Since late 2020, the Walt Disney Company has been engulfed in a civil war between those who put woke politics first, and the investors who put profits first. Whoever wins will decide whether or not the most important faction, the paying customer, will happily return to the magic kingdom, or angrily flee the woke hellscape.
The Disney situation is unfolding in real time before our eyes, and its repercussions will affect far more than just the company itself. It has the potential to create ripples spreading not just throughout an entire industry, but also could very well bolster a governor’s re-election chances, and his shot at the presidency.
Events of this magnitude should be given a full analysis to understand where we are, who are the players, and where we may be going.
History of the Magic Kingdom
Disney corporate management is going in an unprofitable direction. Customers and investors aren’t happy, and take action.
I’m not describing present day Disney, yet, but their past two civil wars.
Conflict is nothing new for Uncle Walt’s company. Despite the giant smile on their flagship character’s face, this business has waged brutal wars with others in Hollywood, even against a former employee.
They’ve had internal conflict too. This present fight is the third civil war to have raged within the Mouse House to date.
In the mid-1980’s, Disney was dying at the hands of Walt’s hand-picked successor, Ron Miller. The late Roy E. Disney, the so-called “idiot nephew,” started a civil war to replace him. He found allies in Fort Worth-based oil men: the Bass Brothers. They won, and Miller was out. Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg were then installed as CEO/Chairman, President, and Disney Studios Chairman, respectively (See Kim Master’s Keys to the Kingdom). This led to the Disney Renaissance, producing memorable hits customers loved, like The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin.
Then the magic ran out.
After Wells’ tragic death in the early 90’s, Eisner chased out Katzenberg, and megalomania engulfed the mind of the CEO/Chairman. With no one checking his flaws, the company steadily slid into decline. When Roy finally spoke up, Eisner tried to remove him from the board. Rather than rolling over, Walt’s “idiot nephew” bared his fangs.
Thus started Disney Civil War II.
Again, Roy found allies in major corporate investors, who were tired of seeing less than steller revenues. Again, Roy and the investors won. Eisner left in 2005, and his lieutenant, Bob Iger, took over as CEO (See James B. Stewart’s DisneyWar).
Then Roy, the company’s guardian angel, died four years later.
Under Iger, Disney engorged itself with the purchases of Pixar, Marvel, LucasFilm, and Fox.
After The Force Awakens hit theaters, it seemed nothing could stop the Iger-led Disney empire.
Then The Last Jedi arrived in 2017, angering Star Wars fans.
Something was wrong within The Magic Kingdom. Really wrong.
Existential Hollywood War
What’s occurring within Disney is part of an overall conflict in Hollywood itself, also involving those who are profits first, those politics first, and customers just wanting a break from this miserable world.
Insightful analysis of this conflict has been found in grassroots media such as YouTube channels like Midnight’s Edge, Valliant Renegade, Culture Casino, Overlord DVD, and screenwriter Kamran Pasha, who once worked at Disney. (Caution, the discussion on these channels are typically not for children).
Much of the analysis of this and the Disney Civil War can be attributed to them, especially Pasha.
Around the time of the campaign and election of former President Trump, most if not all of Hollywood had united around deconstructing pop culture heroes, subverting audience expectation, attacking the Orange Man, and his supporters. Examples of this include the aforementioned Last Jedi, Ghostbusters 2016, and Star Trek: Discovery.
Customers rejected injections of these political narratives in their cultural treasures. Near the end of 2021, it was becoming clear “Get Woke, Go Broke” wasn’t just a meme, but an axiom.
Hollywood is slowly learning. The Jason Reitman-helmed Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which retconned the 2016 movie, won fan-acclaim. It was also decidedly unwoke.
Then there’s Spider-Man: No Way Home. Like Afterlife, this movie avoided hammering political agendas and focused on fan service instead. It has to date grossed more than $1.8 billion, giving the government-restriction hit movie industry a desperately needed booster shot.
Both of the above movies are from Japan-based Sony. Other studios can be expected to follow.
It’s in this environment that relatively new Disney CEO Bob Chapek, and the investors behind him, can be best understood.
The Investors Awaken
As Pasha has said, Chapek was a surprise choice to replace Iger. He wasn’t even Iger’s pick, and Pasha believes the investors, frustrated with Iger’s spend-thrift attitude towards their money, tapped the outsider. It didn’t help matters that they hadn’t seen a return worthy of the cash spent to buy the Kathleen Kennedy-led LucasFilm.
Iger resisted Chapek being handed the keys to the kingdom. In 2020, the very week he stepped out of the CEO role and Chapek stepped in, Iger named himself “executive chairman.” A long goodbye lay ahead, and reports of their acrimonious relationship have recently come to light.
As the virus heard around the world dominated mainstream news coverage, a counter-movement was brewing within Disney to try and repair Star Wars from the Frankenstein-ian mess of J.J. Abrams and Ryan Johnson. The Mandalorian, run by outsider Jon Favreau and George Lucas-heir apparent Dave Filoni, arrived on Disney’s streaming service, (Disney +) to wide acclaim. Unlike the sequel trilogy, this actually felt like Star Wars.
At the end of season two in 2020, Luke Skywalker heroically returned, and Disney + reportedly became overwhelmed with viewership demand. Star Wars was great again, and fans were excited.
Then fan-favorite actress Gina Carano was fired from the show by Kennedy’s LucasFilm, severely gutting the revival.
Fans were shocked and outraged. Chapek appeared to be stunned and unaware such a move was coming. Woke-left Kennedy-acolytes at LucasFilm cheered with glee, having claimed the scalp of a strong, independent woman who dared to defy their political narratives.
Thus began the company’s third civil war.
Disney Civil War III
Investor publication Forbes held Chapek directly responsible for Carano’s firing.
Pasha has theorized, based on his experience, that Chapek may have had Forbes publish this piece as part of a Sun Tzu-esque counter-attack. Because Forbes is read by the investors, Chapek could tell the Steven Spielberg-connected Kennedy that he has no choice but to limit her powers because his own neck is on the line. In Hollywood, this would allow him to act without triggering an industry-wide backlash for firing one of their own.
After the Forbes piece, ripples of a power struggle surfaced.
In May 2021, Variety announced Iger was leaving his post at the end of the year, as well as Disney Studios Chief Creative Officer Alan Horn. Chapek reportedly was accumulating power, and promoting his people.
In August, according to The Hollywood Reporter, for the first time Chapek, not Iger, presided over the company’s annual retreat, and reportedly made it clear that, unlike his predecessor, metrics not narratives would drive the company. The article also confirmed that at least one major investor had Chapek’s ear.
Disney fieflords were bristling under the new boss, namely Disney Entertainment Group Chair Peter Rice. In his own analysis of the Variety piece, Pasha said that, unlike Iger, Chapek seemed to be putting customer service ahead of serving the whims of woke company creatives.
The Variety piece was later followed by a July/August one from The Atlantic, admitting that Kennedy’s woke Star Wars wasn’t great, and that Favreau’s Mandalorian was the way forward. As discussed by Midnight’s Edge and Pasha, this appeared to be a signal that Chapek had severely restricted Kennedy’s authority, in so far as Star Wars was concerned. Further evidence that Chapek had done something significant arose when a pet project Kennedy was aggressively pursuing didn’t land at LucasFilm.
Then Chapek had another fight on his hands.
Scarlett Johanssen sued Disney for releasing Black Widow on Disney +, the company’s streaming platform, instead of restricting it only to theaters during its initial run. The argument was that by doing that, Disney limited the amount of money Black Widow could have made. Chapek responded by restricting Shang Chi, the next Marvel movie, to theaters only. The returns weren’t good, and Johannsen later settled the lawsuit.
Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige, whom Pasha believes was behind the lawsuit to get at his boss, reportedly admitted Chapek wasn’t to be underestimated.
Another fieflord slain.
Then in January of this year, Chapek announced Disney’s three pillars going forward, the third being “a relentless focus on our audience.”
“We are a big company with many constituents and stakeholders, all of whom have a place in our decision-making. But at the end of the day, our most important guide—our North Star—is the consumer.”
As Pasha pointed out, this statement is in direct contradiction to a view parroted by then-Presidential candidate Joe Biden.
In August 2019, more than two years before Chapek’s memo, Business Roundtable issued a statement that encouraged businesses shifting from a “shareholder primacy” to a “commitment to all stakeholders.” To quote Forbes own reporting on this, the statement “presented a call for corporations to adopt purposes that more fully reflect a stakeholder, not solely shareholder, orientation.” A year later, Biden echoed BR’s tone.
Having “shareholder primacy” basically means the business is accountable to the shareholders for how they spend their money, and how much more value they’re creating with it. A “commitment to all stakeholders,” when you add a politician to the mix, sounds like a thinly veiled encouragement for businesses to burn shareholders’ money pushing political narratives.
Chapek himself had previously signed BR’s 2019 statement. This year, here he is repudiating that view, stating that as far as Disney is concerned, the customer is king.
That is a monumental shift away from burning shareholder money being a woke, anti-fan hammer.
When his January 2022 memo went out, everything seemed to be going Chapek’s way.
The Woke Fieflords Strike Back
Poetically, Disney Civil War III, which arguably started to come together during Trump’s rise to power, became volcanic hot during another political fight.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is on a tear of late, shaking the GOP establishment in a way similar to the former president. In response to parents outraged at schools they pay taxes to showing pornographic content to their kids, DeSantis has charged like a lion.
While the political left defended government grooming children, Pasha has said certain Disney employees cynically seized on the issue to resist moving from California to Florida, as Chapek has required.
It also appears to be a last ditch effort by woke fieflords to rid themselves of Chapek.
At the start of the anti-grooming bill fight, the Mouse House CEO said they would not be overtly waging a political war. Afterwards, voices of internal rebellion shrilled, and Chapek appeared to be underfire from all sides. He doubled back and then began publicly positioning Disney against DeSantis’ bill. Instead of forcing a retreat, this has only served to stiffen the governor’s resolve, and boost his national profile as a culture warrior.
DeSantis may also have indirectly signaled to Disney that this really isn’t a fight they want to pick, after some of their employees were caught up in a recent Florida sex-trafficking sting. According to Peter Schweizer’s Disney The Mouse Betrayed, Disney employees caught in such actions isn’t new; a record in Florida’s law enforcement database DeSantis likely has access to.
Also, being on the side of groomers, and against angry parents, isn’t a good look for an allegedly family company.
Meanwhile, more within the company are coming out of the shadows as part of the anti-customer camp. A video was recently leaked of Karey Burke advocating for injecting even more LGBTQ wokeness into company content.
Burke is the president of Disney General Entertainment Content, the same division whose chairman, Peter Rice, reportedly bristled at Chapek’s power moves last year.
While woke executives hit critical shrill within, Pasha has theorized that Chapek may be responding by recycling the strategy he used against Feige: let the woke have their way, wait for the numbers to come in, and if they’re bad, use that as justification to change directions.
Until those results arrive, the company’s brand name could continue to absorb severe wounds in the public eye. The longer woke fieflords are allowed to abuse the company’s resources to sledgehammer political narratives on paying customers, the fewer customers there may be.
Return of the Magic
As this civil war rages, who inevitably will win?
History may have an answer.
Remember Jeffrey Katzenberg? When Eisner unceremoniously chased him out of Disney in the early 90’s, he joined forces with Spielberg and David Geffen to create DreamWorks. If you don’t remember that studio, it’s for good reason: it flopped.
At first, because of the big three names attached to it, investors threw money at what they expected to be a guaranteed money mill. You had billionaire music mogul Geffen, wunderkind Spielberg, and Mr. Animation Katzenberg. What could go wrong? Everything, according to Nicole LaPorte’s The Men Who Would Be King. The company failed to consistently make money.
Investor Paul Allen, the Microsoft co-founder and early investor in the studio, eventually went from starry-eyed sycophant to sour scrooge. Change was demanded, and Katzenberg bristled at being held accountable.
Change came as money dried up. Eventually, all of DreamWorks was sliced, diced, and sold off.
Disney’s own history is a guide too. Remember that in Civil Wars I and II, the company was sliding, so unhappy investors took control, dethroned the king, and crowned a new one.
If the investors remain committed to changing Disney and moving it back towards the center, and being profit-focused, then the woke fieflords will lose.
What that loss looks like could result in any one of three scenarios. The first two have been previously discussed by Midnight’s Edge and Pasha.
Chapek follows his pattern of Sun Tzu-esque warfare and subdues his opponents, then stays on as CEO for about a decade or more.
Or, Chapek defeats the propagandists, but emerges so battered and bloody that he can’t effectively carry on. The investors replace him with someone else to run the now restored Magic Kingdom.
There’s also the scorched earth scenario.
The fieflords “win” and Chapek either surrenders or leaves. Profits slide as customers abandon the woke hellscape, with investors right behind them. As the stock price plummets, shark investors like Carl Icahn lick their lips and buy up the company at bargain basement prices. Not caring what woke activists want, the sharks then either clean house and restore Disney or, ala DreamWorks’ fate, slice, dice, and sell off the ashen remains of Uncle Walt’s legacy.
It should be noted that during Disney Civil War I, from Masters’ Keys to the Kingdom, stock sharks grabbing and dividing the company was a very real threat.
Historian Victor Davis Hanson said that in 1939, it should have been blatantly obvious to everyone that there was no scenario in which the Axis could defeat the Allies. It cost tens of millions of lives to prove that.
In 2022, it may cost billions of dollars, and Disney’s very existence, to prove that woke fieflords can’t defeat the investors. Or, more importantly, the paying customer.