Walt Disney Co. said Josh D’Amaro will succeed Bob Iger as chief executive officer of the entertainment giant, passing the reins at a key moment in the company’s history and after struggles to find a new leader in the past.
D’Amaro, a 28-year-veteran of Disney, will succeed Iger effective March 18, the Burbank, California-based company said Tuesday in a statement. Iger will stay on the board and serve as a senior adviser until his retirement on Dec. 31.
The leadership change comes at a critical time for the century-old company as it makes a transition from traditional TV viewing to the streaming era. Iger, in his second run as CEO, turned around the streaming unit, which includes Disney+ and Hulu, taking it to a $1.3 billion profit last year from a $4 billion loss in 2022. But Disney’s share price has lagged the S&P 500 over the past three years as streaming subscriber growth slows and amid a broader selloff of media companies with shrinking traditional television businesses.
Disney’s shares slid 1.4% to $103.04 in New York on Tuesday morning.
The head of Disney’s theme parks, cruises and consumer products division — by far the company’s biggest source of profit — D’Amaro, 54, was chosen from among several internal candidates. They included Dana Walden, co-chair of entertainment and head of TV; Alan Bergman, also co-chair of entertainment and head of film; and Jimmy Pitaro, ESPN’s chairman.
Walden, 61, was named to a new role as president and chief creative officer of Disney. She’ll report directly to D’Amaro, who was also appointed to the board.
Disney Chairman James Gorman said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that the board considered over 100 candidates in total. He said Iger wasn’t interested in serving as chairman again. “He’ll continue to consult with the company, consistent with what former executives do.”
Gorman said the elevation of Walden came in part out of a desire not to see her leave the company. “If you don’t want to keep talented executives, there’s something wrong with you,” he said.
Bloomberg previously reported that the board was close to naming D’Amaro as CEO.
“Josh is incredibly innovative,” Gorman said. “I’ve often said, what you look for in CEOs, it’s not just what they’ve done that’s important, but what they’re capable of doing.”
D’Amaro has served as president of both California’s Disneyland and Walt Disney World in Florida. As chairman of the resorts unit, D’Amaro supervised a business with 12 theme parks, 57 hotels and over 185,000 employees. Among his projects were the launch of Star Wars themed lands in California and Florida and a refresh of the attractions at Epcot.
Under D’Amaro, Disney has embarked on a $60 billion, 10-year expansion of its resorts. The company plans to nearly double its fleet of cruise ships to 13 from 7 and build its first theme park in the Middle East under an agreement with Miral Group.
D’Amaro, whose experience is almost entirely from the theme parks side, will have to boost profitability at both the film unit and the streaming business, while managing declining viewership for TV networks like ABC and the Disney Channel. He’ll work closely with Walden, who has led Disney’s TV and streaming operations since 2023. Under Walden, Disney’s streaming business turned its first profit in 2024, ending years of losses under prior management.
D’Amaro moves up following a carefully executed search designed to avoid Disney’s past missteps in grooming a successor. Several possible candidates left after Iger, who is serving a second stint as CEO, repeatedly extended his contracts during a first term that ran from 2005 to 2020.
Iger spent tens of billions of dollars acquiring film and TV properties such as Pixar, Lucasfilm, Marvel and 21st Century Fox. He also launched the flagship Disney+ streaming service in 2019.
Iger’s previous handpicked successor, Bob Chapek, the parks chief at the time, was promoted to CEO in February 2020 but was ousted less than three years later after a rocky tenure during which Iger openly criticized his leadership. The board chose to bring Iger back in November 2022 and extended his contract the following year.
The process of finding a new CEO was led by Gorman, who took over succession planning in August 2024 after overseeing a similar search for his own replacement at Morgan Stanley. But the effort to identify a successor to Iger began almost immediately when he returned to the CEO role.
On a call with analysts to discuss quarterly results earlier this week, Iger was praised for taking steps that had a huge impact on profit growth, such as moving Monday Night Football from ABC to ESPN and making peace with Steve Jobs and acquiring Pixar. Iger acknowledged that there was “a tremendous amount that needed fixing,” when he came back. But he also seemed to feel sanguine about the shape the company’s in as he finally says goodbye.
His successor, he said, will be given “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 as well.”
