There are a couple of indications this week that Disney has had enough of the culture wars and will be taking it down a notch. First up, a report today about something said by CEO Bob Iger:

Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger told investors the company will “quiet the noise” in a culture war that has pitted social conservatives against the global media and entertainment conglomerate, according to an analyst note on Wednesday.

Iger’s brief statement, included in an analyst report from Needham media analyst Laura Martin, was part of an investors’ presentation on Tuesday at Walt Disney World Resort in Orlando, Florida…

I can’t move on without noting this truly terrible sentence from the same story. This is supposed to give readers the backstory:

The entertainment company was thrust at the center of the nation’s culture wars in 2022, when it publicly criticized Florida legislation restricting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity.

Notice that the phrasing of this sentence doesn’t really make sense. Disney “was thrust” into the culture wars “when it publicly criticized” Florida’s Parental Rights bill. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say Disney thrust itself into the debate? No one forced them to do this. Also, the author describes the law as “restricting classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity” which is both false and misleading. What the law actually restricts is “classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties” on these topics in grades K-3. Would it have killed the author to point out this was aimed at insulating very young children, ages 5-8, from lectures on gender identity? Somehow that always gets left out and I think we all know why.

Moving on, in the same Tuesday presentation from Iger, he also announced Disney would be investing a lot more money in its theme parks.

Last month, when Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive officer, singled out the parks division as “a key growth engine” on an earnings-related conference call, Wall Street furrowed its brow. Disneyland in Anaheim, Calif., has long been viewed as maxed out, with little room to expand. Walt Disney World near Orlando, Fla., has become a question mark, given that Mr. Iger has said the company’s legal battle with Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, could imperil $17 billion in planned expansion at the resort over the next decade…

On Tuesday, Disney offered a clearer picture of the opportunity it sees, which can only be described as colossal: The company disclosed in a security filing that it planned to spend roughly $60 billion over the next decade to expand its domestic and international parks and to continue building Disney Cruise Line. That amount is double what Disney spent on parks and the cruise line over the past decade, which was itself a period of greatly increased investment.

It’s not clear how much of that $60 billion is going to be invested in Florida but probably quite a bit. Disneyland in California is not actually built out, at least not if Disney’s plans for expansion are given an okay by the city of Anaheim. But as Disney itself bragged yesterday, Disney World is “twice the size of the island of Manhattan.”

So contrary to some progressives who were hoping Disney would literally shut down Disney World and move it to another state, it seems they are going to invest billions more in the Florida theme park. And in order to do that, they are going to tone down the volume of their culture war commentary. And Disney has plenty of reasons for doing so:

Disney is expanding the investment after a stretch of trouble in almost all its divisions. Cable television, including ESPN, has become a shadow of its former self, the result of cord cutting, advertising weakness and rising sports programming costs. Disney had a disappointing summer at the box office, with movies like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Haunted Mansion” selling sharply fewer tickets than anticipated. The company’s Disney+ streaming service continues to lose money; Mr. Iger has said it will be profitable by fall 2024, but some investors are skeptical.

In contrast, Disney’s parks and cruise business has been a bright spot, in many ways propping up the whole company. In the most recent quarter, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products generated $2.4 billion in operating income, an 11 percent increase from a year earlier. Disney Media and Entertainment Distribution had $1.1 billion in operating profit, an 18 percent decline.

Simply put, the them parks are the only part of the business that is doing well right now. They can’t afford to spoil that. Now, long term, I don’t imagine this will make the company one iota less woke than it currently is. But I do think, with the company’s future riding on the parks, Disney is smart enough to dial back its public outrage.