What I’m Hearing: Will Chapek Walk the Plank?

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Discussed in today’s email: Bob Bakish, Ava Duvernay, Jeff Zucker, Ben Silverman, Alan Ladd, Jr., Drake, John Malone, Dolly Parton, Reed Hastings, and Putin’s ‘girlfriend.’

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Who Won the Week: Bob Iger

How great does the former Disney C.E.O. look for slamming the Florida “Don’t Say Gay” legislation weeks before Disney’s current leader Bob Chapek caused a firestorm by refusing to do so, before subsequently backtracking with a forced apology?

More on this topic below… but first, a few little news and notes items…

Oscars co-host Amy Schumer is said to be causing grief among the show’s producers. Hopefully it’s because she’s pushing the Academy to make this year’s telecast actually watchable.
Trade media mogul Jay Penske and his business practices are the subject of an upcoming New York Times feature, pegged to the Oscars. The writer is Katie Rosman, just in case she reaches out.
How aggressively has the Netflix awards machine encouraged employees and partners to join the International Animation Film Society? Netflix took 20 of the 31 prizes at Saturday’s Annie Awards, including best film (Mitchells vs. The Machines) and most of the TV categories. Of the three categories where Disney’s Encanto won, Mitchells wasn’t even nominated. Disney once dominated these awards, until Jeffrey Katzenberg sought to remake the electorate while running DreamWorks Animation. Looks like Netflix is taking a page from his playbook.
Invites for Oscar weekend’s Night Before party have gone out, and despite speculation that the Motion Picture & Television Fund would anoint an official replacement for Katzenberg, its chief wrangler/cheerleader, there’s nobody in that role yet. To me, that says a lot about the lack of a clear leader in modern Hollywood. It’s also an effort by Bob Beitcher, the nonprofit’s C.E.O., to avoid tying the fundraiser, which brings in about $5 million for the motion picture home, so closely to one person.

The Truth Behind Bob Chapek’s Florida Flip-Flop

Disney’s new C.E.O. badly miscalculated in his attempt to pivot the company from left to center, compounding one of Disney’s worst internal crises in years. Will the public relations train wreck derail Chapek, too?

MATTHEW BELLONI

I was having dinner last Friday in Brentwood with Geoff Morrell, the Walt Disney Co.’s new senior executive V.P. and corporate affairs officer, when he spotted a familiar face a few tables away. It was Bob Iger, the former Disney C.E.O., quietly dining with his wife, Willow Bay.

Morrell, a former BP spokesman and George W. Bush appointee to the Defense Department, who now runs communications and government affairs for Disney’s current C.E.O Bob Chapek, had never met Iger. Yet Morrell was in the middle of a burgeoning crisis over Chapek’s decision to stay neutral on Florida’s so-called “Don’t Say Gay” legislation, which would bar “classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity.” It was a crisis made more incendiary because Iger had come out against the proposed law, tweeting to his 241,000 followers that it “will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.”

The Igers stopped by and chatted cordially with us on their way out, but the awkwardness was palpable...

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