According to the Wall Street Journal, Ike Perlmutter states how Disney fired him from Marvel.
What’s Happening:
- Isaac "Ike" Perlmutter says that the Walt Disney Company fired him as chairman of Marvel Entertainment "because he pushed Disney too aggressively to cut costs and ran afoul of the creative executives whom newly returned Chief Executive Robert Iger wants to empower."
- Perlmutter was not a typical employee and did not like the leadership he saw. He even picked up the phone and voiced his concerns to former CEO Bob Chapek and activist investor Nelson Peltz.
- Perlmutter was one of Disney's largest individual shareholders and owns approximately 30 million shares of Disney. He tried to convince Disney for years to spend less on Marvel Studios superhero movies, saying they were too long and expensive to produce.
- "I have no doubt that my termination was based on fundamental differences in business between my thinking and Disney leadership, because I care about return on investment," Perlmutter said.
- "All they talk about is the box office, I care about the bottom line. I don’t care how big the box office is. Only people in Hollywood talk about box office.
- On Tuesday, a Disney representative called in Perlmutter to tell him that his job was terminated as part of the company's layoffs, which affected around 7,000 jobs.
- "It was merely a convenient excuse to get rid of a longtime executive who dared to challenge the company’s way of doing business," he said.
- "My experience with any major corporation, when they’re having problems and they don’t have the free cash or whatever it is, usually people like Nelson Peltz know how to put it back on track," Perlmutter said. "I learned one thing about creative people my whole life: You cannot give them an open credit card.…They’re doing this for 30 years, why would they change?"
- Perlmutter had been frustrated over the clashes over the past year between Disney and Ron DeSantis and advised Disney executives, "Don’t get involved in politics. You’re going to get hurt. It’s a no-win situation."
- Perlmutter also described the clash of disagreements over movie budgets. He received a profit and loss statement on every Marvel movie until 2021, when the studio cut off access.