Walt Disney’s (DIS) President of Production, Sean Bailey, has stepped down after 15 years in the role. However, he is not leaving Disney entirely and will transition to a producer position instead. Bailey will be replaced by David Greenbaum as Disney merges two of its film divisions amid an ongoing board proxy battle.
Yahoo Finance’s Alexandra Canal breaks down the details.
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Editor’s note: This article was written by Angel Smith
Video Transcript
BRAD SMITH: Well, an executive shakeup at Disney this week. The motion picture group’s President of Production Sean Bailey stepping down. This comes while the activist battle continues at the board level. To break this down for us, we’ve got Yahoo Finance’s very own Alexandra Canal here with us in studio. Hey, Allie.
ALEXANRDA CANAL: Hey, Brad. Yeah, so executive Sean Bailey out after 15 years as the president of Disney’s motion picture group. Although he’s not completely leaving the company. He’s going to serve as a producer for a few studio projects. He will be replaced, however, by David Greenbaum.
He’s going to be stepping into a completely new role of president of live action and 20th Century Studios. So, Disney essentially merging the two film divisions here. Greenbaum used to be president of Searchlight Pictures, where he brought several high-profile films to the big screen, including “The Shape of Water” and “Nomadland.”
But this does come as Disney has been really struggling within its film business, its live action and animation business. Projects like “The Haunted Mansion” really underperformed. And then you had the live-action “Little Mermaid.” Although it brought in more than half a billion worldwide, it still didn’t deliver the results that Disney was really expecting there.
And this has been called out by both activist investors that are pushing for board seats at Disney, Blackwells Capital and Nelson Peltz. So, Disney has been really focused on bringing back the creativity, making sure that it’s doing as much as it can do to really bolster its film division.
CEO Bob Iger has talked about this several times on earnings calls, several times in shareholder letters. Disney just recently wrote another letter to shareholders really pushing back on a lot of these activist investors and encouraging people to vote for their current board, saying that any deviation from the current board is going to really set Disney back when it comes to its progress.
So, overall, you know, the company is just going through a bit of turmoil right now. And this is something that Bob Iger really seems to want to address in 2024. We’ll see if some of these other projects that Disney has coming out can deliver on the film side.
SEANA SMITH: Yeah, Allie. It’s really interesting here in terms of what they’re refuting with the claims. They went through nine examples of where they did dispute some of the claims that were made here from Peltz and from Blackwell. I’m curious though.
Since you talked to so many analysts, industry executives within the media space, how are they– maybe this is more so the analyst side of it. How are they thinking about this upcoming vote in terms of whether or not Disney– because I think Disney, obviously, very much was really seen as being able to fend off some of this pressure from Peltz. Is that still the case?
ALEXANRDA CANAL: From the analyst that I’ve spoken with, yes, that is still the case. Largely, this has been seen as a distraction for Disney, a distraction for Iger. I think if Nelson Peltz was able to get a board seat, or Blackwells Capital was able to push through, that would be a big surprise to analysts, to investors.
It is largely expected that the current board is going to remain intact. But, you know, there’s a lot of media stories out there. We’re constantly getting updates. And it does, I think if you’re an investor of this company, make you pause and think, OK, is Disney on the right path right now?
And Disney has done everything, I think, that it can do to really try and fend off that noise. But, again, largely, analysts have said this is a distraction. We’ll see. April 3 is when that shareholder meeting will take place, and that’s when we’re going to get a lot of these answers.
But for now, it seems like Bob Iger is really committed to just maintaining the company’s integrity. We have the dividend. We have the stock buyback that they announced. So, a lot of new initiatives that they’re committing to as well.
BRAD SMITH: All right. All the news on the House of Mouse. Allie, thanks so much for breaking it down.
ALEXANRDA CANAL: Of course.
BRAD SMITH: Appreciate it.
