Bob Chapek Details Disney’s Next Big Move, The 100th Anniversary, ESPN & Hulu’s Futures, & Bringing “Everything Together”

deadline.com:

Bob Chapek won’t talk about whether an Encanto sequel is coming or not, but the Disney CEO makes it very clear he has some very big plans for the company as the House of Mouse heads into its 100th anniversary in 2023.“We call it next gen storytelling,” says Chapek backstage at D23 in Anaheim today of what has been called Disney’s metaverse future by the man himself in a memo earlier this year. “We tend not to use the M word too often, because it has a lot of hair on it,” the enthusiastic exec adds mere minutes after the sprawling Lucasfilm and Marvel presentations had concluded at the confab.“But yes, Disney+ will not just be a movie service platform, but it’s going to become an experiential lifestyle platform.

A platform for the whole company to embody both the physical things that you might be able to experience in a theme park, but also the digital experiences that you can get through media.”While talk of Disney’s next step has been in the ether for several months, and ex-SVP of consumer experiences and platforms Mike White was promoted to run point on the initiative, Chapek has been pretty publicly quiet on the true scope and scale of the company’s next big move until now.Over 30 months after being named as CEO, Chapek has weathered the slings, arrows and near empty coffers of the pandemic, some hard decisions, some disruptive decisions, to put it mildly, and more than one political trial by fire.

Having inked a new contract back in June, Chapek now finds himself overseeing a healthy stock, surging theme park attendance, a greater than expected streaming subscriber base, a full pipeline of content across the board, and a lot of cash on hand.Leaning into to Disney’s big celebration next year, Chapek today outlined