Outgoing Disney CEO Bob Iger is not a creative executive.
He will tell you this. Repeatedly, in fact.
In his 2019 memoir “Ride of a Lifetime,” he remarked that “if I had a strength, it was my ability to urge creative people to do their best work and take chances, while also helping them rebound from failure.”
Time and time again he confessed to giving the actual filmmakers and showrunners and executives who keep Disney ticking “creative freedom” — people like Pixar’s John Lasseter (and, later, Pete Docter) and Jennifer Lee of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Occasionally, Iger recounted, he would have to wrest that control away from some of the most creative people in Hollywood, like when he maneuvered to purchase Lucasfilm (he said George Lucas allowing Disney complete control “wasn’t an easy thing to accept”).
It’s this approach, to let creatives be creative and Iger be a big-picture executive, that defined his tenure at the head of the company. From 2004 to 2026, with a brief, ultimately chaotic retirement from 2020 to 2022, Iger has led the Walt Disney Co. more as a portfolio manager than an actual creative executive, purchasing touchstone creative powerhouses like Lucasfilm, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios and the 21st Century assets, and optimizing the company (and the entertainment industry at large) around them. Iger invested heavily in the Disney Parks division, building new attractions, lands and Disney Cruise Line ships, while making the actual Disney Parks experience more expensive and, incredibly, more sought after.
It’s in this state that Iger leaves Disney, with incoming CEO Josh D’Amaro officially taking the reins on Wednesday. But as D’Amaro looks to the future of the media giant, we look back at how Iger has guided its evolution over more than two decades.
The results are undeniable – a rundown of his accomplishments during his tenure includes surpassing $4 billion in global box office revenue for four consecutive years; creating a robust and profitable streaming portfolio with Disney+, Hulu and ESPN; and generating $10 billion in operating income in fiscal 2025 for the Experiences division (which includes the parks and cruise ships), nearly 50% above pre-pandemic levels, a feat many imagined would not be impossible.
Since he took over in October 2005, Disney shares have risen nearly sevenfold when adjusted for stock splits. Notably, its $100 trading price is up only 7% from when he reassumed his CEO title in November 2022, with shares largely staying within a tight band.
In the process, Iger has made the Walt Disney Co. – historically known for its technological innovation and fearless storytelling instincts – into something so safe that it’s antiseptic. The Iger Era will be defined as much by its successes as the glut of uninspired product that followed, full of hit movies whose countless sequels and spinoffs and remakes left little impression but did much to bolster the bottom line and improve shareholder value. Iger was surrounded by trusted lieutenants, including successor D’Amaro, whom he tasked with the creative heavy lifting, while Iger himself kept an eye on the overall product, something that one former higher-up employee described as a unique and desirable skill.
And while Iger might have abandoned his rumored presidential ambitions, he was able to reshape entertainment – and, indeed, the world – in his image. For better or worse, we are all living in Bob Iger’s future.
“Michael Eisner and Frank Wells took powerful but dormant assets and resources and revived, relaunched or maximized them. In broad terms, I think you could say that with pure ‘Disney’ as its foundation, Michael and Frank built up,” said Disney historian Jeff Kurtti. “I think Bob might be remembered as someone who built out. His strategy reached beyond the core brand and looked toward ‘assembling a portfolio,’ broadening the company’s cultural assets and opportunities with brands that shared a kind of appealing timelessness. I think it’s why ‘Disney’ sits comfortably with Star Wars, Marvel, Pixar, Indiana Jones and The Muppets.”
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It’s easy to forget Iger, a man whose 213-foot, $45 million super-yacht Aquarius II has inspired its own fan page, had relatively humble beginnings. He was born in 1951 to an Austrian-Jewish family in New York City. His father was an executive and World War II veteran who worked at the Greenvale Marketing Corp.; his mother was a schoolteacher. He graduated magna cum laude from the School of Communications at Ithaca College with a Bachelor of Science degree in Television and Radio. He worked in Ithaca, New York, as a weatherman; in the days when he was being feted for the Disney CEO job, critics on fan forums would dismissively refer to him as “The Weather Man.”
After college, Iger joined ABC. He worked a series of minimal jobs before becoming, more than a decade later, a senior program executive for the Calgary Winter Olympics. (To draw a Disney parallel, this was the “Cool Runnings” Olympics.) The success of the broadcast engendered even more goodwill with the senior leadership of ABC. A year later he was named head of ABC Entertainment, where he worked on groundbreaking, Zeitgeist-capturing hits like “America’s Funniest Home Videos” and David Lynch’s “Twin Peaks.” It was Iger who pressured Lynch to resolve the show’s central mystery in season 2. Iger later said that he regretted the decision. “David might have been right all along,” Iger wrote in “Ride of a Lifetime.”
In 1995, Disney acquired Capital Cities/ABC, and Iger went along with it. He was chairman of ABC by this time and stayed in the position. In 1999, Disney named him the president of Walt Disney International and chairman of the ABC Group, the new moniker for the larger Capital Cities/ABC apparatus. A year later he was knighted as Disney’s president and chief operating officer. He was the first Disney president in several years.
Iger’s ascension came at a precarious time for the company.
Michael Eisner, who joined in 1984 and turned its fortunes around after a hostile greenmail attempt by corporate raiders, had lost the faith of the Disney board. There had been a number of catastrophic bungles following the death of Eisner’s trusted colleague Frank Wells in a tragic helicopter accident in 1994, including a falling out with Jeffrey Katzenberg, the disastrously short — and costly — tenure of Hollywood super-agent Michael Ovitz as president and tensions with Pixar owner and Apple co-founder Steve Jobs.
In response, Roy E. Disney (Walt’s nephew) and his business partner Stanley Gold started a campaign to oust Eisner. (Both men were instrumental, years earlier, in getting Eisner appointed.) Eventually, Eisner stepped down early and the company named Iger CEO.
The changes were swift – Iger disbanded the Strategic Planning division, an area of the company that, long ago, proved useful. (They were the ones who begged Eisner off from buying an airline, suggesting that a Mickey Mouse logo on the tail of a plane sticking out of a mountainside might be a bad look.)
Iger described the group in “Ride of a Lifetime”: “Populated by a group of aggressive, well-educated executives … They were steeped in analysis and adept at providing the data and ‘insight’ Michael needed to feel secure in every business move the company made, while he made all of the creative decisions himself.”
Iger also sought to make amends with Jobs and Pixar, spurred by the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland in 2005 and realizing all of the most beloved new characters were developed by Pixar, not Disney. On the eve of his appointment as CEO, he sent Jobs a note. Jobs asked Iger how long he’d worked for Eisner. Iger told him 10 years. “Well, I don’t see how things will be any different but, sure, when the dust settles, be in touch,” Jobs told him, according to “Ride of a Lifetime.” After Iger buried the hatchet with Disney and Gold and made sure Zenia Mucha, a trusted Eisner appointee who was dubbed “director of revenge” during the prolonged feud with Roy, stuck around as communications chief, he went after Pixar.
He was ultimately triumphant. A year after he had assumed the position, Iger had purchased Pixar for $7.4 billion. Like most of Iger’s business decisions, it would prove to be surprisingly frugal, given how much the subsequent movies have made and how instrumental they have been in fueling the theme park and streaming divisions (the films have made over $17 billion at the box office alone).
While their initial conversation was somewhat contentious, Iger and Jobs would grow to respect and depend on each other. In Iger’s memoir, he said that had Jobs not passed away in 2011, that he had hoped the two companies would have merged. It made sense. When Jobs died Iger ordered all Disney properties, including the theme parks in California and Florida, to fly their flags at half mast.
Instead of keeping Pixar’s magic contained, Iger looked to spread it around. He made John Lasseter one of the most important creatives in the company, overseeing the rebirth of Walt Disney Animation Studios and Walt Disney Imagineering, the division of the company responsible for the theme parks, cruise ships and retail spaces. All aspects of the company flourished.
But more importantly, the Pixar acquisition opened the gates for Iger to acquire Marvel Entertainment in 2009 for $4 billion (by 2024 the Marvel Studios movies had grossed more than $30 billion), Lucasfilm in 2012 for $4.06 billion (Iger first broached the idea at Walt Disney World, when he and Lucas were there for the opening of a new iteration of Star Tours). Lucas later backed Iger in 2024 when the CEO dealt with a proxy battle from activist shareholder Nelson Peltz.
“Creating magic is not for amateurs,” Lucas said at the time.
Iger then acquired 21st Century in 2019 for a whopping $71.3 billion. The assets, which included “The Simpsons,” “Avatar” and the Marvel characters that Fox had previously controlled, were meant to bolster the successful 2019 launch of Disney+, which Iger came to think of as his most important legacy to the company.
The streaming service, which is still hugely important to the company, has also become an albatross around its neck, straining creative output and devaluing key brands.
“The rush to streaming over the past decade has meant a lot more content at the cost of quality, and that has hurt the Star Wars and Marvel franchises,” said Avi Greengart, an analyst at consumer research firm Techsponential.
Iger understood that ESPN, another part of the ABC/Cap Cities purchase, was another key brand for the company, and he similarly funneled money into Disney’s theme parks and cruise ships (under Iger’s leadership, the Disney Cruise Line fleet quadrupled, going from two ships in 1999 to eight ships in 2026).
Not all of these investments paid off; things like the Galactic Starcruiser, a “Star Wars”-themed experience and hotel, cost the company an estimated $1 billion and lasted less than two years. And an increased emphasis on squeezing the most out of guests at the theme parks has led to customer fatigue. A 2024 New York Times article documented how many families go into debt to afford their magical vacations; a Times headline from a year later summed things up nicely: “Disney and the Decline of America’s Middle Class.” Ouch.
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Minor missteps aside, under Iger things became smoother, more anonymous.
Once celebrated for their intricate theming, Disney theme parks, hotels and retail outposts became free of character or storytelling. Instead, IP would be grafted onto every available surface – the Polynesian Village Resort at Walt Disney World, made famous as the place that John Lennon signed the papers dissolving the Beatles, was once a South Seas mecca. Then it became a depository for “Moana”-related merchandise.
The hotels that were built or modified during the Iger era were sleek and texture-less. Eisner had once made it a point to seduce some of the leading postmodern architects to the company; the New York Times had dubbed the movement “Disney Deco.” Now, everything looked like a mega-church.
Movies became safer, too.
With Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm and the animation studios Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios, new (or at least new-to-the-viewer) concepts were introduced sparingly. There was a greater emphasis on sequels, prequels and shared universes. In the case of Marvel Studios, this paid off brilliantly, as Kevin Feige constructed a large, interconnected world that supported consumer products, streaming shows and theme parks. Disney Animation and Pixar were similarly encouraged to make more sequels. The results were boffo box office, even if a sense of déjà vu was starting to creep in. Lucasfilm, which attempted to alternate between mainline “saga” films and smaller, stand-alone tales (dubbed “Star Wars Stories”), had less success.
Disney live-action movies began to look inward as well. There were a few high-profile attempts to push out the boundaries of what a Disney movie could be – notably Gore Verbinski’s “The Lone Ranger,” Andrew Stanton’s “John Carter” and Brad Bird’s “Tomorrowland” — but they all flopped. Most of the movies that the studio produced were safe and prepackaged. The company raided the animation studio for live-action remakes of varying quality and success – things like “The Jungle Book,” “The Lion King” and “Lilo & Stitch” proved hugely successful; “Snow White” and “Dumbo” less so. Several more, like “Pinocchio” and “Lady and the Tramp,” were relegated to Disney+.
When Verbinski refused to return for more “Pirates” outings after completing his trilogy, Disney instead hired other directors. The studio would fall back on well-meaning, journeyman filmmakers instead of attempting to coax the very best talent to work with them. Box office remained high, but critical reception started to go down.
That sameness started to creep in.
This year alone, Disney has “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” a sequel to a 20th Century Fox movie; “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” an expansion of a Disney+ series from Lucasfilm; Pixar’s “Toy Story 5”; a live-action remake of Disney’s animated “Moana”; “Ready or Not 2” and “Super Troopers 3,” both from Searchlight Pictures; and Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday.” It also produced “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” which Sony is releasing.
At the Disney Parks, areas that previously had original theming like Paradise Pier at Disney California Adventure have had IP mercilessly grafted to them. There are projects in development at the stateside parks themed to Pixar’s “Coco,” the “Cars” franchise and “Monsters, Inc.” A new “Encanto” ride is going into Disney’s Animal Kingdom, next door to an “Indiana Jones”-themed attraction.
Original stories are now largely relegated to Searchlight Pictures, which Iger mostly left intact after the purchase of 21st Century Fox, and which netted a Best Picture Oscar in 2020 with “Nomadland.”
Towards the end of his tenure, Iger invested $1.5 billion in Epic Games, creators of “Fortnite,” with dreams of creating a virtual Magic Kingdom that players can experience anywhere in the world; and $1 billion into OpenAI, which will soon allow consumers to create their own Disney content with actual Disney assets (under certain parameters).
Iger has always, in his own way, had an eye towards the future. But in the process he’s created a homogeneity that is a detriment to the consumer but a boost to the shareholders. It’s hard, in the wake of all of Iger’s acquisitions, to think that the upcoming merger of Paramount and Warner Bros., which has critics fearing irreparable damage to the industry, would have been possible without the groundwork that he laid.
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If there is one folly that Iger simply cannot shake off, it’s the appointment of Bob Chapek as his successor in 2020.
Chapek spent 26 years at the company, rising through the ranks from the once-lucrative home video division to consumer products and theme parks. At the time of his ascension he was chairman of the Disney Parks division and still felt out of his depth. Iger might have “hand-picked” him (as breathless media reports repeated) but it was clear that he was hedging his bets. Even after he named Chapek as CEO, Iger remained committed to staying on the board and helping with the creative transition. When the pandemic fueled an unnatural boost at Disney+, Chapek invested more in the direct-to-consumer streaming platform, sending new Pixar movies directly to the service and alienating key Hollywood creatives like Scarlett Johansson, who took umbrage at the decision to debut “Black Widow” on the service.
CEO Chapek instituted an ungainly reorganization of executives that logjammed the creative process. He continued the march towards expensive, IP-embroidered parks experiences. And Chapek’s demeanor, cold and nearly robotic, was a stark contrast to the warm and affable Iger, with his easygoing everyman attitude, high collars and crisp cardigans.
When the Disney board decided to terminate Chapek, with Iger back in the top seat, it was seen as a visionary strategic decision, even if all it did was buy Iger a few years to find a halfway decent replacement. At the dismissal of Chapek, though, came a sigh of relief.
And as much as Iger will say that Shanghai Disneyland, the first Disney Park in mainland China, or Disney+ will be his legacy, it might honestly be this smooth transition of power to D’Amaro and co-chairman Dana Walden.
Back in 1984, Eisner and Wells were enshrined after the company was nearly sold off for parts and when Iger assumed control, it followed public outrage and a lack of confidence in the direction of the company.
Today, Iger will say goodbye and D’Amaro will say hello. And as fascinating as what Iger accomplished and how he remolded the company is, what’s even more intriguing is where it will go from here.
