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Disney CEO Bob Iger said the company has reached a new stage of its evolution in streaming and will consider “on occasion” licensing some titles to third parties.
Responding to a question from a shareholder during the company’s annual meeting, conducted virtually this year, Iger acknowledged there had been a period in the late-2010s when the company clawed back streaming rights.
“In order to achieve the goal of getting into the streaming business very successfully, we felt we had to take control back of the content that we had licensed to third parties,” he said. “At that point, most of it was going to Netflix and we actually enjoyed a good relationship with them over the time when we licensed content to them. But we licensed very valuable content, content that we felt we absolutely needed.”
Iger has made similar comments since rejoining the company, including last month at a conference hosted by Wall Street firm Morgan Stanley. In offering context for the streaming race, Iger noted that having exclusivity to many tentpoles drove early demand for Disney+, which reached 100 million subscribers just 16 months after its November 2019 launch. “We’re proud of our track record, though we recognize we have challenges ahead of us, namely to get to profitability,” Iger said. “We’re not looking to license our core Marvel, Disney, Pixar or Star Wars product to third parties. We will consider on occasion licensing other product to third parties.”
The shareholder meeting was Iger’s first since he rejoined the executive suite as CEO last November. He kicked it off with a tour through the company’s theme park plans and also introduced a clip from Dwayne Johnson, who announced a live-action version of Moana. Iger also hit back at Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has been clashing with the company over control of the land around Disney World in the Orlando area.
