Raphael Stevens

The Biden administration said it is offering another round of free at-home Covid tests to American households ahead of the holiday season.
Starting Monday, Americans can use the site to request four additional tests per household.
Demand for tests and other Covid products such as vaccines and treatments has plummeted over the last year as cases and public concern about the virus dwindled from earlier in the pandemic. 

COVID-19 home test kits are pictured in a store window during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic in the Manhattan borough of New York City, New York, U.S., January 19, 2022.
Carlo Allegri | Reuters

The Biden administration on Monday said it is offering another round of free at-home Covid tests to U.S. households ahead of the holiday season, when more people gather indoors and the virus typically spreads at higher levels. 
Starting Monday, Americans can use COVIDtests.gov to request four free tests per household. Those who have not ordered any tests this fall can now place two orders for a total of eight tests, according to the website.

The administration in September allowed people to request an initial round of four free tests through the site, resuming a federal program that temporarily shut down during a political fight over Covid funding.
At-home tests are a critical tool to protect against the virus, especially now that lab PCR tests — the traditional method of detecting Covid — have become more expensive and less accessible since the government ended the public health emergency in May. 
But demand for tests, along with Covid vaccines and treatments, has plummeted over the last year as cases and public concern about the virus dwindled from earlier in the pandemic. 

More CNBC health coverage

Only a small share of Americans appear to be worried about Covid disrupting their holiday plans this fall and winter.
About 3 in 10 Americans said they are concerned they will get seriously sick from Covid or will spread the virus to people close to them over the holidays, according to a poll released Friday by health policy research organization KFF. 

Less than half were concerned about the potential for another Covid surge during the winter, which has occurred in previous years of the pandemic, the poll said. 
Still, signs of a winter Covid wave are emerging.
More than 16,200 Americans were hospitalized in the week ending Nov. 11, according to the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That marks an 8.6% increase from the previous week.
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“Choiceful” is CEOs’ new favorite word to describe consumer spending behavior and their own companies’ strategy.
So far in 2023, “choiceful” has appeared in 15 quarterly earnings calls for S&P 500 companies, up from just two in 2021, according to a CNBC analysis of FactSet transcripts.
Chief executives including Walmart’s Doug McMillon and McDonald’s Chris Kempczinski have used the adjective this year when talking to investors.

Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Inc. Corporation, participates in a Business Roundtable discussion on the”Future of Work in an Era of Automation and Artificial Intelligence”, during a CEO Innovation Summit, on December 6, 2018 in Washington, DC.
Mark Wilson | Getty Images

“Choiceful” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but chief executives love it.
It’s how Walmart CEO Doug McMillon described the average consumer, who is trying to cut back on spending but is still willing to splurge on what’s worth it.

McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski used the word to characterize the company’s strategy on price increases.
And the adjective popped up again during Starbucks’ investor update, when CEO Laxman Narasimhan outlined the coffee giant’s strategy for general and administrative expenses.
So far in 2023, choiceful has appeared in 15 quarterly earnings calls for S&P 500 companies, according to a CNBC analysis of FactSet transcripts. That’s nearly double the usage last year, when it totaled nine mentions. In 2021, only the CEOs of Molson Coors and McCormick said “choiceful” when speaking to investors on their quarterly conference calls.

Chief executives have found it a useful adjective this year, whether it’s to describe today’s unusual economy or to reassure investors that they can steer their businesses through anything.
“Choiceful” can’t be found in Merriam-Webster Dictionary or on dictionary.com. But the Oxford English Dictionary notes the earliest known use of the word in the late 1500s. The adjective typically appears .002 times per million words in modern written English, making it one of a group of words “which are not part of normal discourse and would be unknown to most people,” according to the OED.

These days, CEOs have used it to describe a consumer whose behavior has changed over the last two years. Inflation has put pressure on their wallets, leading them to pull back on spending in some areas but not others.
Some companies have found themselves scrambling to explain why consumers aren’t buying their products or why inventory was piling up at retailers. Others, such as Ralph Lauren, have been beneficiaries of shoppers’ choosiness.
“I think that’s what consumers are looking for right now as they are more choiceful,” Ralph Lauren CEO Patrice Louvet told investors on the retailer’s Nov. 8 conference call. “They want to invest in pieces that are timeless, that they can wear beyond one specific season.”
The change in shopping habits has put pressure on some companies’ top and bottom lines, leading executives to emphasize the thoughtfulness of their strategies. That’s where “choiceful” comes in handy again.
Take Molson Coors’ portrayal of its restrained, targeted approach to nonalcoholic drinks. In recent years, the beer giant has begun shifting away from ales and lagers in favor of faster-growing categories, such as energy drinks.
“We’re going to be choiceful about where we play, and we have two priority spaces,” CEO Gavin Hattersley said at the company’s investor update Oct. 4.
Or there’s McDonald’s explaining its approach to hiking menu prices. Restaurants, like many other industries, have seen diners push back against higher prices by visiting less frequently or opting for cheaper orders.
“I think, certainly given the inflation that we’ve experienced over the last year — really more than a year — we’ve tried to be very choiceful and disciplined on how we have executed those price increases,” McDonald’s Kempczinski told analysts in late October.
Consumers are still feeling the sting of higher prices at McDonald’s and elsewhere. They’re racking up record credit card debt, even as inflation cools.
As 2023 comes to a close, economists are split on whether next year will bring a recession, which could mean even more dramatic challenges for CEOs to tackle.
Maybe they’ll even need to find a new favorite word.

Read more CNBC retail news More

SpaceX launched its Starship rocket into space on Saturday, with Elon Musk’s company pushing development of the towering vehicle past new milestones.
It flew for several minutes before an unknown issue triggered the intentional destruction of the rocket. No people were on board this test flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration will oversee a “mishap” investigation into the flight, a standard regulatory procedure, before SpaceX can launch another Starship rocket.

SpaceX launched its second Starship rocket flight on Saturday, with Elon Musk’s company pushing development of the mammoth vehicle past new milestones.
Lifting off around 8 a.m. ET from the company’s facility in Texas, Starship flew for more than seven minutes, successfully separating from its booster before the rocket’s onboard system intentionally destroyed the vehicle mid-flight.

No people were on board the test flight.
“We have lost the data from the second stage … what we do believe right now is that the Automated Flight Termination System on the second stage appears to have triggered very late in the burn,” John Insprucker, SpaceX principal integration engineer, said on the company’s webcast.

SpaceX’s next-generation Starship spacecraft atop its powerful Super Heavy rocket lifts off from the company’s Boca Chica launchpad on an uncrewed test flight, near Brownsville, Texas, U.S. November 18, 2023. 
Joe Skipper | Reuters

The flight termination system is a standard safety feature in rockets, as it destroys the vehicle if a problem arises or it flies off course. On SpaceX’s webcast, Starship appears to have been detonated at an altitude of about 148 kilometers (or about 485,000 feet). That is a little under half the altitude at which the International Space Station orbits the Earth.
The intentional destruction of Starship represents a premature end to the flight test, as SpaceX planned to fly it most of the way around the Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and splashing down off the coast of Kauai, Hawaii.
“An incredibly successful day, even though we did have a ‘rapid unscheduled disassembly’ both of the Super Heavy booster and the ship,” SpaceX quality engineering manager Kate Tice said on the webcast.

The Federal Aviation Administration confirmed it will oversee a “mishap” investigation into the flight, a standard regulatory procedure, before SpaceX can launch another Starship rocket.
Mishap investigations are how the FAA analyzes the cause of a rocket launch failure, especially when a vehicle is destroyed. The regulator may give SpaceX corrective actions to complete before the company can receive a license for future Starship launches. The FAA said in a statement after the launch that “no injuries or public property damage have been reported.”
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson congratulated the company for making “progress on today’s flight test.”
“Spaceflight is a bold adventure demanding a can-do spirit and daring innovation. Today’s test is an opportunity to learn—then fly again,” Nelson said in a social media post.
The FAA cleared SpaceX for the second launch earlier this week.

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SpaceX first launched a full Starship rocket system in April. Although that flight did not reach space, it successfully achieved multiple historic firsts for an experimental rocket of unprecedented scale. The mid-air destruction of the rocket, as well as an investigation into damage caused back on the ground, triggered a regulatory review that spanned nearly seven months.
The launch attempt comes on the heels of renewed backlash against SpaceX CEO Elon Musk over comments he made online. The White House on Friday condemned what it called “abhorrent promotion of Antisemitic and racist hate” by Musk on his social media platform, X.

Starship system

Starship is both the tallest and most powerful rocket ever launched. Fully stacked on the Super Heavy booster, Starship stands 397 feet tall and is about 30 feet in diameter.
The Super Heavy booster, which stands 232 feet tall, is what begins the rocket’s journey to space. At its base are 33 Raptor engines, which together produce 16.7 million pounds of thrust – about double the 8.8 million pounds of thrust of NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, which launched for the first time late last year.
Starship itself, at 165 feet tall, has six Raptor engines – three for use while in the Earth’s atmosphere and three for operating in the vacuum of space.

The rocket is powered by liquid oxygen and liquid methane. The full system requires more than 10 million pounds of propellant for launch.
The Starship system is designed to be fully reusable and aims to become a new method of flying cargo and people beyond Earth. The rocket is also critical to NASA’s plan to return astronauts to the moon. SpaceX won a multibillion-dollar contract from the agency to use Starship as a crewed lunar lander as part of NASA’s Artemis moon program.
Musk previously said he expects the company to spend about $2 billion Starship development this year.

Goals for second flight

There were no people on board this attempt to reach space with Starship. The company’s leadership has previously emphasized that SpaceX expects to fly hundreds of Starship missions before the rocket launches with any crew.
SpaceX was looking to surpass the nearly 4-minute flight of the first launch, reach space with Saturday’s attempt and demonstrate that improvements to its ground infrastructure mitigate the damage caused by the debut attempt.
During the April launch, SpaceX lit only 30 of the 33 Raptor engines at the base of the Super Heavy booster. Other engines were lost mid-flight. Additionally, a communications problem led to an unexpected delay in triggering the rocket’s Autonomous Flight Termination System, which destroys the vehicle in the event it flies off course.
SpaceX introduced upgrades to the launch pad infrastructure as well as the design of the rocket itself for the second attempt. More

Airlines expect the most air travelers ever this holiday season.
Cheaper airfare than last year is providing some relief to consumers after prolonged inflation.
Thanksgiving will be a test to see how the aviation industry handles the year-end holidays while still managing strains.

Travelers wait in line to check in for their flights at a Delta Airlines ticket counter at Orlando International Airport during the busy Christmas holiday season on December 28, 2022 in Orlando, Florida.
Paul Hennessy | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images

Airlines expect record travel demand this Thanksgiving. Executives say they’re prepared for the hordes.
The Transportation Security Administration expects to screen 30 million passengers from Nov. 17 through Nov. 28, the most ever. The Sunday after Thanksgiving is expected to be the busiest day during that period with an estimated 2.9 million passengers taking to the skies.

“We are ready for the anticipated volumes and are working closely with our airline and airport partners to make sure we are prepared for this busy holiday travel season,” TSA Administrator David Pekoske said in a travel forecast earlier this week.
The year-end holidays are a crucial time for airlines to drum up revenue. Outside of peak holiday or other high-demand periods, carriers have turned to discounting fares or scaling back growth as consumers’ frenetic post-pandemic travel settles back to historical norms. Meanwhile, carriers are facing higher fuel and labor costs that have eaten into their profits.
But coveted travel days around the holidays can still command steep fares.
And Thanksgiving will be a test to see how the aviation industry handles the year-end holidays while still managing strains like a prolonged shortage of air traffic controllers.
The holiday period kicks off nearly a year after a winter storm triggered thousands of flight cancellations around Christmas. Carriers have spent months preparing to ensure that costly missteps don’t reoccur.

Weather readiness is particularly key for Southwest Airlines, which canceled 16,700 flights late last year and in early 2024 following severe winter weather, while other airlines recovered more quickly. The Dallas-based carrier has been spending on increasing aircraft de-icing capabilities and improving technology to better reschedule crews during flight disruptions.
“If your crew is on a three-day rotation and they don’t get out day 1, guess what, day 2, day 3 they’re not there,” Southwest Airlines Chief Operating Officer Andrew Watterson told reporters at the Skift Aviation Forum in Fort Worth, Texas, earlier this month. “An airline always has to keep moving. An airline stops moving, and bad things happen.”
Prep isn’t limited to Southwest.
“We start winter readiness in the summer,” said United Airlines Chief Customer Officer Linda Jojo. “We have some of our first meetings when thermometers are at their highest.”
United has also been upgrading a series of self-service tools in its mobile app to help customers rebook themselves during flight disruptions, as well as real-time flight information. The carrier last month also launched a new boarding order in economy — window seat, middle, then aisle — that Jojo said will shave about two minutes off of enplaning.
Those extra two minutes “just helps that flight and the next flight and the next flight,” she said.

More flights, (some) better fares

The Federal Aviation Administration expects Thanksgiving flights to peak at 49,606 on the Wednesday before the holiday, up from the holiday peak last year of 48,192. (The busiest day of 2023 so far was June 29 with nearly 53,000 flights.)
Delta Air Lines said it alone expects to carry between 6.2 million and 6.4 million passengers from Nov. 17 to Nov. 28, compared with 5.7 million last year and 6.25 million in 2019.
United expects to fly 5.9 million passengers from Nov. 17 to Nov. 29, up 13% from last year and 5% more than 2019, and American Airlines expects to fly a record 7.8 million travelers from Nov. 16 to Nov. 28, up from 7 million last year and beating out 2019 by roughly 200,000 passengers.
Many fares ahead of Thanksgiving were lower than last year as airlines increased service in recent months, a relief for many consumers who have been facing higher interest rates and inflation.
Thanksgiving flight deals are averaging $248 for domestic round trips according to flight-tracking site Hopper, down from $271 last year and $276 in 2019, months before the Covid-19 pandemic began.
Overall, airfare was down more than 13% in the latest U.S. inflation report, according to the Department of Labor. More

Investment firm JAT Capital wants the board of the new Bed Bath & Beyond to answer its questions and be more transparent.
The firm, which has a 9.6% stake in the company, accused Beyond of twisting the facts about former CEO Jonathan Johnson’s ouster.
“I have never seen such poor behavior by a Board in my career,” JAT’s founder John Thaler wrote in an open letter.

Signage is displayed outside a permanently closed Bed Bath & Beyond retail store in Hawthorne, California, on May 1, 2023. 
Patrick T. Fallon | AFP | Getty Images

Investment firm JAT Capital sent a scathing letter to the board of the new Bed Bath & Beyond on Friday saying it has refused to answer questions from shareholders and is engaging in what the investment firm called unprecedented “poor behavior.” 
The firm, which has a 9.6% stake in the company and claims it is not an activist fund, excoriated the board for a series of misdeeds, including canceling planned investor conferences and twisting the facts about former CEO Jonathan Johnson’s ouster.

“We have attempted to engage constructively with investor relations, senior management and the Board of Directors in recent months, making suggestions of best practices that might preserve and enhance value, and more recently pointing out actions taken by management and the board that appear to be destroying shareholder value,” the letter, penned by JAT’s founder John Thaler, states. 
“We have taken the more active posture with Beyond because, quite frankly, I have never seen such poor behavior by a Board in my career. The things that I have heard, the things that have been spoken directly to me, and the actions I have witnessed are in a category that I have never seen.” 
Beyond was previously known as Overstock.com, which bought Bed Bath out of bankruptcy and rebranded. Prior to its rebrand, Beyond had been grappling with sluggish sales and a dwindling market cap. After its first quarter as the new Bed Bath, results were mixed with steep declines in sales and profits. 
The company didn’t return a request for comment.
Earlier this month, JAT called on Beyond to fire Johnson. Days later, the company announced he was stepping down.

In its letter, dated Friday, JAT questioned why Johnson’s board seat was removed after his ouster and said it was an attempt to weaken “shareholders ability to have a say.” The firm also accused the board of being disingenuous about Johnson’s decision to leave the company and said bluntly that he’d been “fired.”
“Rather than terminating Johnson and publicly saying so (a statement that would have been well received by everyone involved), the Board decided to craft a press release along with Jonathan suggesting that he had stepped down, and even making the ludicrous statement that he and the Board had jointly concluded that ‘now was the ideal time’ for a leadership transition,” the missive reads.
“Now is the ideal time? In the middle of a company re‐branding effort, just as the company embarks on a $150 million marketing campaign? And that coincidentally coincides with shareholders calling for Johnson’s removal? Writing a press release that twists the facts and makes disingenuous characterizations of the situation … furthers the perception that the Board is engaged in self‐preservation and inside dealing.”
Meanwhile JAT has called for Marcus Lemonis, the Camping World CEO and TV personality who starred in CNBC’s “The Profit,” to take over management of the company. He joined the Overstock board last month and has cheered its transition to Beyond Inc. 
JAT renewed those calls in Friday’s letter and accused the board of being “suspicious” of Lemonis, pushing him to the sidelines and refusing his expertise. 
“In one of the few instances where I have been able to engage with a member of the Board on the subject of why Marcus Lemonis wasn’t being permitted to help manage the business, [chair of the board] Allison Abraham acknowledged to me that she (and others) were worried that ‘Marcus has a secret nefarious plot,'” the letter states. “She has allegedly repeated this same concern to the interim CEO Dave Nielsen. When pressed on what that ‘nefarious plot’ might be, she acknowledges that she doesn’t know.” 
Lemonis didn’t return a request for comment.
JAT called on Beyond’s board to answer its questions, once and for all, and for everyone from vendors to sell-side analysts to demand more transparency.
“It is my strong desire that the Board be forced to explain what it is doing. This is not an unreasonable ask. The actions cited below which the Board has taken in the last 60 days appear to be to the detriment of the company and shareholders,” the letter states. “This Board has refused to explain why they have made these decisions.”
Read the full letter below: More

Disney CEO Bob Iger acknowledged last week that Disney’s films since the end of the pandemic haven’t met his quality standards.
Disney hasn’t reported positive operating income in its “Content Sales/Licensing and Other” business unit, which includes theatrical, since the quarter that ended April 2, 2022.
In 2024, Disney will release Marvel’s “Deadpool 3,” Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” and “Mufasa: The Lion King.”

Bob Iger, Disney, at Apple program
Source: Apple

It’s rare for Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger to acknowledge his company has had creative missteps. So when he does, it’s probably wise to pay attention.
“As I’ve looked at our overall output, meaning the studio, it’s clear that the pandemic created a lot of challenges creatively for everybody, including for us,” Iger said last week during Disney’s earnings conference call. “I’ve always felt that quantity can be actually a negative when it comes to quality, and I think that’s exactly what happened, we lost some focus.”

Iger followed his comments with a new mandate: Disney will be making fewer films. It’s a similar strategy to one Iger took when he first became Disney CEO in 2005. At the time, Disney’s animation and live-action studio divisions had struggled with a string of failed movies, including including “The Alamo,” and “Home on the Range” and “Pooh’s Heffalump Movie.”
Iger’s solution then was to cut 650 studio jobs and slash its annual movie production output in half, releasing only about a dozen films each year. He also acquired Pixar, giving Disney an immediate infusion of quality movies and a brand of storytelling that rubbed off on Disney’s traditional animation studio.
Iger appears to be re-running the playbook for 2024. After flooding Disney+ with movies and other new content for several years, Iger is strategically cutting back to accelerate free cash flow generation and profitability. Disney eliminated animation jobs in June — the first significant cuts in about a decade — as part of a larger round of job reductions. After releasing four Marvel Cinematic Universe movies in 2021 and three in 2022 and 2023, Disney will have just one in 2024 — “Deadpool 3.” There hasn’t been a Star Wars movie since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.”
In 2006, acquiring Pixar quickly improved Disney’s film quality and box office results. The animators’ blend of technology and storytelling rubbed off on Disney’s traditional animation unit, eventually leading to hits including “Frozen” and “Zooptopia.” This time, Disney will need to improve organically, putting pressure on Iger and studio head Alan Bergman to show results as activist shareholders Trian Partners and ValueAct threaten to pressure management and the board.
“I feel good about the direction we’re headed, but I’m mindful of the fact that our performance from a quality perspective wasn’t really up to the standards that we set for ourselves,” Iger said last week. “And so working with the talented team at the studio, we’re looking to and working to consolidate, meaning make less, focus more on quality. We’re all rolling up our sleeves, including myself, to do just that.”

Iger noted the Disney animation studio’s next release, “Wish,” which stars Ariana DeBose and debuts in theaters on Wednesday, could begin a run of sustainable hits for Disney. Early ticket sales suggest “Wish” is tracking at $55 million for the Wednesday to Sunday period including Thanksgiving. That trails previous Thanksgiving openers from Disney movies including “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Coco,” “The Good Dinosaur” and “Tangled” but is higher than the $18.9 million brought in from “Strange World” last year and the $40.6 million from “Encanto” in 2021, according to data from Comscore.

Disney’s box office blunders

In 2024, Disney will release Marvel’s “Deadpool 3,” Pixar’s “Inside Out 2,” and “Mufasa: The Lion King,” the prequel to 2019 remake of “The Lion King.” All three have blockbuster pedigree, based on the box office performances of their earlier films. “Deadpool 2” earned $785 million in global box office. “Inside Out” earned $859 million. “The Lion King” took in $1.6 billion in 2019, overtaking Disney’s “Frozen” to become the highest-grossing animated film ever – if you consider the computer-generated animals as animation.
Still, there’s no denying the studio has struggled in recent years. Other than last year’s “Avatar: The Way of Water,” acquired as part of Disney’s $71 billion deal for the majority of 21st Century Fox, Disney hasn’t had a movie gross $1 billion since the last Star Wars movie in 2019. Sony produced and distributed “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which made $1.9 billion, although Disney’s Marvel Studios did serve as a co-producer.
For context, among 2019 releases, Disney had seven of the nine movies that grossed more than $1 billion globally.

Movies that topped $1 billion at the global box office (2020-23)

1. Avatar: The Way of Water: $2.3 billion (Disney, 2022)
2. Spider-Man: No Way Home: $1.9 billion (Sony, 2021)
3. Top Gun: Maverick: $1.5 billion (Paramount, 2022)
4. Barbie: $1.4 billion (Warner Bros., 2023)
5. The Super Mario Bros. Movie: $1.3 billion (Universal, 2023)
6. Jurassic World: Dominion: $1 billion (Universal, 2022)
Source: The Numbers

While “Elemental” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” were successful theatrically, Disney’s recent track box office record has filled with misses. “Lightyear” and “Strange World” were duds in 2022. This year, “The Haunted Mansion” and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” have bombed for Disney. “The Marvels,” after the worst opening weekend for a Marvel Cinematic Universe movie, is on its way to being a major disappointment. “The Little Mermaid” and “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” failed to meet analyst expectations for ticket sales.
“We’re proud of the box office successes we’ve had over the past couple of years, but there have been certain titles that haven’t lived up to our own high expectations,” Bergman told CNBC. “We’ve reduced the quantity of our output and are incredibly focused on the quality of our upcoming slate and it is incumbent upon us to execute as we move forward. I believe we’re in a strong position for the future given our world-class brands, filmmakers, talent and creative teams.”
Disney houses its studio business in a division it calls “Content Sales/Licensing and Other.” This incudes Disney’s theatrical business along with home entertainment and selling film and TV content to other third-party TV and subscription streaming services.
In its most recent fiscal fourth quarter, Disney reported an operating income loss in that division of $149 million, which it attributed to “the performance of ‘The Haunted Mansion.'” In its fiscal third quarter, Disney claimed a “Content Sales/Licensing and Other” operating loss of $243 million. A quarter before that, Disney lost $50 million, and $98 million in the quarter prior.
The last time Disney reported an operating income gain in “Content Sales/Licensing and Other” was its second fiscal quarter of 2022 — an earnings report delivered in May of that year, when Iger wasn’t at the company and Bob Chapek was CEO. In that quarter, Disney reported operating income of $16 million, down 95% from a year earlier.
“At the time the pandemic hit, we were leaning into a huge increase in how much we were making,” Iger said. “Returning the studio to basically the level of success that we became used to before the pandemic [is] one of the the building blocks of the company.”

Alan Bergman’s future

Alan Bergman, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, at the D23 Expo, Sept. 10, 2022. Bergman lost some decision-making power under Chapek.
The Walt Disney Company via Getty Images

Disney is holding a town hall on Nov. 28 with Iger and his four division heads — Co-Chairs of Disney entertainment Bergman and Dana Walden, Parks and Experiences head Josh D’Amaro, and ESPN boss Jimmy Pitaro. The quartet under Iger are the four most likely people to ultimately succeed him as CEO. Disney has targeted early 2025 as a likely time to name someone as Iger’s heir apparent, CNBC reported earlier this year.
With Iger shifting Disney’s focus from quantity to quality, the pressure will be on Bergman to ensure Disney pumps out movies worthy of the company’s esteemed brand. Bergman has served in senior leadership roles in the studios division since 2001 but isn’t a creative executive by background, having started as the unit’s chief financial officer. He frequently clashed with Chapek and then-head of Disney’s media and entertainment division, Kareem Daniel, over the company’s decision to strip budget power from studio executives – a decision Iger reversed earlier this year.
Bergman built a solid track record of hits through his years as the division’s president, including “Avengers: Endgame,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Frozen,” “Frozen 2” and “Toy Story 4.” He will continue to rely on many of the same creative leaders that have produced those hits, including Marvel’s Kevin Feige, LucasFilm’s Kathleen Kennedy, Walt Disney Animation Studios creative chief Jennifer Lee and Pixar’s Pete Docter.
Still, Alan Horn, formerly chairman of Walt Disney Studios, departed in 2020 — coinciding with Disney’s slump.
If Disney’s shift away from quantity toward quality doesn’t deliver stronger box office numbers, Iger may start facing investor and collaborator pressure to make leadership changes.
That could put Bergman on the hot seat.
–CNBC’s Sarah Whitten contributed to this article.
Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of Universal Pictures and CNBC. More