Where Disney Is Heading In Its Next Century | The Circuit

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Disney characters just give you the warm and fuzzies. I don’t know what it is. No, they do. They’re timeless. They’ve been around for so long. Who are your favorite characters? I love Minnie. My daughter Eliza was so happy when we’d go to the parks and she’d seen Minnie Classic. Who’s your favorite? My favorite? Ariel. I feel like I always, you know, she was curious. She finds her voice. This is Disney, but so is this. This is the way. And this and even this, I love a little chaos. Disney contains multitudes. The company controls some of the most valuable IP and distribution channels in entertainment history and rakes in over $90 billion a year. Exterior, daytime, Los Angeles. Dana Walden, co-chair of Disney Entertainment and our guide to the magic kingdom. Our stories have appealed to kids for a hundred years. The pull of a Disney story is tremendous.

You grew up in LA I did. What drew you to Hollywood? Well, it’s actually funny. I grew up about four miles from here. My mom was in musical theater. She was a performer and we watched a lot of TV together as a family. And then I remember when I was 12, my parents switched out the TV in the living room and got a new one, and I convinced my mother to let me put the old one in my room. I didn’t come out for about five years. You landed a PR job at 20th Century Fox. 1992. Not withstanding that, I came in on the PR side, I really had a passion for storytelling and creativity. I oversaw different businesses, but my heart was really always with our television studios, Chris Carter on the X-Files, Jim Brooks on The Simpsons. They really taught me how to understand storytelling and production and it led to a 26 year career at Fox. So, Netflix kicks off the streaming boom. It takes Disney six years to get into streaming launches. Disney Plus in 2019 buys Fox to try to catch up. That’s when you enter the scene. Did you feel like you were starting from behind? I didn’t really at the time I thought, what an amazing opportunity to join a company, which is the gold standard in storytelling. Dana Walden joined Disney as co-chair of the entertainment division focusing on TV shows while Alan Bergman oversees feature films. But entertainment is only one piece of the Disney Empire. There’s also experiences, parks and cruises and sports, ESPN and all of Disney’s pieces work together. Popular IP from entertainment gets translated into experiences and products forming the Disney flywheel, a uniquely powerful system for generating revenue across the company. So you oversee now one of the largest creative portfolios in the world between Hulu and Disney Plus and FX.

You and Dana Walden go back to the Nip Tuck days. What’s your relationship like with her? In the case of like All's Fair, she read every script. She gave me a lot of notes, which you know, I love, I love a note. Well, I don’t know where the bodies are. We’re looking for the bodies. We’re not trying to start from scratch and it’s also really difficult to do it without that IP. Every story doesn’t have to be based specifically on our IP, But all of these stories and characters could take on a different meaning as technology brings new challenges and opportunities to the entertainment business. I’ve been wanting to talk about AI. Obviously this is like the next big disruption. This is a company that has prided itself on storytelling for a hundred years and now a computer is getting scary, good at doing a lot of things In terms of our premium stories and how we think about ai, either bending the cost curve or helping us to be faster, more efficient. We are approaching all of that together with the actors, the writers, directors, who are our partners, and have very strong feelings about what is a uniquely human story and how to protect the contributors in that process. Bob talked about being excited about the potential for AI generated content on Disney plus user generated videos. Sure. That people could also watch. Is it still Disney magic if it’s AI created? Disney magic is storytelling. It doesn’t have to be any one form. So I think it is the fundamentals of a story are Disney. The technology has evolved rapidly throughout the history of the company. Technology isn’t the only pressure weighing on Disney and its channels like ABC. In September, late night host Jimmy Kimmel came under fire from the Trump administration over remarks about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. Walden and Bob Iger decided to suspend Kimmel, then a few days later, to reinstate him. Anyway, as I was saying before I was interrupted, The episode raised concerns about the industry’s ability to stand up for free speech and many of Hollywood’s biggest names spoke out against Kimmel’s suspension. Let’s talk about Kimmel. What happened and what were the conversations between you and Bob and Jimmy? We were thinking about only one thing as we made that decision very close to his show going back up on that Wednesday, and you know, the situation was extremely heated. We wanted to take the temperature down. We didn’t think that was gonna be possible that night, so we hit pause to have conversations with Jimmy. We wanted to resolve the situation in a certain way to protect our employees, to think about our audience. Did President Trump call you or Bob or vice versa? Did you get any pressure from the White House? He did not. We did not hear from them. There are reports that cancellations of Disney Plus and Hulu spiked after the incident. The future of Disney? The company is so big, you might as well ask, what’s the future of entertainment? It’s a tricky question. What’s your hope for Grey’s? Well, I think it’s gonna take a lot of work. It’s gonna take a lot of investment. It’s gonna take a lot of creativity. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. It’s gonna take a lot of people. 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