Just from the movie perspective, I don’t know The financialsabout the parks or Disney+ but the movies made $6.5 billion in 2025. So I’m gonna go with yes.
Unquestionably yes. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is Scarlett Johansson. Bob Chapek tried to screw her over for a couple million dollars and it backfired horribly.
To pull a quote from Iger that he attributes to Steve Jobs,
“In a strange way,” Iger says, “I am the brand manager of Disney.” He sees his job as building, in the words of his friend the late Steve Jobs, more “brand deposits” than “brand withdrawals.”
Scarlett Johansson made a deal with Disney that gave her film Black Widow a theatrical release and Disney pushed it out to Disney+ as a premium offering during COVID.
If you can screw over the biggest Hollywood star, you could screw over anyone. This isn’t some dispute where there are both sides to the story or Johansson had done something that might have caused an issue. This was Disney’s new CEO panicking.
Even if Disney had won legally, they weren’t going to win in the court of public opinion and that’s a brand withdrawal. You can do it. You can make a big brand withdrawal and make a bunch of money, but it better be worth it.
Disney begged him to come back after retiring. So that’s the bill. The question is — was it worth it?
Just from the movie perspective, I don’t know The financialsabout the parks or Disney+ but the movies made $6.5 billion in 2025. So I’m gonna go with yes.
Compared to who he replaced, yes
Unquestionably yes. There are a lot of reasons, but the biggest reason is Scarlett Johansson. Bob Chapek tried to screw her over for a couple million dollars and it backfired horribly.
To pull a quote from Iger that he attributes to Steve Jobs,
(Source)
Scarlett Johansson made a deal with Disney that gave her film Black Widow a theatrical release and Disney pushed it out to Disney+ as a premium offering during COVID.
If you can screw over the biggest Hollywood star, you could screw over anyone. This isn’t some dispute where there are both sides to the story or Johansson had done something that might have caused an issue. This was Disney’s new CEO panicking.
Even if Disney had won legally, they weren’t going to win in the court of public opinion and that’s a brand withdrawal. You can do it. You can make a big brand withdrawal and make a bunch of money, but it better be worth it.
In Bob Chapek’s case, it wasn’t.