Bob Iger Tries Diplomacy This Time On Strike: “I Am Personally Committed” to Finding a Solution

Erik Hayden
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After mystifying Hollywood with remarks made from a billionaire’s retreat that cast striking writers and actors’ asks as “not realistic” earlier in July, Disney chief Bob Iger took a more diplomatic tack during his company’s quarterly earnings call on Wednesday.

“Nothing is more important to this company than its relationships with the creative community. That includes actors, writers, animators, directors and producers,” Iger said. “I have deep respect and appreciation for all those who are vital to the extraordinary creative engine that drives this company and our industry. And it is my fervent hope that we quickly find solutions to the issues that have kept us apart these past few months. And I am personally committed to working to achieve this result.”

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Disney unveiled second quarter results including a $512 million streaming loss for its direct-to-consumer unit (Disney+, Hulu, ESPN+) as well as a $2.4 billion impairment charge tied the removal of dozens of film and TV shows from its services as the company pared back its streaming offerings. The core Disney+ offering now sits at 105 million subscribers.

Due to the impact of the strikes on halting production, the Disney leader revised down the estimate for total spending on programming this year. “We currently expect fiscal 2023 content spend to come in at approximately $27 billion, which is lower than we previously guided due to lower spend on produced content, in part due to the writers and actors strikes,” Iger stated.

Iger, who has had a reputation as a talent-friendly and media-savvy executive, dented this carefully crafted image of himself with a poorly timed TV hit from Sun Valley’s Allen & Company mogul conference on the day that SAG-AFTRA called its strike order, July 13. “There’s a level of expectation that they have that is just not realistic, and they are adding to a set of challenges that this business is already facing, that is quite frankly, very disruptive,” Iger said on CNBC, referring to the strikers. Those “not realistic” comments have reverberated across picket lines in Los Angeles and New York ever since.

As a fraught strike summer punctuated by overheated rhetoric has collided with earnings season, top entertainment executives have decided to play it safe on investor calls, projecting that they’re aware of the seriousness of the situation and offering a vague hope that the parties can come back to the table amicably. They’ve instead let the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of major studios, take the lead in firing off retorts to the guild’s characterizations of why talks have failed so far.

Paramount Global CEO Bob Bakish spoke on August 7 of being “saddened that, as an industry, we couldn’t come to an agreement.” Days earlier, Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav, who has arguably become union members’ No. 1 perceived foe thanks to his $247 million 2021 pay package, admitted “we’re in uncharted waters” but pledged a “good faith” effort to make a deal with SAG-AFTRA and the Writers Guild of America. And Netflix’s co-CEO Ted Sarandos, who has seen his Los Angeles offices become a major picketing location since May, chose to lead off his company’s July 19 earnings call with a story of how he gets it: His father was a union electrician who went on strike, too.

Super agent Ari Emanuel — whose sports and entertainment powerhouse Endeavor is not part of the AMPTP, unlike Disney, Paramount and Netflix — was able to zag from his fellow moguls. While Endeavor, the owner of agencies WME and IMG along with sports league UFC, estimated it would be taking a $25 million hit from the impact of the actors and writers strikes given the halt to dealmaking and production, Emanuel said “we continue to stand with our clients, advocate on their behalf and push for a resolution.” (He also described the current impasse, which, in the writers’ case, has now hit the 100-day mark, as “unlike any strike that’s happened in a long time.”)

One mogul who has been notably silent on the strikes? Comcast CEO Brian Roberts, the overlord of NBCUniversal, who appears to not have been quoted publicly on the stand off since May. His direct report, NBCU president Michael Cavanagh, reiterated a nondescript line on a July 27 earnings call: “We are committed to reaching a fair deal with the guilds as soon as possible.”

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