Multi/Investors' Day 2023

Bob Chapek - CEO, The Walt Disney Company: "Transforming from a single animated cartoon studio creating a little fellow named Mickey, into a family of multiple media and entertainment brands - thanks in large part to the success of a movie called Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. That's how The Walt Disney Company that exists today has come to be. But, this isn’t the end of the line. Changes for the company are just beginning, as consumers find new ways to experience the content they love. From movies, to theme parks, to TV, to video gaming, to the web. Walt Disney once said that we keep moving forward because we're curious. And curiousity leads to new things. That's especially true today."

(...)

Bob Chapek: "Thanks, Kevin. All right, so I hope that that gives you a sense of some of the great content that we’re working on that we hope you'll be excited for. A lot of what we’ve shown today isn’t going to be seen in the next year or two. Some of this is still a long way off. But this is some of the most exciting stuff that I’ve ever seen coming from our company, and I’m just incredibly energized to be on this journey with all of you. And there’s one more thing that I want to tell you about today.

I believe the multiple brands that are now part of our family - which we now dub the "multiverse" - show we're more than just the Disney brand, and it’s the next chapter for our company too. So I’ve been thinking a lot about what this means for our company and who we are as we embark on this journey. We’re a company that focuses on entertaining people from arond the world. While most other media and entertainment companies focus on how people consume and create, we focus on creating content so people can be immersed with the stories told. One of the reasons Walt and Roy Disney started this great company was they wanted a place where one's imagination could come to life. Today, we are seen as a media conglomerate, but in our DNA, we are a company that creates content that connects with people. And our acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and the assets of 21st Century Fox were just the beginning.

Walt and Roy founded the company in a specific time and place, a garage in Garden Grove, California - near the cinema capital of the world, Los Angeles - in 1923. It was what they could build at the time to create wonderful innovations in the art of animation. But we've become more than just animation over the past century. I remember visiting Disneyland as a young child, and was mezmerazed by many of the attractions there. Little did I know that not only would I end up working here, but it would grow as big as it has.

Today is our 100th anniversary, and people think that since we're still named after our visionary co-founder, Disney's just Mickey Mouse, fairy tales, animation, and theme parks. The brands, franchises, experiences, and products that have become part of the Disney family over the years shows we're more than just that - as does the ever-evolving ways our content is consumed and created. Walt Disney believed in the idea of progress, and that the future of content will also mean an advancement of technology. And boy has that prediction come true in more ways than one.

I know content providers aren't perfect. Every chapter means new voices and new ideas, and yes, there will be challenges and risks and disruption of established interests, but there will also be opportunities and benefits that we can’t even imagine yet; for connection, for creation, for learning and joy. We’ll all need to work together from the beginning to bring the best possible version of this future to life, a future similar to one featured in the classic Magic Kingdom attraction, Carousel of Progress.

I’ve been thinking a lot about our identity as we begin this next chapter. Disney is one of the most well known family entertainment brands in the history of the world. It is an iconic content brand, but increasingly it just doesn’t encompass everything that we do. ABC, ESPN, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, now 20th Century Studios, FX and more; building our multiverse will always be an important focus for us, but right now our brand is so tightly linked to one brand name that it can’t possibly represent everything that we’re doing today, let alone in the future. Over time, I hope that we are seen as more than just the Disney name, and I want to anchor our work and our identity on what we are building towards.

So, in honor of our centennial, we are making a fundamental change to our company. We already mentioned that we have become a multiverse; a massive family of brands, not just the Disney brand. And as part of this, it is time for us to adopt a new company brand to encompass everything that we do. To reflect who we are and what we hope to build, I am proud to announce that starting today, The Walt Disney Company is now Multi. Our mission remains the same, still about quality content. Our divisions, subsidiaries, and their brands and franchises, they’re not changing either. And we are still the company that designs our content for audiences all over the world. But now we have a new north star to help bring all of our brands together, and we have a new name that reflects the full breadth of what we do and continues Walt's dream.

From now on, we’re going to be multiverse first, not Disney first. However, you can still use Disney+ for family-frendly content from the Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, and National Geographic brands; while on Hulu, great adult fare from ABC, FX, and 20th Century Studios is waiting for you. For you sports buffs out there, we have our ESPN+ service for live sports on demand. And as our new brand starts showing up in our products, I hope that people come to know the Multi corporate branding and the future that we stand for. I used to love using the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a kid, and the word multi means having several parts. For me, it symbolizes that there is always more parts to use. There’s always a next chapter to the story. And for us, that’s a story that started in a garage near LA and grew beyond anything we could imagine, into a family of studios, brands, franchises, and characters that have become recognizable to people all over the world in more ways than one.

I’m sure Walt would be proud of what we’ve built so far and excited about what comes next as we move beyond what’s possible today. Well, as the Mouseketeers once said, now it's time to say goodbye. Thank you for your time today, and we hope you will enjoy our content for years to come."