In today’s Q1 2023 earnings call, Disney CEO Bob Iger opened the call with more details on his plan to restructure the leadership structure at The Walt Disney Company. Following this, he took the time to emphasize the restoration of control over distribution and marketing to the creative minds behind the films.

Iger said that the company was based on storytelling, and empowering the creatives who tell those stories to make decisions about how to frame and market their films was critical. “Our new structure is aimed at returning greater authority to our creative leaders, and making them accountable for how their content performs financially. Our former structure severed that link and it must be restored.”

“Moving forward,” he continues, “our creative teams will determine what content we’re making, how it’s distributed and monetized, and how it gets marketed.”

Creative teams at Disney had previously expressed both private and public concerns about former CEO Bob Chapek’s restructuring of the company, which placed many of these decisions away from creative teams and in the hands of one man. Chapek decided to take decisions on how much to spend on marketing and publicity away from studio executives and instead hand them off to another department, consolidating most power at the newly-formed Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution division, headed by now-ousted Kareem Daniels.

Iger had said privately that he felt Chapek was “killing the soul of the company” through his decisions which included the treatment of creatives, and this decision reaffirms his previously-held concerns.

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