Disney to “pull back” on Star Wars and Marvel content, says CEO Bob Iger

Disney CEO Bob Iger has said the company will be pulling back on creating new Star Wars and Marvel content.

The announcement comes on the back of the company’s attempts to cut costs, having seen a number of their recent films, from Marvel to animation, underwhelm at the box office.

“You pull back not just to focus, but also as part of our cost containment initiative. Spending less on what we make, and making less,” Iger told CNBC on Thursday (July 13).

Iger said that many of the decisions were made to prop up the company’s flagship streaming service, Disney+, and attract more customers.

The Disney CEO went on to note that an influx of new Marvel content, both on the big and small screens, had “diluted focus and attention”.

“It had not been in the television business at any significant level, and not only did they increase their movie output, but they ended up making a number of TV series,” said Iger. “Frankly, it diluted focus and attention.”

Disney has been systematically removing content from Disney+ in recent months in an attempt to cut costs, with new shows such as the Willow sequel series and The World According to Jeff Goldblum receiving the axe.

According to Variety, Disney targeted $3billion (£2.4billion) in savings for 2023, and will take a reduction of $1.5 billion (£1.2billion) to $1.8billion (£1.4billion) later this year for the loss of value in content developed for Hulu and Disney+ to draw new subscribers.

“This is part of the maturation process as we grow into a business that we had never been in,” Iger said.

“It’s critical we rationalise the volume of content we’re creating and what we’re spending to produce our content,” he told investors.

“Our legacy platforms enable us to expand our audiences and often augment our potential streaming success while at the same time allowing us to amortise our content costs across multiple windows.”

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