Bob Iger gave another mea culpa for Disney’s tepid box office lately but said the company’s had great theatrical runs unrivaled by other studios and “I think I don’t want to apologize for making sequels.”
“Some of them have done extraordinarily well. And they’ve been good films too. I think there has to be a reason to make it, beyond commerce. You have to have a good story. And we have made too many. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to continue to make them,” he said during a Q&A at The New York Times’ DealBook conference.
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Interviewer Andrew Ross Sorkin read aloud a letter to shareholders written by Walt Disney in 1966, in which he excoriated sequels. “I’m a born experimenter. To this day, I don’t believe in sequels. I can’t follow popular cycles, I have to move on to new things. There are many new worlds to conquer. As a matter of fact, people have been asking us to make sequels ever since Mickey Mouse first became a star,” the letter said.
“Right now we’re not thinking about making another Mary Poppins, we never will. Perhaps there’ll be other ventures with equal critical and financial success. But we know we cannot hit a home run with the bases loaded every time we go into play. We also know the only way we can even get to first base is by constantly going back and continuing to swing.”
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Iger said he sometimes wanders into Walt’s office, which has been preserved as it was. “I go into his office, just to just to sort of feel the presence. I know that sounds a little weird, but it’s kind of a nice way to relax and appreciate the legacy of the company. And the first thing you really realize when you study Walt is that Walt was unbelievable at adapting to change. Firstly, he loved technology, he loved to use technology. And he also knew that the world was not a static place.”
He acknowledged that things had a taken a turn and promised, as he has been doing, that Disney will be stressing quality over quantity after The Marvels, the latest Indiana Jones and a handful of other films disappointed. But he also defended the studio’s track record. “I’m not sure another studio will ever achieve some of the numbers that we achieved. I mean, we got to the point where if a film didn’t do a billion dollars in global box office, we were disappointed. That’s an unbelievably high standard.”
“I’ve been very public about it saying and I would say right now my number one priority is to help the studio turn around creatively.”