Disney CEO Bob Iger has warned that the entertainment giant may have to pull out of filming future movies in the state of Georgia, due to a proposed abortion law.
Iger interviewed with Reuters, just before the dedication for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, to explain that continuing filming in the Peach State might be “very difficult to do so” should the law pass and go into effect in January 2020.
“I rather doubt we will,” said Iger when asked about Disney’s continued presence filming popular movies such as Avengers: Endgame and Black Panther in Georgia. “I think many people who work for us will not want to work there, and we will have to heed their wishes in that regard. Right now we are watching it very carefully.”
Georgia governor Brian Kemp signed the law on May 7, which would ban abortion from as early as six weeks into pregnancy. “I don’t see how it’s practical for us to continue to shoot there,” Iger continued.
Georgia has been a popular filming location in recent years as the state offers a tax credit to production companies in an effort to incentivize the industry to move out east. The industry currently accounts for 92,000 jobs in Georgia alone, meaning Disney’s removal would cause a huge blow to Georgia’s local job market. According to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), 455 productions were filmed in Georgia just in 2018 alone.
Some actors and producers have already boycotted working in Georgia in protest of the proposed law.
Oh boohoo, you dont like something, the reason they film in Georga is because of Californias high tax rate, so.they film somewhere that had lower taxes…..its proven, low tax states normally lean right, so my subjection is for the all those people crying about Georga maybe they sho6cry about high taxes in California. And move back there….
Why are so many people down voting this? The reason the companies are filming there is the lower tax credits? They only came there for that. They don’t care about the people or the local community.
I basically wrote the same thing before I read your comment. 100% correct.
Iger Disney has no business in the abortion issue
Hey Iger, protecting life is more important than your films. There is no need to kowtow to abortionists.
I love Disney’s films……..But I agree human life is more important. I would hate to give up my support of the company but would do so. In this day and age there is no excuse for unwanted pregnancies other than in the case of rape or incest. Abortion should therefore be a rare option. A child is a gift from God that will enhance your life . I suggest you consider your support base when weighing in on th[s issue .
I think preventing innocent humans from being killed is more important that whether movies are filmed in your state. Bravo to the leaders in Georgia for making a stand on this important issue, despite the blackmail attempts.
There’s no ‘blackmail’ going on. This isn’t about innocent ‘humans’.
It’s about basic human rights and Georgia going against federal law.
I’m glad Disney is helping push back against this stupidity.
So you are one of those non-science people who don’t believe the life inside a human is another human. smh I believe the right to life is a basic human right btw.
It’s not a law. It was legislated from the bench. If you want abortion to be legal…pass a Constitutional Amendment. But you won’t try because you know it will never get passed needing 2/3 of the states to approve it.
disney should be the last ones to care about morals! they have none,look at all the drinking they are promoting in there parks! they should keep there noses out of politics!
So Disney is for killing us future customers.
Good. The only way to stop this is with our wallets. (And I’m saying that as someone who lives in Alabama and is trying to leave. )
I assume they will still accept our (Georgians’) money at the box office and turnstiles.
You would think people would have a natural inclination to support saving the lives of babies rather than killing them.
I’m very glad Disney is taking a stand against people who want to punish women and enact cruel laws.
This isn’t politics. It’s about women’s lives, including the lives of the women who work on Disney productions.
It’s cruel to kill a human life? The bill specifically states that once a heartbeat is detected, most abortions are off the table. And a heartbeat equals life. And, unlike Alabama, it still provides abortions in the case of rape or saving a life. Furthermore, providing abortions goes against the entire medical code of ethics. The Hippocratic Oath specifically says to do no harm. And even if the fetus doesn’t have a heartbeat yet, it’s been proven that women who really want an abortion have suffered emotional and mental distress afterwards, which is another form of harm.
Your argument is that women should be forced to have children against their will. That women have no control over their bodies once they are pregnant. That is cruelty, yes, and exactly why corporations like Disney should avoid doing business in states that deny women human rights. (By the way, that’s not how the Hippocratic Oath or the medical code of ethics work.)
No one is “forcing women to have children”… becoming pregnant, except in the case of rape, is the result of a choice a woman already made. No one is tying women down and inseminating them against their will, so just stop spreading that lie. What people are saying is that women should live up to the responsibilities that occur as a result of their choices, rather than murdering an innocent child in order to avoid the consequences of their actions.
Once shes pregnant SHE HAS TECHNICALLY ALREADY HAS THE CHILD’ ITS CALLED CONCEPTION. ESPECIALLY WHEN THERE IS A HEARTBEAT! Disney WITH ITS PROMOTING DARTH VADER SOOO MUCH AND NOT MUCH YODA AND GOOD GUYS REALLY HAS GONE TO THE DARK SIDE. Walt WOULD BE ASHAMED OF WHAT Disney HAS BECOME!!!
In humans, the natural ratio between males and females at birth is slightly biased towards the male sex, being estimated to be about 1.05 or 1.06 males/per female born. If there are 108,000 males and 100,000 females the ratio of males to females is 1.080 and the proportion of males is 51.9%. So one could estimate roughly half the babies aborted are female. If you want to talk of women’s “rights,” shouldn’t you include the ones still in the womb? You are snuffing out their voices before they even can speak. I think everyone has a right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and that should include the yet to be born!
What about the “life” of the young “woman” inside that is murdered. Fact: only 1.3% is for rape or incest All other abortions are connected to Greed! Cant afford it, not a good time, etc….
It’s sad that he can’t separate politics from business. What does an abortion bill that might not even take effect (as it’s voted on in January) have to do with the art of filmmaking? Nothing, that’s what. Heck, the CEO of Disney isn’t even a woman so he shouldn’t even have any personal stake in what happens.
I am a fan of Disney and frequent visitor to tje parks. What drew me to Disney and my love of the parks was its devotion to family and children.
Disney always has been tolerant of different cultures, religions, lifestyles etc.
However, the hypocrisy is as clear as Pinnochio’s lying nose.
Finally states with their constituants leading the way are standing up to the heinous evil act of aborting/killing an unborn child. Most abortions are actually not for the protectionof the life of the mother, or rape or incest. Most are of a man and women acting irresponsibility and killing the fetus for their convenience. They say the child will suffer so they kill it before its born. They they tje mother has a right to her body and shouldn’t be force to bear the child.
Many of the pro choice people will fight to save animals, trees and fish but not a human baby.
Anyway. If Disney supports killing fetuses I’m done with Disney.
About half the country supports abortion and about half opposes it. So the CEO of the Walt Disney Company (rather than keeping his mouth shut or saying they are reviewing options (if posed in a question)) comes out and alienates people who have strongly held beliefs.
Why? If that is how you feel, just do it and don’t say anything. All this accomplishes is makes him a hero in the eyes of people who share his view and a villain in the eyes of the other half.
Last time I looked, Iger had a fiduciary responsibility to all the stakeholders of the Walt Disney Company – not just those who share his political views.
This is just stupid…as Mark Twain said: “It’s better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than open it and remove all doubt”
It’s more like 80-90% that are not in favor of the latest unhinged attempts to move abortion toward infanticide.
disney keep your nose out of politics! there are left and right politics in our country,how about staying neautral! your p.c attitude is starting to piss us off!
Thank you Bob for not helping Georgia to force women into giving birth against their will.
Did the state of Georgia also “force” these women to become pregnant in the first place?
You mean like getting raped?
Cases of rape are not precluded by the law in Georgia. How were you not aware of this before commenting? That’s sad.
These cases are EXTREMELY rare. Any honest debater here would know that abortion is widely used as a form of birth control for selfish reasons, by vast margins.
The VAST majority partake in irresponsible behavior (unprotected/risky sex) and then turn to this barbaric procedure to make the consequence of it go away.
I’m 100% for personal liberty, choice for my own body. But this is just wrong. When you take an ACTION for which the result is an expected outcome … just like with anything in life, there is a level of responsibility that you are personally accountable for.
If I touch fire, I know I will be burned. If I eat too much, I know I will be sick. If I drink too much, I know I will be hungover. If I have unprotected sex, I know I may become pregnant.
Grow up people, take responsibility for your actions.
Were the victims of rape forced to have sex? Oh yeah, they were, and they are still punished for it.
If you dont want to give birth don’t get pregnant. Get an IUD, a condom, birth control. Nobody forces anyone to get pregnant and give birth bc kk this law. Stupid!
Disney has always managed to be neutral on political and religious issues. He would have been wiser to keep silent on this. One reason I fre visit wdw, watch their movies, etc is bc of this. This and their family values, love for children. It’s the one last place I feel like my family can do everything together. If they make this move, I will boycott them like I do all the other businesses that contribute to the slaughter of humans. Gonna be a sad day bc we are wdw obsessed, but I’ll find somewhere else to spend my thousands! Even if he feels this way, he should have plead the 5th. Stay neutral. Either side he is on is going to upset a portion of his fan base!
keep the mouse out of politics!!!
I’m pro-choice. If you want to have an abortion, have one. If you want to have a kid but give it up for adoption, do that. BUT know that if a mother’s or infant’s life is in danger because of the pregnancy, you’re going to end up killing one or both of them. I’m glad that Iger didn’t stay neutral. Women’s rights are a real thing, and we shouldn’t be told what we can or can’t do with our bodies.
I couldn’t give two frog farts about what a woman does to HER body. I am more concerned about the OTHER body.
In today’s climate there is no more sitting on the sidelines. Congratulations Disney for standing for personal freedom. History will slowly grind away the bigotry and attempt of todays right to drag us all backwards.
How about this Mr Iger, it is not up to a multi-national corporation like you, who develops programming for “children” to try and force the citizens of Georgia to abort their unborn children….I own a travel agency and i will not be sending more customers to your hotels or theme parks, am ending my subscription to the Disney channel and will contact my cable company to stop carrying your programming….these hollywood elitist snob actors have gone too far and you are fatally stupid for allowing them to impact your business model……..think of it programming for children from someone who wants them dead, pretty sick
Yay! The parks are already very busy as is. Feel free to send your guests to Seaworld who is known for torturing Whales, Six Flags parks who profit on minimum-wage labor, or Comcast’s Universal, who has been voted the worst company in America in multiple national polls and actively campaigns against free internet!
And here I thought Disney was supposed to be all about kids and families. But I guess they are only okay with kids AFTER they are born.
Good luck Disney. You left Democrat California to enjoy the low taxes and low regulation of a Republican state (Georgia).
If Leftism is so good…why don’t you go back to California to shoot, or maybe highly taxed New York?
Stay out of the abortion debate Disney. It’s not going to bode well for you.
You’re right! This was a mistake on his part. He should have just kept his mouth shut and not had Mickey a factor in the fight. No no matter what they do they piss off 50% of their fan base. Stupid move.
I guess Disney would be put in quite a quandary if FL was to pass a similar law…
I see that the anti-abortion activists have hit this site hard; they must have been waiting for WDWNT to post about this so they could swarm the comments with fake “boycott” comments and vote down anyone OK with Disney’s stance on supporting its female employees. The vast majority of this country is very much in favor of supporting a woman’s right to choose and not letting the government control her body. I’m glad Disney is, hopefully, on the right side of history here.
Fred, your comments have all the hallmarks & phrases of the typical intenet abortion agendist. So bravo there on being a good repeater. Years from now civilization will look back in bewilderment at this stone age idea that cultists pushed & promoted to establish a society where terminating our own human young was in any way acceptable. ‘Women rights’ are fictitious. As are Men’s Rights, Children’s Rights, Elderly Rights and whatever else hyphenated rights you want to make up. Human Rights cover it all and are are what matters.HUMAN.
I am sure Human Rights includes everyone and everything except, gay right, transgender rights, women health rights…. etc. You Grunt are an example of the past. Being pro-choice is a very simply concept. You can be against abortion personally but support the belief that a woman has the right to control her own body. You want to stop abortion support real sex education in schools, contraception rights, the morning after pill. Put your energy to helping women get the medical support they need, but at the end of the day you Grunt have no right to control a woman’s body.
Dan, if you oppose abortion personally, you can’t support the belief that a “woman has the right to control her own body” because the woman’s body isn’t the only body involved. As far as I am concerned, you can’t support human rights and support abortion because you are advocating for the arbitrary elimination of a life.
I do believe that in the rare cases where the mother’s life is at risk, an exception should be allowed, but that would be in an emergency room/hospital environment and not in the equivalent to a dentist office. Even this exception can lead to abuse if all it takes is a doctor claiming that the mothers life is at stake.
I also believe that abortion supporters that use rape victims in their arguments are extremely inconsiderate to the rape victims that decide to keep their child. By continually insisting that a baby that is created as a result of a rape has no value, how should someone that was born into this situation feel? Wouldn’t it be more empowering to the victim to approach the situation by making the best of it by bringing a new life into the world who could be the next Einstein, Florence Nightingale, Martin Luther King Jr, or Jonas Salk. What if the next Mozart turned out to be created as the result of a rape? Does that person not have a right to live regardless of the situation of their conception?
Sorry for the length of this comment, but if you’ve made it this far, I would like you to consider one last point of view. If you get into a car accident and the paramedics arrive at the scene, how do they determine if you are alive? They check your heartbeat. If a heartbeat determines life, a person with a heartbeat is alive…
So does that mean no more espn in Ga and the many other SEC states that have passed the heartbeat bill? Never liked the channel anyway. Let’s cancel our subscriptions tomorrow.
Based on other comments I’ve seen I’ll get down voted a lot for this BUT: Disney can do what it wants with politics, whether you agree with it or not. Disney has been showing signs in its movies lately that it was going to be more progressive. If you don’t agree with it, fine, boycott Disney or do whatever you need to do that makes you think that you’re damaging their company. More room for the rest of us.
For those responding strongly on either side of the issue – note that Iger’s comments simply reflect the reality of the business he’s in rather than being a specific stance by Disney/Iger on abortion rights. He’s simply saying that if the actors and crew don’t want to work in Georgia anymore, he can’t force them to do so and won’t realistically be able to film in Georgia. Essentially he’s putting it back on the crew/actors.
The voters of Georgia have elected legislators that are passing laws presumably based on their constituents’ desires. I’m not sure why Bob Iger has an opinion unless he’s a registered voter in Georgia.
If Iger and or Disney board members or stockholders are really concerned that women’s rights or human rights are being violated to the degree they stop doing business in Georgia, why did they build a park in China?
Disney is not just the only other studio considering this. Frankly as a business it’s their right to do so.
I have been a Disney fan a long time but I won’t support a company that has to to become politically motivated
Saying it and doing it are far apart. Disney has millions invested in studios in Georgia and losing that investment along with the tax credits to move where…? California… England… or build a new studio…. maybe but sounds like a stretch for best use for their time and money. This may be more of Iger signaling his personal beliefs and getting that on record then moving on to the next topic.
I gotta say, I was a little hesitant to read the comments on this one, knowing that the Disney Co and a significant part of its employees and customers are lefties. But I am pleasantly suprised at the outpouring of support for the unborn. Not a great business model for Disney to support the large scale murder of its future customers.
WDWNT community, you have revitalized my hope in humanity. (temporarily at least) Well done!!!
As a prolifer and huge Disney fan I don’t boycott Disney movies because I disagree with their politics or those of their star actors (most of whom I completely disagree with on their World views.)
Disney should get out of politics, have they not learned from what they experienced with the political commentary coming from ESPN.
I don’t tune into sports to hear political commentary and I don’t watch Disney movies because they agree with my world view, I watch them because I enjoy the entertainment.
Do what you do best Disney and stay out of politics unless it is coverage by your news outlets.
Lets’ just admit what this is, a really dumb comment. By stating that Disney may pull out of Georgia due to the Abortion bill he has alienated a lot of people. There is no telling what the financial fallout will be from this comment, but remember that a lot of conservatives buy Disney goods. This also sets up a bad situation for Disney. If they let Bob Iger go it will seem as if they are catering to the Pro Life movement. On the other hand if they retain him it will look like they are catering to the pro choice movement. Whichever way they go they will alienate at least one group.