Iger’s “Stacy’s Mom” Pitch One of Few Rejected Ideas
In a recent interview for Kara Swisher’s New York Times podcast Sway, former Walt Disney Company Chairman and CEO Bob Iger shared a number of reflections and never-before-told anecdotes. Though predominantly serious, the chat also shared a few hilarious tidbits about moments in which the brilliant leader pitched some less-than-stellar ideas. Among those, a sitcom loosly based on the 2003 Fountains of Wayne song, “Stacy’s Mom.”
“I always have ideas, or had ideas. Most of the time, I was politely laughed at. I had a title, so they couldn’t really just throw me out of the room. They had to listen. … I pitched an idea for a sitcom once about a teenage kid who had a mother that was ridiculously sexy … They thought that was absurd,” Iger told Swisher during the interview. A recent CBR article highlighted this specific interchange.
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“Stacy’s Mom … It was a bad idea,” Iger added during the talk with Swisher who followed up with a comment about how he “would have been so canceled.”
Iger Offers Advice for Disney Future
Jon Favreau and Bob Iger
The interview also covers a large number of other timely topics, including the creation of the Disney metaverse, the role of Disney+ in the company’s more recent success, and the importance that he continues to place on the role of imagination within the Walt Disney Company’s future endeavors. Many worry that his successor, current Disney CEO Bob Chapek, may focus too much on data, a concern legitamately based on previous times in which the company focused too much on numbers.
“If we had tried to mine all the data that we had at the time, to determine whether we should make a superhero movie that was about, essentially, an Afro-futuristic world with a Black cast, the data would have said don’t do that, and Black Panther never would have been made,” Iger said in the podcast elaborating on his comments from a retreat last June for the Walt Disney Company Board of Directors. Originally, he made comments told by Kim Masters for The Hollywood Reporter.
Officially, Iger’s time with the company ended on Dec. 31st when he officially retired from the Board of Directors. Previously, he stepped down as CEO in February 2020 when Bob Chapek took over just as the impact of the coronavirus pandemic took hold.
Feature Image Credit: D23
