Haunted Mansion. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It's been a bit of a rocky few months for Disney, which has seen two recent box office disappointments in a row. While the immediate narrative around Disney theatrical releases is a bummer, Disney CEO Bob Iger is confident this isn't the whole story. But he's also candid that the recent box office results have been "disappointing."
When asked on today's earnings call how he planned to increase the performance of theatrical films, Iger offered to "put things in perspective a little bit."
"The studio has had a tremendous run over the last decade, perhaps the greatest run that any studio has ever had with multiple billion-dollar hits, and including, by the way, two that were relatively recent. One in particular, Avatar: The Way of Water and we also had a pretty strong performance with Guardians of the Galaxy 3, which I think has done approximately $850 million in global box office.
"That said, the performance of some of our recent films has definitely been disappointing, and we don't take that lightly. As you'd expect, we're very focused on improving the quality and the performance of the films we've got coming out. That's something that I'm working closely with the studio on. I'm personally committed to spending more time and attention on that as well."
Iger's "perspective" isn't off-base, though the question's a valid one given a recent string of underperforming Disney films. Both Haunted Mansion and the recent Indiana Jones revival struggled at the box office. Before that, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania debuted strong but quickly dropped off, and the live-action remake of The Little Mermaid did well enough but not as well as other live-action remakes . And one film that may erroneously be on people's minds is Elemental, which had a dismal debut but has since climbed week after week for a surprising rebound.
All in all, Disney's most recent year could be considered more uneven than anything, but its two most recent films struggling were enough to give Iger pause. It will be up to upcoming animated films Wish and Elio, along with the live action Snow White remake, to turn the narrative around.
Elsewhere on the call, Disney unveiled details for upcoming price hikes to Disney+ as well as hinted at a planned crackdown on password sharing in the footsteps of Netflix., even as it continues to remove more and more content from the service.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
