During an interview, last week at Vox Media’s Code Conference, Disney’s former CEO Bob Iger commented that the pandemic left a “permanent scar” on movie theatres, an injury from which the sector would never fully recover. Iger went on to soften his comments slightly, saying that exhibition is “not a dead business.”
Iger’s highest profile accomplishment at Disney was to champion the development of Disney+, which debuted in November 2019 only five months before COVID forced the closure of all public gathering places, including movie theatres and theme parks.
During his VOX interview, Iger stated “I think the movie industry used to argue that you could not create cultural impact without having everybody go to a movie theater on the weekend in every country in the world, and then just couldn’t create franchises. I don’t agree anymore.”
While Iger’s analysis is noteworthy, it’s also expected that he would be bullish on the initiatives he led while at Disney.
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