Disney CEO lays out early plan for digital future

Bob Chapek, chief govt of Walt Disney Co, speaks on the 2022 Disney Legends Awards throughout Disney’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, California, U.S. September 9, 2022. REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni/File Picture

Sept 11 (Reuters) – Walt Disney Co (DIS.N) on Sunday sketched the contours of a plan for a way the leisure, theme parks and shopper merchandise conglomerate will use know-how to reinforce storytelling for the following 100 years.

Talking backstage on the firm’s biennial D23 Expo fan conference with Reuters, Chief Govt Bob Chapek took nice pains to keep away from what he known as the “M-word,” or metaverse, regardless of pushing the corporate in that path final 12 months.

Chapek described Disney’s imaginative and prescient for the metaverse as “next-generation storytelling.” He needs to make use of knowledge gleaned from theme park visits and shoppers’ streaming habits to ship customized leisure experiences, together with from the corporate’s Marvel and Lucasfilm studios.

“Disney is completely a life-style,” he informed Reuters on Sunday in an interview on the conference in Anaheim, Calif. “The query is, how is our next-gen storytelling leveraging what we find out about a visitor uniquely on this Disney way of life, then serving up distinctive experiences.”

Leisure and know-how corporations rushed to safe a place within the metaverse after Meta Platforms Inc (META.O) CEO Mark Zuckerberg introduced the way forward for his firm could be dedicated to creating a sturdy, three-dimensional, persisitent setting the place customers’ digital avatars would work, hang around and pursue their hobbies.

Effectively forward of Meta’s announcement, Chapek, who oversaw the parks division earlier than taking excessive job in 2020, has spent years getting ready how one can lengthen the theme park expertise to individuals who won’t ever go to one of many firm’s six theme parks globally.

Disney began laying the groundwork in earnest to discover new types of storytelling over the previous 12 months, because it appointed veteran media and tech govt, Mike White, to supervise the newly created Subsequent Technology Storytelling and Shopper Experiences unit.

White has been charged with assembling the technological toolkit for Disney’s artistic executives to make use of.

He has additionally been brainstorming concepts for utilizing augmented actuality and different applied sciences to deliver a brand new dimension to storytelling. Chapek cited one early instance – an eight-minute augmented actuality movie that premiered this week on Disney+.

“This might be an actual massive catalyst for what is going on to indicate up there and, , 5 to 10 years,” stated Chapek.

Reporting by Daybreak Chmielewski in Anaheim; modifying by Kenneth Li and Stephen Coates

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