Disney CEO Bob Iger is taking a victory lap today after squashing billionaire Nelson Peltz's attempts to insert himself onto the company's board of directors. Now, he can get back to overseeing the company as it gears up for its next CEO, all while attempting to put its film and TV offerings back on the right track.
Talking to CNBC, Iger addressed the fact that ousted Marvel Entertainment CEO Isaac Perlmutter was backing Peltz (which is also likely what led the latter to question the need for superhero movies with predominantly female or Black casts).
Iger says the fight wasn't personal "on my side" and adds, "I was supporting the interests of the company, not my personal interests, and defending what the company and the board was doing, as opposed to defending myself."
"If you are asking if it was personal on their side, [Perlmutter] would probably say no [but] I think there was probably a degree of personal animus there. We closed the Marvel offices and it did result in Ike leaving the company. But I am not going to put words in his mouth."
Peltz's attempts to appeal to the anti-woke crowd are thought to have backfired on him, particularly as those comments in his Financial Times interview got far more attention than any good points he made about what could make Disney more profitable.
Asked for his thoughts on Disney content being deemed too "woke," Iger said:
"I think the noise has sort of quieted down. I’ve been preaching this for a long time at the company [from] before I left, and since I came back, that our number one goal is to entertain, I think the term ‘woke’ is thrown around rather liberally. No pun intended. I think a lot of people don’t even understand really what it means. The bottom line is that infusing messaging as a sort of a number one priority in our films and TV shows is not what we’re up to."
"They need to be entertaining. And where the Disney company can have a positive impact on the world, whether it’s, you know, fostering acceptance and understanding of people of all different types great. But, generally speaking, we need to be entertainment for an entertainment first company, and I’ve worked really hard to do that.”
"We’re trying to reach a very, very diverse audience. And, on one hand, in order to do that, the stories you tell have to really reflect the audience that you’re trying to reach. And really, first and foremost, they want to be entertained, and sometimes they can be turned off by certain things. And we just have to be more sensitive to the interest of a broad audience. It’s not easy, you can’t please everybody all the time, right?"
You can hear more from Iger on defeating Peltz in the player below.