The wait is over. Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro will succeed Bob Iger because the leisure large’s subsequent CEO, the corporate introduced on Tuesday. Dana Walden, co-chairman of Disney Leisure and largely seen as D’Amaro’s predominant competitors for the CEO job, will grow to be President and Chief Inventive Officer.
The roles will take impact on March 18.
Walt Disney Firm shares have been up over 1.3% to $105.84 in pre-marketing buying and selling on information of D’Amaro’s appointment.
D’Amaro, who first joined Disney in 1998, has beforehand held management roles each within the U.S. and internationally throughout finance, enterprise technique, advertising and marketing, artistic growth and operations, together with chief monetary officer of Disney Shopper Merchandise International Licensing and president of Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort.
As chairman of the Experiences division, D’Amaro has led a staff of 185,000 forged members throughout 12 theme parks and 57 resort lodges in six international locations within the U.S., Europe an Asia. He has overseen the enlargement of Disney theme parks throughout the globe, with new lands and sights resembling Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Marvel-themed Avengers Campus, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway and World of Frozen.
Along with the corporate’s theme parks, his oversight contains Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Shopper Merchandise, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Signature Experiences, Disney Trip Membership, Adventures by Disney and Storyliving by Disney.
In 2023, Disney stated it will make investments $60 billion over the subsequent decade for brand new cruise ships, resorts, themed lands, sights and applied sciences, which incorporates upcoming tasks resembling a Monsters Inc.-themed land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, a brand new Avatar-themed land at Disneyland, and new areas impressed by Vehicles and Disney Villains in Magic Kingdom.
Wanting forward, Disney is planning to open new theme park in Abu Dhabi and can develop its cruise ship fleet from seven to 13 ships by 2031. It is usually growing a digital universe inside Fortnite by a partnership with Epic Video games the place customers can play, watch, store and interact with characters and tales from Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, Avatar, and extra.
Moreover, Disney has taken a $1 billion stake in OpenAI and can license its characters to the latter’s Sora video platform. The characters — although not the expertise who painting or voice them — will even be out there to be used for ChatGPT’s image-generation platform, and can embody everybody from Mickey Mouse to Iron Man to Elsa. Disney will even host a sequence of curated Sora-generated movies on Disney+, and OpenAI will assist energy new experiences on the streaming service. Disney staff will even have entry to ChatGPT.
D’Amaro’s appointment comes after a years-long search course of led by the Disney board’s succession planning committee, which incorporates chairman James Gorman, who led his personal seek for a successor after an 18-year run as Morgan Stanley’s CEO, and administrators Mary Barra, Jeremy Darroch and Calvin McDonald.
He was one in all 4 inner candidates within the working for the job. Different Disney executives into account included Disney Leisure co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro.
All 4 candidates went by a “rigorous” preparation course of that included mentorship from Iger, exterior teaching and engagement with all 10 of the board’s administrators. (Disney’s board is poised to increase to 11 members after the corporate nominated former Apple government Jeff Williams to face election at its 2026 annual assembly in March.)
In fiscal 2025 alone, the succession planning committee met 5 instances. It reported to the total board at each scheduled assembly and reserved time to fulfill with out Iger current as acceptable. It additionally mentioned succession with Iger current a minimum of annually.
As a part of the discussions, the board’s compensation committee reviewed and thought of shareholder suggestions to find out a brand new CEO pay package deal when succession takes place and design an government compensation program aimed toward “driving the creation of long-term shareholder worth.” In 2025, Iger was paid $45.8 million, an 11.5% improve from $41.1 million in 2024.
Iger returned to Disney as CEO in November 2022 following the disastrous ouster of his successor-turned-predecessor Bob Chapek.
Chapek, who beforehand served as the corporate’s parks chief earlier than taking over the function of CEO from 2020 to 2022, had a tenure that was marked by a number of missteps, together with a poorly dealt with lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson over her wage tied to the streaming launch of “Black Widow” in addition to his preliminary determination to keep mum about Florida’s “Don’t Say Homosexual” invoice, drawing the ire of quite a few staff. He additionally was in cost because the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the globe, which resulted in non permanent closures of Disney’s theme parks and 1000’s of staff who have been both furloughed or laid off.
Previous to handing off the reins to Chapek, Iger served as Disney’s CEO for 15 years from 2005 to 2020, throughout which period he oversaw the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and twenty first Century Fox. He has famously been a popular CEO — delaying his departure date a number of instances — and is about to step down when his contract expires on the finish of 2026.
Iger’s newest time period has included a lot of milestones, resembling Disney+ reaching streaming profitability, the launch of the ESPN Limitless streaming service, the sale of Star India to Reliance industries, buying full management of Hulu and a majority stake in Fubo and a landmark cope with OpenAI.
However it additionally included a good variety of challenges, together with the Hollywood writers’ and actors’ strike in 2023, a proxy battle with activist investor Nelson Peltz, the failed launch of Fox and Warner Bros. Discovery joint streaming enterprise Venu Sports activities, a $16 million authorized settlement between ABC Information and President Donald Trump, field workplace struggles and the non permanent suspension of ABC late evening host Jimmy Kimmel.
“Once I got here again three years in the past, I had an amazing quantity that wanted fixing. However anybody who runs an organization additionally is aware of that it may possibly’t simply be about fixing. It needs to be making ready an organization for its future and actually placing place, taking steps to create alternatives for progress,” Iger informed analysts throughout Disney’s first quarter earnings name on Monday. “The excellent news is that the corporate is in a lot better form right this moment than it was three years in the past, as a result of we’ve achieved loads of fixing, however we’ve additionally put in place a lot of alternatives, together with the funding throughout our experiences enterprise to basically increase in each location we do enterprise and on the excessive seas.”
“I additionally consider that on the planet that modifications as a lot because it does that in some kind or one other, attempting to protect the established order is a mistake, and I’m sure that my successor won’t do this,” Iger continued. “So that they’ll be handed, I believe, hand by way of the power of the corporate, a lot of alternatives to develop, and in addition the exhortation that in a world that modifications, you additionally need to proceed to alter and evolve.”
When requested how he’d prefer to be remembered throughout a podcast interview in November, Iger stated he hoped he’d be remembered as somebody who helped usher Disney to “a spot that even Walt can be pleased with.”
“What which means is extra nice storytelling to a bigger viewers, extra innovation, extra risk-taking, extra actually creation of happiness. It’s actually that straightforward,” Iger stated. “At one level I assumed, ‘Nicely, OK, you’re now working Disney. What’s essentially the most you need out of it?’ Nicely, don’t screw it up, but it surely’s far more than that. I actually have been aware of the obligation that I really feel has been handed to me to make it even higher than it’s ever been.”
As for his successor, Iger stated that he hopes they might be “respectful of our previous and effectively conscious of the values that actually created the worth of the corporate within the first place, and carry them ahead, however not let something that’s been achieved up to now get in the way in which of bringing the corporate into the longer term.”
“That’s actually fixed innovation, a relentless exploration, fixed want to reinvent or to invent much more than anything. That’s what I’d need,” he stated. “However I believe we do occupy a spot on the planet as nice storytellers, maybe possibly the best in lots of respects. And I’d hope that place would proceed for years and years, a long time forward.”
Extra to come back…
