I Haven’t Forgotten Your ‘Spooky’ Resignation Right Before The Pandemic, Bob Iger

by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock (9241938da) The Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger attends a special screening of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at Alice Tully Hall, in New York NY Special Screening of “Beauty and the Beast”, New York, USA – 13 Mar 2017

This is total idle speculation, but I still find it very “spooky” that Bob Iger quit Disney….right before the COVID19 pandemic struck the West. You could not have timed it better.

It almost makes you think that he knew how bad things were going get. As if, maybe…FIVE EYES in SPOOKY places might have given him a tip? I know it sounds crazy…but why would he quit out of the blue like that at the top of his game….then come slinking back to Disney now just as the pandemic is wrapping up?

Very, very curious.

Very, very SPOOKY, if you will.

Logically, Disney Will Hand The Simpsons Over To Pixar


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

We are fast approaching a moment when the first Mikey Mouse shorts will be in the public domain. I think 2024 will be it. So, logically, it would make a lot of sense for The House Of Mouse to become The House Of Simpsons.

No one listens to me.

What they should do is move all their Simpsons IP over to Pixar. The show should have been canceled a long, long, long time ago and Disney should bite the bullet and do just that. Then, after maybe five years, come back hard with a planned series of Pixar-produced Simpsons movies.

The Simpsons would be updated using the best of Pixar’s computer animation and storytelling. Then, every two years or so, there would be a Simpsons movie that would fuse the greatness of the Simpsons with the equal greatness of Pixar.

But, alas, absolutely no one listens to me.

The Fatal Flaw Of The Star Wars Franchise


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


I’ve written about this before, but I thought I would mention it again because it’s on my mind for some reason. I can pinpoint for you the moment the Star Wars franchise was dealt a mortal blow — when Lando Calrissian is introduced as a man in Empire Strikes Back.

That’s the moment when the whole Star Wars universe met its doom.

The reason — it’s natural for characters to pair off as a franchise matures. As such, Leia and Han pair off…leaving Luke Skywalker with nothing (or no one) to do. Just think, if Lando was a woman, you open the first movie of the new trilogy with a brown Ray.

Ta-da, you have a whole new avenue for the Skywalker family to go down.

But, obviously, that can’t happen now.

I honestly don’t know what happens with Star Wars now. I guess they just keep selling toys and blowing up bigger and bigger Deathstars until the sun goes dark or something.

What The Fuck Is Going On With HBO?


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

Let me be clear — I’m just a doofus in the middle of nowhere. No one listens to me. But I’ve known of HBO my entire life and I’m worried about its future. WarnerMedia (AT&T) simply has no idea what the fuck its doing with the brand. Either just call their streaming service “HBO” or call it “Warner+.”

To have this bastard child known as “HBO Max” is to not only confuse the market but degrade the great, great HBO brand mindshare. It just makes no sense, any of it.

In passing, I would note when you’re fighting against the streaming behemoths of Disney+ and Netflix, you probably need to dig a little deeper to catch people’s attention. I know of the simultaneous release decision for big movies on HBO Max…but that seems like a gimmick.

If I was either HBO Max or Paramount+ I would take things to the next level with content and emulate Disney+ by dusting off the old — and rarely seen — back catalogue.

Anyway. No one listens to me.

Mulling The State Of Star Wars


by Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner

As I have said before, I’m not really much of a fan of Star Wars. But the franchise is such a cultural powerhouse, that it is interesting to try to understand where it stands.

To me, the existential crisis of Star Wars has nothing to do with the franchise itself. It has everything to do with how the bolts are popping off civil society in the United States. Throw in the quirks of the modern Hollywood economy and you have a recipe for the entire edifice to collapse in on itself.

The reason why what’s “wrong” with Star Wars is so difficult to understand is there’s a lot going on with the franchise. The convention wisdom on YouTube, often advocated by angry young men, is Star Wars where it is because of the malfeasance of Kathleen Kennedy. She’s a very convenient scapegoat for some legitimate problems with Star Wars.

I’m of the opinion that things just aren’t that simple. Disney paid something like $2 billion for LucasFilm and, as such, they decided to use it as a money tree. It seems to me that what all the complains are about has more to do with modern Hollywood in general than Ms. Kennedy.

Three major things are warping Star Wars so as to cause a major rift between the studio and the fanbase.

  1. MAGA-Qanon is consuming America
    A lot of unhappiness in the Star Wars fanbase likely comes from how the United States, in general, is extremely divided. This is out of the control of anyone involved. Everything — EVERYTHING — is seen through the prism of politics, and, as such, given that the Star Wars fanbase is made up of young men, it’s inevitable that they will be unhappy if there’s a whiff of “liberal bias” in the storytelling.
  2. Disney wants to sell toys
    Next, Disney really, really, REALLY wants that sweet, sweet toy money. So that bends the storytelling associated with Star Wars to such an extent that they throw in an entire subplot that’s devoted exclusively to featuring creatures that are to be sold as toys.
  3. “Woke” Hollywood
    This is probably the most conspicuous problem with the franchise and, in a sense, the most intractable. Woke Hollywood screws with some basic tenants of storytelling to such an extent that even the average casual Star Wars audience member can be left a little annoyed.
  4. Disney isn’t a fan of Star Wars
    I think this is the real problem with Star Wars. They just don’t “get” Star Wars and where the magic comes from. It’s like a bookworm trying to be a basketball coach when they don’t even know the rules of the game. They know how to make money, but they have lost sight on how to tell a Star Wars story the way the fans will really like.

I honestly don’t have a solution to any of these problems. Disney does run a real risk, however, of driving the franchise into the ground to such an extent that they can’t make any more money off of it. I have suggested before than someone like Kevin Smith (who is a huge fan of Star Wars) should be given a three picture deal and a lot of creative control.

One thing that is really staring Disney in the face and they’re ignoring it is how huge the Star Wars universe is. It makes you start to think whomever is in charge of Star Wars (Ms. Kennedy?) is either not very creative or too timid to do what is needed.

Why not just find a minor fan favorite character and think completely out of the box with them. No Skywalker. No Darth Vader. Nothing from the known canon of the franchise. They’ve got a whole galaxy mapped out in various ways in “Lore” and so forth, why not just pick a direction, any direction and run with it? Why be so absolutely tied down to the major aspects of the canon?

But I guess all that would require money and risk that Disney isn’t prepare to get into. Though there may come a day when they grow so desperate that they don’t have any choice.

The Bob Iger Bounce: #DIS #CoroniaVirus

Mandatory Credit: Photo by Invision/AP/REX/Shutterstock (9241938da) The Walt Disney Company CEO Robert Iger attends a special screening of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” at Alice Tully Hall, in New York NY Special Screening of “Beauty and the Beast”, New York, USA – 13 Mar 2017
Shelton Bumgarner

By Shelt Garner
@sheltgarner


Why did Bob Iger leave Disney so abruptly? I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory to say he may have known through his network of Masters Of The Universe that there was a really good possibility that Disney as he knew it for 15 years was a Dead Man Walking.

I’ll leave it to the folks at CNBC to do the fundamentals, but a back of the envelope projection of Disney’s profits for the rest of the year look like this:

#US0

Nothing. The moment someone does the WuFlop at a Disney property anywhere in the world and it’s recorded, well, that’s it. Disney will have to survive off of Disney+ subscriptions for about a year. And I seriously doubt that will be enough to prevent some serious pain at the House The Mouse Built. No new TV or movie production. No one will go to Disney Land or Disney World. But everyone in their house with a lot of free time will use their Disney+ subscription like crazy.

For
A
Whole
Year

So, I guess, what may have happened was Iger wanted to quit at the top, rather than have his potential legacy destroyed by having to complete re-imagine Disney from the ground up to accommodate the mainstreaming of “Immersive Media” over the next 18 months.

But the above is just wild speculation on my part. A bit of financial “infotainment,” if you will. Don’t use it to make any financal decisions, for Christ’s sake. I’m nothing more than Brian Fellows, writing in an obscure portion of an unimportant part of the Internet.

This is me when it comes to stocks.