According to The Hollywood Reporter, Bob Chapek’s metaverse dream is officially over.
What’s Happening:
- The entertainment giant ended Bob Chapek’s metaverse dream as part of Monday’s layoffs.
- These layoffs were the first round of cuts from CEO Bob Iger as he seeks to streamline the entertainment giant.
- The division had been part of a project by Disney’s former CEO Bob Chapek.
- This was first mentioned in a earnings call in November 2021, stating “our efforts to date are merely a prologue to a time when we’ll be able to connect the physical and digital worlds even more closely, allowing for storytelling without boundaries in our own Disney metaverse, and we look forward to creating unparalleled opportunities for consumers to experience everything Disney has to offer across our products and platforms, wherever the consumer may be.”
- “Since Steamboat Willie, we have been the world’s foremost innovative storytellers,” Chapek wrote at the time. “That must continue as technology evolves, giving our creative teams new canvases like the metaverse on which to paint.”
- It was unclear exactly what they were working on to create the division.
- In his final appearance as Disney CEO, he said the division was building “a set of tools.”
- The goal, he said, was to “put these tools in the hands of the Kathy Kennedys and the Kevin Feiges and Dana Waldens and help them really create that next level of storytelling that is unique to you.”