What Will Bob Chapek Announce This Month?
For most people, mid-November means the start of the holiday season.
You’ve worked hard this year, and you cannot wait for Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, and Christmas. Those holidays get you through the year.
Bob Chapek, CEO of The Walt Disney Company, views the next few weeks through a different lens.
Holiday theme park attendance will go a long way in determining the company’s financial status as we enter 2022.
Source: CNBC.com
Speaking of which, on New Year’s Day, Chapek becomes his own man when Bob Iger officially leaves Disney for good.
Before then, Chapek will participate in two essential events, Disney+ Day and Destination D23.
Photo: thenewzealandtimes.com
So, what should we expect Chapek to announce this month?
About Disney+ Day
Never doubt that dog years are real. To wit, Disney+ only debuted two calendar years ago, on November 12th, 2019.
Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images
Last year, when Disney was struggling due to the pandemic, Chapek capitalized on the unique marketing opportunity of Disney Investor Day.
That event happened in December of 2020 and triggered a $21-dollar surge in Disney’s stock price overnight. You can look at the chart here.
Yes, before Disney Investor Day, DIS hovered in the low $150s. Afterward, it has remained in the mid-$170s for the body of a year.
Chapek’s announcements boosted the company’s value by 13 percent overnight and kept it in that range afterward.
Source: Variety.com
You can understand why another event matters so much to Chapek and his new team of Disney executives.
Interestingly, the company has effectively merged Disney Investor Day with Disney+ Day this year.
Image: Disney Plus
The company will report earnings after the closing bell on November 10th. Then, only one Wall Street day later, Chapek will reveal the upcoming slate of Disney+ titles.
Symbolically, Chapek has paired the two events to indicate the significance of Disney+ to the company’s financial status.
Photo: Chesnot/Getty Images
What’s at Stake on Disney+ Day
I don’t think that Disney has scheduled the short gap coincidentally. Sure, November 12th does indicate the second anniversary of Disney+.
However, Chapek’s real play here involves the expected lackluster subscriber numbers for the service.
Photo: Shuttershock
Disney had previously indicated flat growth for this fiscal quarter, which also represents the end of the fiscal year.
Many Disney+ subscribers come from India. They’d previously purchased annual memberships. But, unfortunately, those don’t auto-renew in India for legal reasons.
Photo: Shuttershock
Ergo, Disney must entice those customers back. HBO Max recently faced the same issue with Amazon Prime. As a result, it intentionally lost some customers as a strategy.
Amazon Price received its cut of each HBO Max membership. So, WarnerMedia execs willingly ended those subscriptions in hopes of getting them to sign up directly.
Photo: Jeremy Freeman/WarnerMedia
Every dollar matters in the streaming wars, and the loss of Disney+ customers could cause a stock drop.
On November 12th, Chapek may counter this possibility by announcing several blockbuster series.
As a reminder, here’s where Disney stood last December. The company had forecasted at least 300 million subscribers across its three streaming services by 2024.
These numbers lump ESPN+, Hulu+, and Disney+ together in one bucket. As of August, that trio claimed roughly 174 million subscribers.
For this reason, I don’t consider Disney’s projections the least bit outlandish.
Image Credit: Disney
We have noticed some overall streaming service subscriber growth during the tail end of the pandemic, though.
Disney had previously indicated that it would spend at least $8 billion on streaming programming by 2024. Chapek could increase that budget, too.
Photo: CNBC
In fact, previous forecasts had suggested Disney would spend at least $14 billion on Hulu+, ESPN+, and Disney+ programming in 2024.
What Should Disney Announce This Week?
Last year, Disney loaded up its investor day schedule with a comical amount of titles, starting with Raya and the Last Dragon.
At the time, Disney still vacillated between theatrical release and a simultaneous streaming release strategy.
Now, the company appears wholly committed to the 45-day theatrical window before making films available on digital.
Source: bgr.com
As such, much of what Chapek and his team announce will prioritize Disney+ and Hulu releases, albeit with some ESPN+ stuff thrown in for good measure.
Analysts rank ESPN third in the current fight for NFL Sunday Ticket rights. At this late stage, I doubt Disney could have kept such a massive acquisition under wraps.
So, I’m thinking about more projects under the Marvel, Star Wars, and Pixar umbrellas, probably with some Walt Disney Studios Animation thrown in for good measure.
What should we expect? Here’s a list of titles Disney revealed last year:
- Armor Wars
- Cheaper By the Dozen reboot
- Chip N’ Dale: Rescue Rangers
- Diary of a Wimpy Kid reboot
- The Falcon and the Winter Soldier
- Greek Freak
- Hawkeye
- Hocus Pocus 2
- Home Sweet Home Alone
- Ironheart
- Loki
- Marvel
- Night at the Museum animated series
- Peter Pan and Wendy
- Pinocchio
- Pixar’s Burrow
- Cars: The Series
- Soul as a free Christmas title
- Win Or Lose
- Secret Invasion
- She-Hulk
- Star Wars: Ahsoka
- Andor
- The Bad Batch
- A Droid Story
- Lando
- Star Wars: Rangers of the New Republic
- Star Wars: Rogue Squadron
- Three Men and a Baby
- Willow
Image Credit: Marvel
I could actually keep going, but you get the point. Disney will take some of its older properties and some it bought from Fox to create new programming.
Overall, the focus will remain on Marvel, Pixar, Star Wars, and Disney animation. And maybe Avatar!
Is That Everything?
Ha! No!
There’s a second part of this story that I discussed in the most recent Disney Rumors update.
Destination D23 technically starts on November 19th. In reality, all theme park fans are anxiously awaiting the announcements from the following morning.
Between 9 a.m. and noon on November 20th, Chapek and the head of Disney’s Parks division, Josh D’Amaro, will unveil plenty of new stuff.
This event, Connections: A Look at the Future of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, signals the start of Disney’s post-pandemic theme park plans.
As such, it’s the most seminal Disney park event since all this nonsense started in March of 2020.
We’ll finally learn what Disney intends to do with its expected streaming revenue windfall.
D’Amaro technically hosts this event, but I’ll be surprised if Chapek sits this one out. It’s his first real opportunity to put his stamp on the parks as the boss.
Please remember Chapek formerly ran Disney’s theme park empire as well. However, virtually everything you’ve noticed recently came from Bob Iger.
Yes, I’m including Disney Genie, Lightning Lane, the new annual pass system, and all the other stuff folks have complained about online.
None of that would have gotten off the ground without Iger’s approval. In fact, he could have killed any of it before it even started.
So, Chapek has taken a social media drubbing for stuff that wasn’t ultimately his call.
Now, a week from Saturday, Chapek’s Disney starts in earnest. Expect several new attraction announcements as a way to boost excitement.
Right now, I would describe most Disney fans and cast members alike as drained. It’s…been a hard 18 months.
Chapek enjoys a rare opportunity to turn the page and start with a clean slate on November 20th. Everything that happens then goes on his resume.
Feature Image: Matt Stroshane/Courtesy Disney Parks
