Entertainment
Disney shares dipped 1.5% on Tuesday after the company crowned Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro as its next CEO and Entertainment co-chair Dana Walden as president and chief creative officer.
Iger, whose contract is set to expire at the end of 2026, will transition into the role of senior advisor and remain a board member, subject to the vote at Disney’s annual meeting on March 18. He will step down from the executive committee of the board after the annual meeting.
Disney stock, which is trading at around $102 per share as of Tuesday morning, has fallen 9.8% in the past month, 13.8% in the past six months, 9.7% in the past year and 43% in the past five years.
Guggenheim Securities analyst Michael Morris says D’Amaro’s appointment represents a potential inflection point for Disney’s strategic direction. He added that D’Amaro’s expertise in the company’s Experiences division “positions him well to drive a more integrated approach to leveraging Disney’s brands across businesses.”
“We believe his leadership could result in more disciplined content investment decisions, better coordination between content creation and distribution, and enhanced focus on high-return consumer touchpoints,” Morris added. “While some observers view the timing as providing an easier setup for the incoming CEO, we believe the challenges facing the business — including linear decline, streaming profitability and Experiences investment returns — remain substantial and will require decisive strategic action.”
D’Amaro, who first joined Disney in 1998, has previously held leadership roles both in the U.S. and internationally across finance, business strategy, marketing, creative development and operations, including chief financial officer of Disney Consumer Products Global Licensing and president of Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort.
As chairman of the Experiences division, D’Amaro has led a team of 185,000 cast members across 12 theme parks and 57 resort hotels in six global destinations in the U.S., Europe and Asia. He has overseen the expansion of Disney theme parks across the globe, with new lands and attractions such as Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge, the Marvel-themed Avengers Campus, Mickey and Minnie’s Runaway Railway and World of Frozen.
In addition to the company’s theme parks, his oversight includes Walt Disney Imagineering, Disney Consumer Products, Disney Cruise Line, Disney Signature Experiences, Disney Vacation Club, Adventures by Disney and Storyliving by Disney.
D’Amaro’s appointment comes after a years-long search process led by the Disney board’s succession planning committee, which includes chairman James Gorman, who led his own search for a successor after an 18-year run as Morgan Stanley’s CEO, and directors Mary Barra, Jeremy Darroch and Calvin McDonald.
He was one of four internal candidates in the running for the job. Other Disney executives under consideration included Walden, Disney Entertainment co-chair Alan Bergman and ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro. All four candidates went through a “rigorous” preparation process that included mentorship from Iger, external coaching and engagement with all 10 of the board’s directors.
In fiscal 2025 alone, the succession planning committee met five times. It reported to the full board at every scheduled meeting and reserved time to meet without Iger present as appropriate. It also discussed succession with Iger present at least once a year.
As part of the discussions, the board’s compensation committee reviewed and considered shareholder feedback to determine a new CEO pay package when succession takes place and design an executive compensation program aimed at “driving the creation of long-term shareholder value.” In 2025, Iger was paid $45.8 million, an 11.5% increase from $41.1 million in 2024. D’Amaro will receive a pay package of approximately $38 million in his first year, while Walden will receive approximately $24 million.
Iger returned to Disney as CEO in November 2022 following the disastrous ouster of his successor-turned-predecessor Bob Chapek.
Chapek, who previously served as the company’s parks chief before taking on the role of CEO from 2020 to 2022, had a tenure that was marked by multiple missteps, including a poorly handled lawsuit from Scarlett Johansson over her salary tied to the streaming release of “Black Widow” as well as his initial decision to stay mum about Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, drawing the ire of numerous employees. He also was in charge as the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the globe, which resulted in temporary closures of Disney’s theme parks and thousands of employees who were either furloughed or laid off.
Prior to handing off the reins to Chapek, Iger served as Disney’s CEO for 15 years from 2005 to 2020, during which time he oversaw the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and 21st Century Fox. He has famously been a well-liked CEO, delaying his departure date multiple times.
Iger’s latest term has included a number of milestones, such as a $60 billion investment in the company’s cruise ships, theme parks and new technologies through 2030, Disney+ reaching streaming profitability, the launch of the ESPN Unlimited streaming service, the sale of Star India to Reliance industries, acquiring full control of Hulu and a majority stake in Fubo and a landmark deal with OpenAI.
But it also included a fair number of challenges, including 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 venture Venu Sports, a $16 million legal settlement between ABC News and President Donald Trump, box office struggles and the temporary suspension of ABC late night host Jimmy Kimmel.
“When I came back three years ago, I had a tremendous amount that needed fixing. But anyone who runs a company also knows that it can’t just be about fixing. It has to be preparing a company for its future and really putting place, taking steps to create opportunities for growth,” Iger told analysts during Disney’s first quarter earnings call on Monday. “The good news is that the company is in much better shape today than it was three years ago, because we have done a lot of fixing, but we’ve also put in place a number of opportunities, including the investment across our experiences business to essentially expand in every location we do business and on the high seas.”
“I also believe that in the world that changes as much as it does that in some form or another, trying to preserve the status quo is a mistake, and I’m certain that my successor will not do that,” he continued. “So they’ll be handed, I think, a good hand in terms of the strength of the company, a number of opportunities to grow, and also the exhortation that in a world that changes, you also have to continue to change and evolve.”
When asked how he’d like to be remembered during a podcast interview in November, Iger said he hoped he’d be remembered as someone who helped usher Disney to “a place that even Walt would be proud of.”
“What that means is more great storytelling to a larger audience, more innovation, more risk-taking, more really creation of happiness. It’s really that simple,” he said. “At one point I thought, ‘Well, OK, you’re now running Disney. What’s the most you want out of it?’ Well, don’t screw it up, but it’s much more than that. I really have been mindful of the duty that I feel has been handed to me to make it even better than it’s ever been.”
As for his successor, Iger said that he hopes they would be “respectful of our past and well aware of the values that really created the value of the company in the first place, and carry them forward, but not let anything that’s been done in the past get in the way of bringing the company into the future.”
“That’s really constant innovation, a constant exploration, constant desire to reinvent or to invent even more than anything else. That’s what I’d want,” he shared. “But I think we do occupy a place in the world as great storytellers, perhaps maybe the greatest in many respects. And I would hope that position would continue for years and years, decades ahead.”
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Lucas Manfredi