Inside Disney’s Search to Replace Zenia Mucha: Does a New Era Demand a New Kind of Communications Chief?
Scarlett Johansson has thrown Disney into a full-on PR crisis by suing the entertainment giant over the release of “Black Widow,” and by a luck of timing, the entertainment giant is short one communications leader. Chief Communications Officer Zenia Mucha, tough enough to have earned such nicknames as “The Warrior Princess” and “Director of Revenge,” has announced she’ll depart in early 2022 after 20 years in the powerful role overseeing a team of 500 people. That makes the longtime and well-compensated executive a lame duck at a time when Disney badly needs expert media guidance. Mucha was Disney Executive Chairman Bob Iger’s longtime right-hand aide in managing difficult PR situations. Whoever takes the job will have to establish a similar relationship for the apparently less media-savvy Bob Chapek, who assumed the CEO role last year. Although she is technically still in the job, “Zenia is checked out,” one former Disney executive told TheWrap, pointing to the company’s harshly worded response last week to the Johansson lawsuit, which called the actress “callous” for suing over profit participation during the COVID-19 crisis — an oddly aggressive slam of an A-list star from a company that laid off 32,000 workers last year due...
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