Dana Walden, Disney’s President & Chief Creative Officer (CCO), recently shared her thoughts about Jimmy Kimmel, live-action Moana, and more during Bloomberg’s Screentime.
Dana Walden at Bloomberg’s Screentime
When asked if the late-night show host Jimmy Kimmel will return to ABC next year, Dana Walden said that she’s working on it.
“It’s a very challenging daypart, late-night,” Walden said during her Thursday morning conversation at Bloomberg’s Screentime. “That’s not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they’re up relative to a smaller audience that’s watching late night on broadcast television.”
She notes that millions of people are watching Kimmel on YouTube, which may not be the most lucrative opportunity for the talk show. There’s a balance between making sense of the business while also honoring Kimmel’s closeness with Disney. “What does Jimmy want? What’s the right thing to do, and what’s the right thing for our business?”
Jimmy Kimmel has found himself in hot water several times over the past year. He was temporary suspended last year after a comment he made regarding the killing of Charlie Kirk. After receiving backlash to the decision, ABC put Kimmel back on the air less than a week later. TV groups Nexstar and Sinclair agreed to stop preempting the show a few days later.
Amid the controversy, Disney’s investors demanded records to understand the reasoning behind the suspension decision. Disney ultimately extended their deal with Jimmy Kimmel through 2027.
This year, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced they were going to review Disney’s ABC licenses two years early. Though the FCC said it was related to its investigation of Disney’s DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) initiatives, the early renewal order came one day after President Donald Trump called for the firing of late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over his “widow” Melania Trump joke. A group of former FCC officials spoke out later, calling the early license review “an assault on free speech.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Walden discussed the poor box office performance of the live-action Moana film, which released in theaters in July 2026. She blamed the outcome on the film’s proximity to the animated Moana 2, which came out in November 2024.
“It’s so competitive right now that you have to have … the right film at the right time, with audiences feeling a certain degree of demand. I would say our live-action ‘Moana,’ which is excellent, I think it was hurt by the proximity to our second animated version of ‘Moana,’ which came together under unusual circumstances, but premiered about 18 months before this one. So perhaps there was not enough time to create a lot of pent-up demand for another film.”
The live-action Moana opened with only $18 million, when it was predicted to make $85 million on its opening weekend. The film may end up losing over $100 million and has not received a high Rotten Tomatoes score.
Another likely factor to Moana‘s failure to thrive was due to releasing right around the same time as Toy Story 5, which crossed over $1 billion at the box office, becoming one of Disney’s strongest film releases of the year.
Walden also addressed the recent Disney layoffs, which affected a few hundred employees largely in the tech and HR departments. The cuts marked the third round of layoffs this year. When Josh D’Amaro succeeded Bob Iger as CEO, over 1,000 employees were laid off in April. Then, hundreds of Pixar, ESPN, and National Geographic employees were laid off in July.
Walden said, “I think, like all of our similarly situated competitors, and certainly all of our competitors in the tech industry, there is a need to constantly evaluate how you’re structured. You know what? How big is the organization?” She later added, “This past round was a voluntary retirement program, which was extremely generous and gave a number of our long-tenured executives agency and the opportunity to make their own decisions around whether the timing was right to leave or to stay, knowing that this evolution will never stop, technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive and thrive and grow, and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Do you agree with Walden? Let us know on social media.
For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow WDW News Today on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
The post Disney President Dana Walden Blames Live-Action ‘Moana’ Box Office Flop on ‘Moana 2’, Talks Jimmy Kimmel & Layoffs appeared first on WDW News Today.
