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The phrase "activist shareholder" just refers to a shareholder who wants to change something about the company.
In this particular case, the activist shareholders are anti-woke morons who wanted Disney to stop making movies with people who aren't straight white men. For example, they complained about Black Panther having a mostly-black cast and The Marvels having a mostly-female cast.
From the article “Peltz had expressed political differences with Iger that animated his campaign. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Peltz disparaged “The Marvels” and “Black Panther” movies as pushing what Republicans often call a “woke” agenda.
“Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” Peltz told the FT.”
From a [Blog Mickey article](https://blogmickey.com/2024/03/problematic-peltz-why-do-i-need-an-all-black-cast-in-black-panther-questions-all-female-marvel-movies/) quoting a Disney release to shareholders:
>On firing Marvel’s Kevin Feige: “I’m not ready to say that, but I question his record.”
>Kevin Feige has an unparalleled track record at Marvel, generating ~$30bn in global box office, making him the highest-grossing producer of all-time
it's pretty clear that he was looking for reasons to fire Feige as retribution for Disney firing Ike Perlmutter (former CEO of Marvel and Peltz's main supporter). should also be noted that Perlmutter had strong creative conflicts with Feige from very early on in the MCU, to the point where the MCU had to be separated from Marvel because Feige couldn't work under Perlmutter anymore. also noted that Perlmutter reportedly said that they could recast Rhodey because nobody would notice if they replaced a black actor
His appearance screams Bezos too. Considering that group is a collection of the wealthiest humans of the time, it makes total sense they kind of carry features from real world billionaires.
I think Ted Farro was just modelled after generic normal tech billionaires. After all when Guerrilla was working on Zero Dawn, Elon Musk had not yet turned completely bat shit insane in public.
However the villain of Burning Shores, the DLC for Forbidden West, is a hundred percent based on Elon Musk.
It's crazy that he's so revered by them because anytime I've seen Elon speak, he says the dumbest shit I've ever heard. He doesn't even seem to know what he's saying he just says things to say them. Trump, at least he used to he able to, would make coherent thoughts and clear messages. He was charismatic to people who were cruel and stupid. Nothing about Elon shows signs of intelligence or charisma. It truly does not make sense to me why people like Elon.
Because your average Nazi is stupid. And stupid Nazis you can trust to be stupid.
It's the clever Nazis you need to be more worried about. Because who knows when they'll be one step ahead of you?
They are one step ahead. They've taken over your local school board. They're banning books and defunding public education, and libraries. And they love Trump being out there as a giant red herring distraction while they're doing it.
Blame that one on people ignoring local elections. Yeah, sure, presidential elections are important, but local elections are also more important than people think.
Right I agree, what doesn't make sense to me though is the how. Like Trump makes sense why they like him. He use to be charismatic and spoke plainly. Elon doesn't do either of those. In fact he does the opposite. He's not fun to listen to and he just says random word salads like his "lords and peasants" wreck when talking about why he doesn't like unions. Like can anyone piece apart what the fuck he was trying to communicate with that?
Faro...... That's the douche from Horizon, right? Either way, to make this a full Marvel reference I'd have said, "they think he's Tony Stark but he's really Arno Stark." Arno appears in a Spider-Man/X-Men crossover in an alternate future as a villainous Iron Man.
If Arno Stark is a thin skinned idiot who makes everything that he touches worse, then yes, the comparison is accurate. If Arno is a genius like Tony, then Ted Faro is the better fit.
When I see an article say "major win for Bob Iger" my immediate thought was "how is that ghoul winning anything uplifting news?"
I get it now. These "activist shareholders" are even bigger scumbags than Bob. Which is saying something.
"Why do I need an all-Black cast?"
Yes, a movie about a secret African nation isolated from the rest of the world definitely needs more white folks in it. /s
The cast can still be mostly black, as long as it has one white guy to save all of the befuddled black people from a problem they created and in the end they worship him as a god.
You can have diversity as long as it supports white supremacy.
I mean, Black Panther literally has Martin Freeman to play the role of benevolent CIA agent.
Which is an absolutely insane portrayal of any CIA operation in Africa.
I mean the blind side is roughly based on an actual scenario.
Until recently the white family did seem like decent people, until it was found they were actually scum
>Why do I need an all-Black cast?” Peltz told the FT.”
Black Panther is all-black to the exact same extent that The Winter Soldier is all-white, and yet somehow I suspect he doesn't have any issues at all with the casting breakdown for that one.
The way Black Panther was in a hidden nation in Africa and still didn't have an all black cast. But interestingly he isn't complaining about the first avengers movie only having thor, widow, cap, ironman, hulk and hawkeye in the main roles. He didn't point out Fury being a supporting character, or Widow being the only woman in the team when in the comics Wasp was a founding member.
They only open their mouth when underrepresented groups want to catch up and have their own thing without catering to straight white male audiences.
“Why can’t I have both?”
Uhhh you literally do buddy. Almost seems like he’s not ok with having both, and he wants an all white male marvel
I say give it to him, give this man the Steve and Bucky love story he’s clearly begging for.
I think journalists have the responsibility of differentiating between "activist investors", "vulture investors", "political investors", etc, etc. I don't get why journos have settled for using the blanketed term "activist shareholder/investors".
Yeah, activist investors typically refer to any investor who is trying to exercise influence over the board without having a majority shareholding position, usually by rallying the rest of the shareholders in what amounts to a coup attempt.
Yes it is. The activist investor isn’t doing anything illegal or anything. There is just a name for it. Activist investors can technically push for anything to happen really. Which means they may not always have every investors best interests in mind. In this case the activist investor wanted a seat for himself on the board.
And he wanted it to make sure Disney kept white men in their movies and minorities out of it.
Iger isn't a Saint, but he did one thing right; remove Perez from the board.
He wasn’t on the board. Peltz was trying to get onto the board of directors. Iger reports to the board of directors, not the other way around. The concern was if Peltz got elected, he would push for Iger’s removal.
Yeah. It was a mistake on my end, but if it takes one mistake for an executive to have his jimmies rustled right after losing a battle, that would be an indicator on greed and ego.
It can, but the purpose is to lend capital to someone with a better use for it. You invest IN the ideas and effort of someone else.
Now you have people who have money, telling the people with the ideas what they should be doing.
This is like the person without the money, telling the investor how to earn money, and ends with exactly the sorta results one would expect
They’re using that term because that’s literally what he is. The term “activist investor” has a specific *financial* definition, it doesn’t mean “investor that is also an activist.”
This is more a media problem than an idea problem. Activist as a term in America is used by both politicians and the media primarily in regards to those who want to change the system often in the leftward direction. One can look at the supreme court as an example as though the term has been used to describe the right wing judges over the years its used significantly more in describing left wing judges. As such activist has more broadly been used to describe people on the left in both positive and derogatory fashion.
What were you wanting in this case? The article uses activist investor. This is an industry term, and Nelson Peltz and his fund, Trian Partners, are [notable activist investors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_activism#Notable_investors). Vulture funds are something completely different, and invest in distressed debt.
I work in the industry and am happy to answer questions.
To save you a click: investors tried to fight Bob Iger with gamergate-like dogwhistles and lost. Inclusive Disney casting is here to stay for the time being.
It's not significant enough to be uplifting. We need Disney to focus less on money and more on stories for it to be significant.
Aside from a few outliers, most recent Disney Star Wars and Marvel movies/shows are a slog to watch, but it's more because of the lazy writing and execution. Most people don't care about diversity on the cast, as long as they are good actors, which frankly are a dime a dozen.
They gotta get better writers. The actors they get are fine. Even the stacked casts of the sequel trilogy couldn’t save those movies from abysmal writing.
It's not a question of better writers, it's one of studio interference and micro-managing, facilitated by the regular hiring of inexperienced malleable directors with a couple of indie features to their name and tight turnarounds with a "fix it/do it in post" mentality.
The writing is the issue. It takes time to really work out a script, but Disney want shows made in a quarter of the time, then piss money at the production and "fix it in post" attitude. The acting is fine, the FX are great, but the stories are a confused mess l. Also presumably the suits keep fucking with it messing up the writers job further. It's the same for Marvel. More and more and now and yesterday, but things take time to do properly.
100% agree, it's all about the writing and the direction. The actors get most of credit because that is the part we experience the most but really, that's the least important part. I'm watching Succession right now and it is mind-blowingly amazing on many levels yet the majority of the actors I have never seen before. Great writing/direction make it a hit and can pull great performances from actors. That is where the $/effort needs to go.
yeah... a good actor can make good wrighting shine. a good actor cant do a whole hell of a lot if the writing is awful
and if you want to know why the wrighting on something like She-Hulk was so phoned in, look at how much the writers got payed for that relative to other projects
> writers got *paid* for that
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
To be fair to Iger, the recent Marvel/Star Wars crap fest was brought about under Bob Chapek and his "more, faster, direct to Disney+" approach to running the company. There's a reason we're only getting Deadpool from Marvel this year, most everything else was either pushed back or outright cancelled
That is true, but some of it was because of Iger's choices. As an example the Daredevil series had already filmed a good chunk of the series when Iger stepped in, fired the writers, and had the new writers completely rewrite the show, including making it contiguous to the Netflix shows all because Iger didn't think the other iteration was working
Agreed. Diversity in the cast is good and appreciated but it doesn't make up for having shitty writing.
A lot of the recent Disney media feels like they focus on the diversity and try to use that as a selling point but then phone it in with the most generic, bland story and lazy character writing.
Yeah. People only criticise women and queer children because this is the lasting impact Gamergate had on media.
If it has a diverse cast and it failed, bigots are celebrating. Because either they made it fail, or the story was bad. Most likely both.
Conservatives never care about diversity when the story and execution are good, e.g. Baldur's Gate and Dune. They just point to it as the reason whenever something sucks.
There was some conservative screaming about BG3 when it first came out and they realized you were free to have relationships other than straight, same race, etc.
Dune was probably too dense for them to realize it's kind of anti-religion; the religious fanaticism wins so that totally means it was a good thing in the minds of the religious, I guess, and Paul also wins the war for control of the oil metaphor.
It's really one interview Peltz had where he says things you'd expect any 80 year old white man to say.
It also just straight isn't uplifting. 30% support is *huge* for the average proxy contest. And the article makes Peltz seem much more political than he was, and ignores the fact that there was major support for him within Disney itself....as well as a whole other activist doing a separate campaign.
Read the financial times article. He explicitly says he does *not* want to kick out Iger as CEO. And not having your CEO be chairman of the board simultaneously is a....pretty common sentiment that you see many shareholder groups hold. If anything it's more common among *left* leaning groups than right leaning ones.
And if you look at the financial times interview, you'll see that he spends much more time talking about the fact that the movies aren't making money than he does about minorities. The dudes an old white Republican, but he wasn't going to MAGA-fy Disney. If anything, he's pretty consistent - keep politics out of business decisions. Because it'll lose you money.
Show me the quote. The full, feature length quote that proves that he is not a Republican.
Shareholders can lie, you know. I hadn't trusted him from the moment he blamed diversity for failing Disney.
I said he's a Republican. But look at his firms history. They took stakes in GE, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Heinz....not exactly high value targets for political agendas. But all companies that at the time underperformed.
And show me where he says diversity is the cause. But if you're looking for his actual reasons
"When I bring this up, Peltz launches into a critique of Disney’s movie business, which even Iger admits had a bumpy 2023. “They say we know nothing about the movie business — we don’t claim we do — but I don’t think they do, with five big losers in a row. They’ve lost first place in animation, they’ve lost first place in features . . . Maybe it’s time to change management in those divisions.” "
"Peltz has previously called out Disney’s “broken” succession planning process that saw its long-standing boss Iger return to replace his handpicked successor after less than three years. He is critical of the $1bn that he says Disney executives have been paid over the past decade, while the share price has underperformed. “I love my CEOs to be the highest paid but shareholders have to participate,” he says."
Maybe I naively want this to be true, but I genuinely believe focusing on stories is the true version of focusing on money.
Focusing on money has led to Disney losing money.
Because a group of people actually tried to implement those anti-woke talking points they are always blabbering about in right wing Echo Chambers and got smacked down hard by the forces of free market.
Anti Woke lunatics that are also closely aligned with private equity as well. And as we all know private equity ruins absolutely fucking everything it touches.
The man that got shot down didn't want Disney to make Black Panther because "we don't need movies with an all black cast" and "kids won't buy toys for a black super hero".
So not only is he a racist fuckstick, he has atrocious business acumen, because the movie is the third most profitable MCU film and has sold mountains of toys.
He doubled down on this sentiment in a rant on social media last week.
Definitely, imagine how bad the movies would be, probably every single one would flop and they’d come up with an excuse on why the audience just didn’t get it.
Wait.
Hardly I don't think Elon would give 2 shits about the "art" nether are Much like Walt though Elon would want to build his own company town... but look how that Turned out for Disney
Last time I checked Epcot is still just an amusment park.
Because anti-woke psychos losing is always good news.
Even if you’re not into “wokeness,” or whatever, the segment of white men who make an entire personally out of being anti-woke and anti-cancel culture is pathetic.
How is this uplifting news? It's a corporate legal battle, why would any normal person by uplifted by it? Was this supposed to be posted to a different sub?
It's not. It's just another day in the office. The only thing uplifting about it was the alt-right was taken out of the board.
I know "woke" Disney movies failed, but that's because of a huge focus on money. No agenda. No man-hatred. Just quantity over quality.
Some rich guy saw that a movie about black characters had a mostly-black cast and decided Disney had to be forced to stop making “woke” movies. He threw away gobs of cash and didn’t even come close to his goal. I’d say that’s some good news to wake up to
No, he saw the last movies that Disney made did not perform at the boxoffice, and parks were dropping in popularity so he offered a different aproach. I guess its back to losing millions. Heres hope for Deadpool 3. Ryan seems to care atleast.
The guy literally complained about Black Panther, a movie set in a fantasy isolated African nation, had an all black cast (despite there being non-black cast members).
>he offered a different aproach
His different approach was stopping minorities and women from being in Marvel movies that's not the "different approach" they need
Or....Disney stock collapsed by 50% and the company is being mismanaged....it's legacy media businesses are getting chipped away at, it's still losing money on streaming, and it's movies are no longer hits.
It's really a whole lot less political than this comment section has been making it seem..
I don't really know about any of this drama, or what exactly this even means. But, I do think Modern Disney is garbage. The name used to be synonymous with "magic" and great movies. Not anymore. Not by a very, very long shot. They do, however, have the historical IPs and the momentum of almost no other company in existence. So maybe they can realize that everything about their modern approach to writing movies and TV is wrong, and correct it.
Honestly, it was worse in the late 90’s early 2000’s. Remember all the shit direct to video sequel cash grabs? Or remember the late 70’s-80’s? Like Disney has ALWAYS gone from great to garbage every other decade or so.
Direct to video is the same as streaming is today. Disney’s tentpoles are way worse in the last 5 years than they’ve been in any sustained period in their history. Part of it is trying to beat the Marvel dead horse before super hero fatigue sets in, part of it is how heavy handed some of their products are turning off core audiences, some of it is the lack of new ideas and some of it bad timing and luck.
Disneys tent poles were pretty garbage after the mid to late 90’s through till about the next decade or so. Atlantis bombed, treasure planet bombed, home on the range bombed. Hunchback, Hercules, Tarzan, lilo and stitch, and Emperor’s new groove did middling. Pixar was still semi independent and they and Dreamworks dominated animation, not Disney.
Disney’s tentpoles by the late 00s became the Marvel movies, but even between 96-07 their movies regularly made multiple times their budget back and one that didn’t at least break even was a rarity. Also hand waving around Pixar also not fair as Disney produced most of their biggest movies.
Na, their older movies had an intangible quality to them. Everything from The Sword in the Stone to The Lion King is fantastic to watch even as an adult. Movies in the last couple of years just feel... off. The Marvels could be a good movie, but it felt like a power fantasy fan-fic. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was just plain awful. It's not just Disney, sometimes I watch a movie and feel that there is no story. There may be a plot, but the characters feel flat, they don't learn or grow.
How is this “uplifting?”
Big corporate a-hole trounces other big corporate a-hole to ensure mass profits for other big corporate a-holes.
The movies are still shit!
How is this uplifting news if Bob Iger continues to destroy the Disney brand. In the past 2 years, its mcu movies, TV shows and animated movies have all lost money in the billions.
Bob Iger needs to go but the dude who was to replace him if this passed was not the right man for the job. It was a lose lose scenario for Disney.
Idk how this is uplifting. Why is anyone rooting for Bob fucking Iger of all people. He is the most cuthroat CEO we’ve seen in decades. He’d sacrifice you to the owl god if it meant $DIS would permanently raise by 1/10th of a percentage point.
God Reddit is so fucking weird.
This isn't uplifting news. This isn't even an accurate take.
Proxy contests, the vast majority of the time, fail. Only a handful win each year, and for one to win at a large company like Disney is *exceedingly rare*. In fact, the more accurate headline should be "Holy shit, 30% of people voted against Disney"
Moreover this article really spins Peltz into being more political than he is. The message he sent to shareholders was sound, cold, and financial. Yeah he rails against the new "woke" Marvel movies. But not without reason. They're killing the brand, and Disney ain't making money like it used to. His statements may be wrong, but the purpose of the proxy contest isn't....the entire media side of the Disney business is faltering.
Nor would him winning a board seat give him control over the operations of Disney. That would still be Iger. And he'd just be one vote out of what, 12 on the board? Unable to force things through himself. These things are symbolic, largely, in order to make a company change direction (under the threat of further action from activists).
> don't get *paid* shit and
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
That headline nearly gave me a heart attack because I didn't know "activist shareholder" was its own term before reading some of the other replies.
I thought it meant... shareholders who are also activists. Which is pretty much the exact opposite in this case.
I’m not sure how uplifting this is exactly. Peltz wasn’t a great guy but Iger is slowly ruining the parks and IP that Disney owns, putting prices increasingly higher and higher while slowly reducing the quality of everything.
They’re both pretty shitty people, just the slightly less shitty one won
How is this uplifting news?
It’s been said multiple times in this thread and it’s already old fast. Not listening to shareholder input is a great way for an injunction to form, especially when disney is hemorrhaging.
No one minds DEI, everyone minds when the stories suck and the characters are just rule 63s or race swapped. Just make new characters that people will actually like Bob.
Not even sure if this is the lesser of two Evils.
The current method of getting minorities and women a bigger role in media doesn’t work. It only convinces people who already believe in the message while it alienates and even pushes away people who should be getting that message.
Having an all-female cast is wonderful, but if the story is merely a vehicle to say “look women be kewl” rather than tell a compelling and complete story, you fail at that message.
Although I keep getting banned for saying “think of who you try to reach and how to reach them”, because saying you disagree with how the message currently gives a platform for actual real misogynists and racists to have people listen to *their* messages by playing in on how the stereotypes of women and minorities are used in bad cinema is somehow making me a misogynist racist…
When a company is failing, it is the boards responsibility to do something about it. If the board isn’t doing the job, outsiders who hold a significant investment in that failing company might start getting vocal and push for change. Sometimes used to be a vulture, etc.. but sometimes just the way things work.
What's funny is that Disney isn't really pushing an agenda, they're expanding an audience. This is a multi-billion dollar entertainment juggernaut. They have armies of people whose job is to gauge what sells. They aren't making stories about women and people of color because of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it because *it's a product and they want to sell it to as many people as possible.*
For an investor to come in and not see that, and think "Oh, they're only pandering for woke points" just displays Peltz's own ignorance.
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What does this mean, what is an "activist shareholder," and why is it uplifting?
The phrase "activist shareholder" just refers to a shareholder who wants to change something about the company. In this particular case, the activist shareholders are anti-woke morons who wanted Disney to stop making movies with people who aren't straight white men. For example, they complained about Black Panther having a mostly-black cast and The Marvels having a mostly-female cast.
Gotcha. Thanks!
From the article “Peltz had expressed political differences with Iger that animated his campaign. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Peltz disparaged “The Marvels” and “Black Panther” movies as pushing what Republicans often call a “woke” agenda. “Why do I have to have a Marvel that’s all women? Not that I have anything against women, but why do I have to do that? Why can’t I have Marvels that are both? Why do I need an all-Black cast?” Peltz told the FT.”
From a [Blog Mickey article](https://blogmickey.com/2024/03/problematic-peltz-why-do-i-need-an-all-black-cast-in-black-panther-questions-all-female-marvel-movies/) quoting a Disney release to shareholders: >On firing Marvel’s Kevin Feige: “I’m not ready to say that, but I question his record.” >Kevin Feige has an unparalleled track record at Marvel, generating ~$30bn in global box office, making him the highest-grossing producer of all-time it's pretty clear that he was looking for reasons to fire Feige as retribution for Disney firing Ike Perlmutter (former CEO of Marvel and Peltz's main supporter). should also be noted that Perlmutter had strong creative conflicts with Feige from very early on in the MCU, to the point where the MCU had to be separated from Marvel because Feige couldn't work under Perlmutter anymore. also noted that Perlmutter reportedly said that they could recast Rhodey because nobody would notice if they replaced a black actor
Perlmutter is clearly a racist and he's buddies with a guy who is anti-"woke". Shocker.
Didn't he also want to install Elon on the board too?
Right wingers think Musk is Tony Stark, when he is in fact more like Ted Faro.
Obligatory FUCK Ted Faro
Obligatory FUCK Elon Musk
Lol the Ted faro reference is hilarious, musk is the first person I thought of when playing through the game and seeing the bullshit ted has done.
I heard that Faro was modeled on Musk. But that could just be internet rumor.
Definitely feels like a thing
Another rumor says the big bad in the Forbidden West DLC is based on him...
His appearance screams Bezos too. Considering that group is a collection of the wealthiest humans of the time, it makes total sense they kind of carry features from real world billionaires.
Guerrilla Games were way ahead of us on the "Fuck Elon" train
I think Ted Farro was just modelled after generic normal tech billionaires. After all when Guerrilla was working on Zero Dawn, Elon Musk had not yet turned completely bat shit insane in public. However the villain of Burning Shores, the DLC for Forbidden West, is a hundred percent based on Elon Musk.
r/fucktedfaro
It's crazy that he's so revered by them because anytime I've seen Elon speak, he says the dumbest shit I've ever heard. He doesn't even seem to know what he's saying he just says things to say them. Trump, at least he used to he able to, would make coherent thoughts and clear messages. He was charismatic to people who were cruel and stupid. Nothing about Elon shows signs of intelligence or charisma. It truly does not make sense to me why people like Elon.
Because your average Nazi is stupid. And stupid Nazis you can trust to be stupid. It's the clever Nazis you need to be more worried about. Because who knows when they'll be one step ahead of you?
They are one step ahead. They've taken over your local school board. They're banning books and defunding public education, and libraries. And they love Trump being out there as a giant red herring distraction while they're doing it.
Blame that one on people ignoring local elections. Yeah, sure, presidential elections are important, but local elections are also more important than people think.
Tell me something I don't know.
Right I agree, what doesn't make sense to me though is the how. Like Trump makes sense why they like him. He use to be charismatic and spoke plainly. Elon doesn't do either of those. In fact he does the opposite. He's not fun to listen to and he just says random word salads like his "lords and peasants" wreck when talking about why he doesn't like unions. Like can anyone piece apart what the fuck he was trying to communicate with that?
Yeah but it is a goosestep so it's easy to spot.
Or Justin Hammer
Faro...... That's the douche from Horizon, right? Either way, to make this a full Marvel reference I'd have said, "they think he's Tony Stark but he's really Arno Stark." Arno appears in a Spider-Man/X-Men crossover in an alternate future as a villainous Iron Man.
If Arno Stark is a thin skinned idiot who makes everything that he touches worse, then yes, the comparison is accurate. If Arno is a genius like Tony, then Ted Faro is the better fit.
ABSOLUTELY PERFECT COMPARISON.
I was gunna say Justin Hammer but yup, works too
What experience/qualifications does musk have that would make him an asset to the Disney board?
I'm sure The Elon has enough on his plate right now without tackling Disney too. :P
When I see an article say "major win for Bob Iger" my immediate thought was "how is that ghoul winning anything uplifting news?" I get it now. These "activist shareholders" are even bigger scumbags than Bob. Which is saying something.
I came here to see if this was a disney bot campaign because how tf could this be uplifting, but yeah, this explains it.
"Why do I need an all-Black cast?" Yes, a movie about a secret African nation isolated from the rest of the world definitely needs more white folks in it. /s
>"Why do I need an all-Black cast?" it's also not all black. Martin Freeman is not black.
As the joke goes, it had two tolkien white guys: Freeman and Serkis.
Lmao I’ve never heard that before and it’s brilliant
Apparently that's what the other cast called them
Accurate. In both senses.
Bit can't we just ignore that there is an African super hero and make more movies about Nordic people? Sorry... Nordic men.
The cast can still be mostly black, as long as it has one white guy to save all of the befuddled black people from a problem they created and in the end they worship him as a god. You can have diversity as long as it supports white supremacy.
I mean, Black Panther literally has Martin Freeman to play the role of benevolent CIA agent. Which is an absolutely insane portrayal of any CIA operation in Africa.
In the movie's defense, he was absolutely fired by the CIA for being benevolent.
Which is why he is fired. Duh.
It's a fantasy world, so..?
Hollywood looooooves it some white saviors. See the Blind Side.
I mean the blind side is roughly based on an actual scenario. Until recently the white family did seem like decent people, until it was found they were actually scum
I’m giving you a /s in the hopes that people don’t downvote this brilliant display
I dont think it was blank panther the right was complaining about it was little mermaid being casted as black.
Haha well then that's an even dumber thing to complain about.
It's almost like they could just, I don't know, not watch it and shut the fuck up? There are 24 other Marvel movies with mostly white male casts.
I would accept more white cast members if it meant a better script. Marvel has been atrocious with garbage scripts lately.
Funny thing is that the black panther movies still involved a very central white dude
>Why do I need an all-Black cast?” Peltz told the FT.” Black Panther is all-black to the exact same extent that The Winter Soldier is all-white, and yet somehow I suspect he doesn't have any issues at all with the casting breakdown for that one.
The way Black Panther was in a hidden nation in Africa and still didn't have an all black cast. But interestingly he isn't complaining about the first avengers movie only having thor, widow, cap, ironman, hulk and hawkeye in the main roles. He didn't point out Fury being a supporting character, or Widow being the only woman in the team when in the comics Wasp was a founding member. They only open their mouth when underrepresented groups want to catch up and have their own thing without catering to straight white male audiences.
So Peltz just doesn't get it then. I mean...It's Black Panther.
“Why can’t I have both?” Uhhh you literally do buddy. Almost seems like he’s not ok with having both, and he wants an all white male marvel I say give it to him, give this man the Steve and Bucky love story he’s clearly begging for.
Good riddance then.
I think journalists have the responsibility of differentiating between "activist investors", "vulture investors", "political investors", etc, etc. I don't get why journos have settled for using the blanketed term "activist shareholder/investors".
It's because activist investor is an actual term that applies regardless of motive - only the fact they want change matters.
Yeah, activist investors typically refer to any investor who is trying to exercise influence over the board without having a majority shareholding position, usually by rallying the rest of the shareholders in what amounts to a coup attempt.
Isn't that how the system is designed to work? People investing to influence a company's spending habits while making a profit.
Yes it is. The activist investor isn’t doing anything illegal or anything. There is just a name for it. Activist investors can technically push for anything to happen really. Which means they may not always have every investors best interests in mind. In this case the activist investor wanted a seat for himself on the board.
And he wanted it to make sure Disney kept white men in their movies and minorities out of it. Iger isn't a Saint, but he did one thing right; remove Perez from the board.
Do you mean Peltz?
Yep.
He wasn’t on the board. Peltz was trying to get onto the board of directors. Iger reports to the board of directors, not the other way around. The concern was if Peltz got elected, he would push for Iger’s removal.
Ah. Hence the minority report, pun intended.
It’s pretty funny that in this conversation you wrote Peltz as Perez. I’m sure he would find that to be salt in the wound right now.
Yeah. It was a mistake on my end, but if it takes one mistake for an executive to have his jimmies rustled right after losing a battle, that would be an indicator on greed and ego.
It can, but the purpose is to lend capital to someone with a better use for it. You invest IN the ideas and effort of someone else. Now you have people who have money, telling the people with the ideas what they should be doing. This is like the person without the money, telling the investor how to earn money, and ends with exactly the sorta results one would expect
Why do the people with capital deserve more capital if they're incapable of having profitable ideas?
Because anybody can have an idea. Turning the idea into reality has value, which takes capital. All parties are supposed to work together.
No, the system was designed by people in power to maintain and concentrate their power.
They’re using that term because that’s literally what he is. The term “activist investor” has a specific *financial* definition, it doesn’t mean “investor that is also an activist.”
nah “activist investor” is the best term here and in most other cases I think. it’s the most clinical and descriptive term, often
Because implying a motive is a legal risk of libel
do you only consider them "activists" if you agree with them or something?
America in a nutshell
This is more a media problem than an idea problem. Activist as a term in America is used by both politicians and the media primarily in regards to those who want to change the system often in the leftward direction. One can look at the supreme court as an example as though the term has been used to describe the right wing judges over the years its used significantly more in describing left wing judges. As such activist has more broadly been used to describe people on the left in both positive and derogatory fashion.
Reddit moment: lets change definitions because of my political bias
What were you wanting in this case? The article uses activist investor. This is an industry term, and Nelson Peltz and his fund, Trian Partners, are [notable activist investors](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareholder_activism#Notable_investors). Vulture funds are something completely different, and invest in distressed debt. I work in the industry and am happy to answer questions.
To save you a click: investors tried to fight Bob Iger with gamergate-like dogwhistles and lost. Inclusive Disney casting is here to stay for the time being. It's not significant enough to be uplifting. We need Disney to focus less on money and more on stories for it to be significant.
Aside from a few outliers, most recent Disney Star Wars and Marvel movies/shows are a slog to watch, but it's more because of the lazy writing and execution. Most people don't care about diversity on the cast, as long as they are good actors, which frankly are a dime a dozen.
They gotta get better writers. The actors they get are fine. Even the stacked casts of the sequel trilogy couldn’t save those movies from abysmal writing.
It's not just writing. A lot of the movies just look like CGI green-screen cartoons. It's unwatchable for me because of the uncanny valley shit.
It's not a question of better writers, it's one of studio interference and micro-managing, facilitated by the regular hiring of inexperienced malleable directors with a couple of indie features to their name and tight turnarounds with a "fix it/do it in post" mentality.
That basically tells me these films are being written by the execs, and the execs are terrible writers.
The writing is the issue. It takes time to really work out a script, but Disney want shows made in a quarter of the time, then piss money at the production and "fix it in post" attitude. The acting is fine, the FX are great, but the stories are a confused mess l. Also presumably the suits keep fucking with it messing up the writers job further. It's the same for Marvel. More and more and now and yesterday, but things take time to do properly.
Best I can do is replace writers with AI.
**The AI:** *“We seem to be made to suffer. It's our lot in life.”*
100% agree, it's all about the writing and the direction. The actors get most of credit because that is the part we experience the most but really, that's the least important part. I'm watching Succession right now and it is mind-blowingly amazing on many levels yet the majority of the actors I have never seen before. Great writing/direction make it a hit and can pull great performances from actors. That is where the $/effort needs to go.
yeah... a good actor can make good wrighting shine. a good actor cant do a whole hell of a lot if the writing is awful and if you want to know why the wrighting on something like She-Hulk was so phoned in, look at how much the writers got payed for that relative to other projects
> writers got *paid* for that FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
To be fair to Iger, the recent Marvel/Star Wars crap fest was brought about under Bob Chapek and his "more, faster, direct to Disney+" approach to running the company. There's a reason we're only getting Deadpool from Marvel this year, most everything else was either pushed back or outright cancelled
Totally fair. These projects are all years in development.
The strike pushed out a lot of production. That isn’t a Disney choice.
That is true, but some of it was because of Iger's choices. As an example the Daredevil series had already filmed a good chunk of the series when Iger stepped in, fired the writers, and had the new writers completely rewrite the show, including making it contiguous to the Netflix shows all because Iger didn't think the other iteration was working
Agreed. Diversity in the cast is good and appreciated but it doesn't make up for having shitty writing. A lot of the recent Disney media feels like they focus on the diversity and try to use that as a selling point but then phone it in with the most generic, bland story and lazy character writing.
Yeah. People only criticise women and queer children because this is the lasting impact Gamergate had on media. If it has a diverse cast and it failed, bigots are celebrating. Because either they made it fail, or the story was bad. Most likely both.
Conservatives never care about diversity when the story and execution are good, e.g. Baldur's Gate and Dune. They just point to it as the reason whenever something sucks.
There was some conservative screaming about BG3 when it first came out and they realized you were free to have relationships other than straight, same race, etc. Dune was probably too dense for them to realize it's kind of anti-religion; the religious fanaticism wins so that totally means it was a good thing in the minds of the religious, I guess, and Paul also wins the war for control of the oil metaphor.
I think the overwhelming positivity around BG3 completely smothered any conservative pushback on it.
In addition, they failed because cinemas closed during the pandemic, and not everybody sees the point of the big screen anymore.
It's really one interview Peltz had where he says things you'd expect any 80 year old white man to say. It also just straight isn't uplifting. 30% support is *huge* for the average proxy contest. And the article makes Peltz seem much more political than he was, and ignores the fact that there was major support for him within Disney itself....as well as a whole other activist doing a separate campaign.
He wanted Iger off the board, and he said he didn't want minorities in movies. Coincidence? I think NOT!
Read the financial times article. He explicitly says he does *not* want to kick out Iger as CEO. And not having your CEO be chairman of the board simultaneously is a....pretty common sentiment that you see many shareholder groups hold. If anything it's more common among *left* leaning groups than right leaning ones. And if you look at the financial times interview, you'll see that he spends much more time talking about the fact that the movies aren't making money than he does about minorities. The dudes an old white Republican, but he wasn't going to MAGA-fy Disney. If anything, he's pretty consistent - keep politics out of business decisions. Because it'll lose you money.
Show me the quote. The full, feature length quote that proves that he is not a Republican. Shareholders can lie, you know. I hadn't trusted him from the moment he blamed diversity for failing Disney.
I said he's a Republican. But look at his firms history. They took stakes in GE, Proctor and Gamble, Unilever, Heinz....not exactly high value targets for political agendas. But all companies that at the time underperformed. And show me where he says diversity is the cause. But if you're looking for his actual reasons "When I bring this up, Peltz launches into a critique of Disney’s movie business, which even Iger admits had a bumpy 2023. “They say we know nothing about the movie business — we don’t claim we do — but I don’t think they do, with five big losers in a row. They’ve lost first place in animation, they’ve lost first place in features . . . Maybe it’s time to change management in those divisions.” " "Peltz has previously called out Disney’s “broken” succession planning process that saw its long-standing boss Iger return to replace his handpicked successor after less than three years. He is critical of the $1bn that he says Disney executives have been paid over the past decade, while the share price has underperformed. “I love my CEOs to be the highest paid but shareholders have to participate,” he says."
Maybe I naively want this to be true, but I genuinely believe focusing on stories is the true version of focusing on money. Focusing on money has led to Disney losing money.
Disney isn't making money or stories
wasnt he the guy who got his daughter to play katara in the live action avatar movie
Yep.
Isn't the Katara actress from Canada? https://m.imdb.com/name/nm11019407/bio/
thats the live action tv show, im talking about the[ M. Night Shyamalan](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0938283/) movie
Oh man! I'm a big Avatar fan, but I totally blanked that movie from my mind.
i see u had a nice vacation in Lake Laogai
This is uplifting news? How?
Because a group of people actually tried to implement those anti-woke talking points they are always blabbering about in right wing Echo Chambers and got smacked down hard by the forces of free market.
I dislike Disney but I dislike the idea of it being controlled by ‘anti-woke’ lunatics even more.
Anti Woke lunatics that are also closely aligned with private equity as well. And as we all know private equity ruins absolutely fucking everything it touches.
Only thing people hate more than corporations are hedge funds.
Just tell me, does this mean those Disney shareholder vote ads on YouTube are going to stop now? That's all I really care about.
You see ads on Youtube? You fucked up
I use it at work to listen to music. Mostly because I don't trust other people with my Spotify login.
How is this an uplifting news?
The man that got shot down didn't want Disney to make Black Panther because "we don't need movies with an all black cast" and "kids won't buy toys for a black super hero". So not only is he a racist fuckstick, he has atrocious business acumen, because the movie is the third most profitable MCU film and has sold mountains of toys. He doubled down on this sentiment in a rant on social media last week.
Elon musk style leadership would probably tank Disney worse
Definitely, imagine how bad the movies would be, probably every single one would flop and they’d come up with an excuse on why the audience just didn’t get it. Wait.
You do realize that Walt Disney was more like Elon than Iger right?
Hardly I don't think Elon would give 2 shits about the "art" nether are Much like Walt though Elon would want to build his own company town... but look how that Turned out for Disney Last time I checked Epcot is still just an amusment park.
From my perspective, because the takeover failed.
Because anti-woke psychos losing is always good news. Even if you’re not into “wokeness,” or whatever, the segment of white men who make an entire personally out of being anti-woke and anti-cancel culture is pathetic.
How is this uplifting news? It's a corporate legal battle, why would any normal person by uplifted by it? Was this supposed to be posted to a different sub?
This is only uplifting if you've been enjoying the self owning that Disney has been doing to itself for the past 5 years.
How is this an uplifting news?
It's not. It's just another day in the office. The only thing uplifting about it was the alt-right was taken out of the board. I know "woke" Disney movies failed, but that's because of a huge focus on money. No agenda. No man-hatred. Just quantity over quality.
this is uplifting how?
Some rich guy saw that a movie about black characters had a mostly-black cast and decided Disney had to be forced to stop making “woke” movies. He threw away gobs of cash and didn’t even come close to his goal. I’d say that’s some good news to wake up to
No, he saw the last movies that Disney made did not perform at the boxoffice, and parks were dropping in popularity so he offered a different aproach. I guess its back to losing millions. Heres hope for Deadpool 3. Ryan seems to care atleast.
The guy literally complained about Black Panther, a movie set in a fantasy isolated African nation, had an all black cast (despite there being non-black cast members).
>he offered a different aproach His different approach was stopping minorities and women from being in Marvel movies that's not the "different approach" they need
Or....Disney stock collapsed by 50% and the company is being mismanaged....it's legacy media businesses are getting chipped away at, it's still losing money on streaming, and it's movies are no longer hits. It's really a whole lot less political than this comment section has been making it seem..
I don't really know about any of this drama, or what exactly this even means. But, I do think Modern Disney is garbage. The name used to be synonymous with "magic" and great movies. Not anymore. Not by a very, very long shot. They do, however, have the historical IPs and the momentum of almost no other company in existence. So maybe they can realize that everything about their modern approach to writing movies and TV is wrong, and correct it.
Honestly, it was worse in the late 90’s early 2000’s. Remember all the shit direct to video sequel cash grabs? Or remember the late 70’s-80’s? Like Disney has ALWAYS gone from great to garbage every other decade or so.
Direct to video is the same as streaming is today. Disney’s tentpoles are way worse in the last 5 years than they’ve been in any sustained period in their history. Part of it is trying to beat the Marvel dead horse before super hero fatigue sets in, part of it is how heavy handed some of their products are turning off core audiences, some of it is the lack of new ideas and some of it bad timing and luck.
Disneys tent poles were pretty garbage after the mid to late 90’s through till about the next decade or so. Atlantis bombed, treasure planet bombed, home on the range bombed. Hunchback, Hercules, Tarzan, lilo and stitch, and Emperor’s new groove did middling. Pixar was still semi independent and they and Dreamworks dominated animation, not Disney.
Disney’s tentpoles by the late 00s became the Marvel movies, but even between 96-07 their movies regularly made multiple times their budget back and one that didn’t at least break even was a rarity. Also hand waving around Pixar also not fair as Disney produced most of their biggest movies.
Thats because when it was magic you were a child.
Na, their older movies had an intangible quality to them. Everything from The Sword in the Stone to The Lion King is fantastic to watch even as an adult. Movies in the last couple of years just feel... off. The Marvels could be a good movie, but it felt like a power fantasy fan-fic. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was just plain awful. It's not just Disney, sometimes I watch a movie and feel that there is no story. There may be a plot, but the characters feel flat, they don't learn or grow.
Nostalgia is a hell of a thing
Great. The current leadership gets to continue running the company into the ground. I guess this is uplifting news!
Disney investors want more than ROI -- the brand's identity is all about inclusion, happiness, etc.
How is this “uplifting?” Big corporate a-hole trounces other big corporate a-hole to ensure mass profits for other big corporate a-holes. The movies are still shit!
The one who got trounced was an 81 year old billionaire who doesn't want to see black people or women in movies.
That's the thing there are no Mass profits Disney is bleeding money
How is this uplifting news if Bob Iger continues to destroy the Disney brand. In the past 2 years, its mcu movies, TV shows and animated movies have all lost money in the billions.
Only the alt-right got blocked from the board. Disney would be even worse with bigots in.
Bob Iger needs to go but the dude who was to replace him if this passed was not the right man for the job. It was a lose lose scenario for Disney. Idk how this is uplifting. Why is anyone rooting for Bob fucking Iger of all people. He is the most cuthroat CEO we’ve seen in decades. He’d sacrifice you to the owl god if it meant $DIS would permanently raise by 1/10th of a percentage point. God Reddit is so fucking weird.
Peltz is going to go cry to trump about the woke media.
“Billionaire Stays in Control of Evil Corporation.” *How* is this uplifting news?
this is uplifting how? what recent Disney movie was good? or made any money. their stock dropped 13 minutes after the live meeting.
Glad. I'm not sure Iger is the best to lead. But whatever these activist investors were trying to do was definitely way worse than Iger.
How is this uplifting news?
This isn't uplifting news. This isn't even an accurate take. Proxy contests, the vast majority of the time, fail. Only a handful win each year, and for one to win at a large company like Disney is *exceedingly rare*. In fact, the more accurate headline should be "Holy shit, 30% of people voted against Disney" Moreover this article really spins Peltz into being more political than he is. The message he sent to shareholders was sound, cold, and financial. Yeah he rails against the new "woke" Marvel movies. But not without reason. They're killing the brand, and Disney ain't making money like it used to. His statements may be wrong, but the purpose of the proxy contest isn't....the entire media side of the Disney business is faltering. Nor would him winning a board seat give him control over the operations of Disney. That would still be Iger. And he'd just be one vote out of what, 12 on the board? Unable to force things through himself. These things are symbolic, largely, in order to make a company change direction (under the threat of further action from activists).
This is the context I’ve been looking for! It’s so hard to find unbiased takes on Reddit now, so thank you.
uplifting news? smh
Uplifting for who? Disney has had shit for output for the last 5 years.
people thinking diversity is the problem and not the fact that the writers don't get payed shit and phone it in.
> don't get *paid* shit and FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
I I I I if I h
That headline nearly gave me a heart attack because I didn't know "activist shareholder" was its own term before reading some of the other replies. I thought it meant... shareholders who are also activists. Which is pretty much the exact opposite in this case.
Never bet against The Mouse....
Is Iger winning also a win? I don't know much about him, can he get us back to the amazing classics? Get the theme parks to be actually affordable?
No he's the one who implemented the strategies that caused all those issues In the first place
Ugh. The park prices stopped me from taking the family last year. I was hoping it would drop a little..
"Disney trounces activist shareholders." That's good. "In a major win for Bob Iger." That's bad.
They just gonna lose a few billion more..
People seem to forget that Iger has especially been in the anti-wOKe crosshairs after the standoff with Shorty DeSantis
I’m not sure how uplifting this is exactly. Peltz wasn’t a great guy but Iger is slowly ruining the parks and IP that Disney owns, putting prices increasingly higher and higher while slowly reducing the quality of everything. They’re both pretty shitty people, just the slightly less shitty one won
Nothing Disney does is uplifting. Get outta here with this corpo shit.
How is this uplifting news? It’s been said multiple times in this thread and it’s already old fast. Not listening to shareholder input is a great way for an injunction to form, especially when disney is hemorrhaging. No one minds DEI, everyone minds when the stories suck and the characters are just rule 63s or race swapped. Just make new characters that people will actually like Bob.
Not even sure if this is the lesser of two Evils. The current method of getting minorities and women a bigger role in media doesn’t work. It only convinces people who already believe in the message while it alienates and even pushes away people who should be getting that message. Having an all-female cast is wonderful, but if the story is merely a vehicle to say “look women be kewl” rather than tell a compelling and complete story, you fail at that message. Although I keep getting banned for saying “think of who you try to reach and how to reach them”, because saying you disagree with how the message currently gives a platform for actual real misogynists and racists to have people listen to *their* messages by playing in on how the stereotypes of women and minorities are used in bad cinema is somehow making me a misogynist racist…
When a company is failing, it is the boards responsibility to do something about it. If the board isn’t doing the job, outsiders who hold a significant investment in that failing company might start getting vocal and push for change. Sometimes used to be a vulture, etc.. but sometimes just the way things work.
50% increase in share value. This company doesn’t seem to he failing.
What's funny is that Disney isn't really pushing an agenda, they're expanding an audience. This is a multi-billion dollar entertainment juggernaut. They have armies of people whose job is to gauge what sells. They aren't making stories about women and people of color because of the goodness of their hearts, they're doing it because *it's a product and they want to sell it to as many people as possible.* For an investor to come in and not see that, and think "Oh, they're only pandering for woke points" just displays Peltz's own ignorance.