Now the former CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger's legacy will undoubtedly be the consolidation of some of the world's most popular intellectual properties. Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars...he went after them as if they were Infinity Stones. And they might as well have been, considering how powerful they've made the mouse-eared media conglomerate.
The transition from Iger to new CEO Bob Chapek comes at a time that was already pretty transitional for most of that IP. Pixar has taken a break from branching out its most beloved franchises, at least for now, in favor of original plots and characters like Onward. Marvel Studios just successfully wrapped the most ambitious decade-long cinematic endeavor of all time and is choosing to put resources in limited-run TV series. On the heels of the mixed success that was The Rise of Skywalker, the supposed final chapter in the Skywalker Saga, Star Wars is headed in a new direction as well. But the promotion of Chapek, from the chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products to CEO, could signal a change for Lucasfilm in particular.
Iger notoriously halted the production of several planned spin-off movies after the disappointing critical reception and box office performance of Solo: A Star Wars Story. Later, he'd tell investors that, "the priority in the next few years is television," and that when it came to Star Wars, "less is more." The assumption seems to have been that there was simply a glut of Star Wars content, too soon after there had been a drought. Iger's solution was to move anything that could be thought of like a spin-off to the corporation's burgeoning streaming platform, Disney+.
Chapek, however, is from the world of theme parks and merchandising. If you thought Twitter wars over The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker were bad, his is a business that's in a constant high-stakes feedback loop with its customers. Try fielding complaints from families who paid five grand only to miss out on a boarding group for Rise of the Resistance. Where Iger may have thought of his impressive collection of IP as precious, Chapek is more likely to -- and probably better equipped to -- give the people what they want.
Chapek oversaw a huge increase in the amount of Star Wars-branded products. He took the franchise from action figures and t-shirts to near omnipresence in often unexpected markets. But he's better known for giving fans immersive Star Wars related experiences. Should you be so inclined, you can now embark on a seven day Star Wars-themed Disney cruise through the Caribbean. But the most notable of these is, of course, the expansion of Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge in both Disneyland and Walt Disney World, where you can build a lightsaber with a 'real' kyber crystal, take home your own custom droid, order blue milk from a cantina and pilot the Millennium Falcon. Chapek envisioned a galaxy here on Earth where storytelling and fandom could be taken to their logical and most extreme (not to mention, expensive) conclusion.
In that way, Iger and Chapek are two different kinds of fanboys. Iger seems perhaps more inclined to keep Star Wars arranged neatly on high shelves, still in the original packaging. Chapek seems the type to rip the packages open and play. He's indicated that he will "continue to embrace [the] same strategic pillars going forward" as works with Iger (who will serve as Executive Director through 2021) to carry out immediate plans. But Chapek has also talked about preparing Disney -- and by extension, Star Wars -- for the disruptions that so affected the media landscape of the past fifteen or so years. One has to wonder what he imagines those disruptions to be, and how new Star Wars media, products and experiences will be shaped around them.
Fans probably shouldn't expect outright reversals anytime soon. The Obi-Wan Kenobi spin-off movie is now a Disney+ series in pre-production, for example, and that's unlikely to change, even though production was recently put on hold. But it could become, say, a feature-length straight-to-streaming movie, or part of a larger experiential vision. Chapek sees himself as being "consumer focused" and is especially invested in direct-to-consumer projects. Disney+ should shape up to be a good fit for his leadership. The unveiling of Project Luminous as a Star Wars: The High Republic publishing campaign is also ripe for Chapek's more-is-more approach.
All fans can hope is that the lesson Chapek will take away from Disney's stewardship thus far isn't that they need less Star Wars, but the right amount delivered in the right way; content that's in a constant dance between giving the consumers what they want and knowing better than them what that is. Not every new Star Wars product has been a winner, and the rollout of Galaxy's Edge hasn't been perfect. But if his time developing products and theme parks is any indication, the new CEO seems to play a little faster and looser than his predecessor, both creatively and strategically. Most promising of all, he seems able to translate fan service into good customer service.