Sarah Polley No Longer Directing Disney’s Live-Action ‘Bambi’ Adaptation Amid Disney Changes

A Governor Ron DeSantis-selected special district board the oversees The Walt Disney Co.‘s Florida theme park properties has settled its litigation with the company today.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor UPDATED: Nelson Peltz claims Disney‘s board, not CEO Bob Iger, is the problem. But his investment firm, Trian Group, withheld its votes for Iger’s reelection to the Disney board. With just over a week before Disney’s annual shareholder meeting on April 3, Peltz’s Trian — which has been aggressively campaigning to get two seats on the Mouse House’s board — issued a new statement Monday saying the battle is not about any dispute with Iger but rather about forcing change on the board’s composition to boost the company’s financial returns.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Michael Eisner, the former Disney CEO who exited the company in 2005, is the latest member of the extended Disneyverse to weigh in with support for current chief exec Bob Iger, who’s facing a proxy fight with activist investors including Nelson Peltz in a vote for board candidates at Disney’s April 3 annual shareholders meeting. “[I]n 1983, Disney was under attack by corporate raiders trying to take over the company,” Eisner wrote in a post on X, referring to the unsuccessful attempt by financier Saul Steinberg to stage a hostile takeover of the company.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney was handed a setback in its boardroom fight with activist investor Nelson Peltz after proxy-advisory firm Institutional Shareholder Services recommended that shareholders vote him onto the Mouse House’s board. ISS, whose recommendations are influential among institutional investors, cited Disney’s “failed” succession planning in the CEO role in its report backing Peltz, whose Trian Partners.

It’s been almost two years since we learned the news that Disney is making a live-action Hercules movie and we still haven’t heard anything about who will star in the film.

Children’s fantasy classic The Neverending Story is headed for a big screen reboot via a series of live-action features to be developed and produced by Michael Ende Productions and Oscar-winning See-Saw Films. The partners were granted the rights to Ende’s enduring novel by the author’s executor, Wolf-Dieter von Gronau.

Matt Donnelly Senior Film Writer Popeye is coasting back to the big screen. The iconic sailor man and spinach chugger, who first appeared in comic strips in the late 1920s, will be the subject of a new live-action feature film from Chernin Entertainment and King Features.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Star Wars mastermind George Lucas has come out with a statement in support of Disney‘s board and CEO Bob Iger, urging Mouse House shareholders to reject a bid by two activist investor groups to take seats on the media company’s board. “Creating magic is not for amateurs,” Lucas said in a statement released Tuesday. “When I sold Lucasfilm just over a decade ago, I was delighted to become a Disney shareholder because of my longtime admiration for its iconic brand and Bob Iger’s leadership.” Lucas continued, “When Bob recently returned to the company during a difficult time, I was relieved.

Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce are making moves behind the scenes!

Proxy advisory firm Glass Lewis has recommended that Disney shareholders withhold votes for all board candidates except the company’s own.

Disney’s latest salvo in a proxy fight with activist investor Trian Fund Management highlights the firm’s “silent partner” Ike Perlmutter and his “difficult history with Bob Iger.”

Disney shares were up 2% at mid-day Monday, extending their recent rally, as the company renewed its attacks on activist investor Nelson Peltz.

Wes Anderson, among the most celebrated filmmakers of this generation, is finally taking home an Oscar after being seven-times nominated. The eighth was a charm for his live action short The Wonderful Story Of Henry Sugar. He wasn’t able to get there so no acceptance speech.

Dermot O'Leary has revealed he's been working on a new show away from This Morning amid changes on the ITV show. Following Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby’s departure from the show within months of each other last year, the presenter has been part of the show’s revolving line-up of hosts.

Disney CEO Bob Iger remains committed to turning the ship around, but in doing so, admits the company has had to make some hard choices and cancel projects the studio didn’t have 100% belief in. “You have to kill things you no longer believe in, and that’s not easy in this business,” Iger said, speaking at a conference hosted by Morgan Stanley in San Francisco on Tuesday (via THR).

Disney CEO Bob Iger said the studio has “killed a few projects already that we just didn’t feel were strong enough,” as the company tries to reverse a box office slump.

Disney CEO Bob Iger called the proxy fight being waged by two activist investors a campaign that “is, in a way, designed to distract us, to take our eye off all [that’s] necessary to do what we need to do to generate returns for shareholders.”

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged that the company is behind Netflix in terms of technical capabilities — and that the Mouse House is in the process of catching up. “We need to be at their level” of technical capability, in order to reduce marketing expenses and cut churn rates, Iger said about Netflix, speaking Tuesday at the 2024 Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference. Iger reiterated that Disney is on track to achieve profitability in the streaming business — which includes Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+ — by the fiscal quarter that ends September 2024.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If the Academy judged features by the same standards that they do live action shorts, the best picture ballot would be full of starry, quasi-political issue movies: well-meaning but manipulative films like “Father Stu” and “The Janes.” In this category, it’s the message that matters to Oscar voters, which makes this year’s “2024 Oscar Nominated Short Films: Live Action” program (available in theaters and on demand from ShortsTV) one of the most frustrating lineups in recent memory. Or it would, if not for the presence of one genuinely brilliant, liberatingly unserious nominee among them.

Todd Spangler NY Digital Editor The descendants of Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney have weighed in on the bid by two activist investment firms to win seats on the board of the Walt Disney Co. Nelson Peltz, the activist investor who runs hedge fund Trian Partners, is waging a proxy-fight battle to install himself and ex-Disney CFO Jay Rasulo as directors; Peltz’s stated aim is to drive up the price of Disney’s stock.