals done, but they know Bob Iger's going to get those deals done. Right. The other thing is we were just talking about this with Netflix in terms of the sports, where a lot of the sports leagues don't feel like they're quite ready for prime time or whatever.

You know, like UFC was just talking about they're probably going to re-sign with Disney rather than go to Netflix because they'd be guinea pigs over at Netflix. So that's another thing where Disney plus Netflix together would be a huge appeal. You get this massive subscriber base, but you get a name that's trusted to do events and live streaming and all these things that people wouldn't necessarily bring to Netflix. So a joint entity there would have that as a key advantage. And didn't Disney Plus just last night do Elton John live? From Dodger Stadium, yeah.

Disney Plus at this point, they do live streaming every week. Dancing with the Stars is exclusively live on Disney Plus now. Is it? I didn't know that. Yeah, it's done on ABC. If you want to watch Dancing with the Stars, it's exclusively on Disney Plus, but they do those results shows live, just like they used to do on TV. Are they going to buy AMC? Maybe it's theaters, and they're just going to do live events like crazy.

There's the AMC of it, and then there's the Stars. Lionsgate. Because at this point, Stars and Lionsgate are going to split probably the film studio and then the Stars Network, and those could go to companies as well. Hmm. Hmm. Interesting times. I think Lionsgate's John Witt. I think it's the live. I think it's live, Molly. I think it's live that they, if they're experimenting with live on Disney Plus, and they have ESPN and they have Hulu and Hulu does live, maybe Bob Eiger's next thing is to try to do, like run the table on three live deals, just like he did with the Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, acquisitions. Maybe he gets NBA NFL and some World Cup stuff and all of a sudden, boom,

the DL Master comes in and just one more time, he repeats it again. You know, like Jordan comes back and does another three championships, but this time, instead of it being IP, it's live IP. It's sports. And if you were to run the table on those, oofa, that could be accretive to the bottom line. Let's go. Let's go, Bob. Thanks, Bobby Iger. Thanks for hopping on for this emergency pod to finally. talk about something just kind of fun. Always happy to be here. Yeah.

We'll see you tomorrow, everyone, when we are going to actually return to the conversation about the crypto contagion. Sonny Madra. Vinny's off on a cruise or whatever, but Sunny's going to join us to break down. Sunday Madras come. Break down in crypto. It's funny. All right.

We'll see you tomorrow. Bye-bye. Bye-bye.