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It’s Josh D’Amaro’s Disney now, or it will be soon, anyway. The freshly named CEO undoubtedly knows his transition to power will be scrutinized intensely over the next six weeks as he takes the reins from outgoing chief executive Bob Iger. How will the former parks boss lead one of Hollywood’s most dominant entertainment companies? Will he get along with newly elevated chief creative officer Dana Walden, who nearly won the big job herself? And where will D’Amaro — who’s never made a show or movie himself — steer the company’s beloved IP? We have thoughts.
Will Disney Take Bigger Swings in Streaming?
Nobody inside Disney’s TV and streaming unit would ever say so out loud, but things have been in something of a holding pattern there over the past year or two as Walden competed for the CEO gig. Everybody clearly wanted to make sure nothing they did would mess up her chance at landing the big job. Meanwhile, Disney’s TV rivals made huge moves: Comcast split up its streaming and cable units and committed upwards of $1 billion to land Taylor Sheridan for Peacock; Paramount started spending like crazy under its new owners, snapping up the UFC and the Duffer brothers; Netflix made a deal to buy Warner Bros. and is now vowing to make movies for theaters.
So with the succession drama over, will Disney TV and streaming start taking much-needed bigger swings? Iger has said he doesn’t think Disney needs to buy any new IP — that’s what his 2018 deal for 20th Century Fox was all about — but the company could use more scripted-TV tentpoles to go along with unscripted sizzlers such as The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives and the reinvigorated Dancing With the Stars. Its biggest new scripted hit in recent years, ABC’s unsexy but massively watched High Potential, does a great job at getting eyeballs, but broadcast shows don’t tend to drive new sign-ups for subscription services. Doubling down on finding Disney’s next massive streaming success will be a key priority for Walden in her new role as chief creative officer. —J.A.
Will Josh and Dana Play Nice?
In 2013, following the two-year bake-off to name a new Warner Bros. CEO, Kevin Tsujihara promptly pushed out his felled competition amid mounting tensions: Bruce Rosenblum “exited” Warner Bros. TV, and Jeff Robinov “departed” as president of the motion-pictures group. At Disney, the board thinks it has avoided a pissing contest or a brain drain by giving Walden her expanded role while making sure D’Amaro has an experienced hand (with the deep Hollywood talent relationships he sorely lacks) running the creative decisions. So right now, there’s no reason to think Walden won’t stay at Disney until her newly extended contract ends in 2030, if not longer.
But amid the never-ending culture wars Disney habitually finds itself fighting, it’s hardly a foregone conclusion the two will achieve managerial lockstep or row the content boat in the same direction. Disney has never had a single, companywide chief creative officer. Will Walden give notes to newly installed Lucasfilm president Dave Filoni about increased Ewok presence in the Rebel Alliance? Will she demand a director’s-cut release of Pixar’s Elio? With the Burbank lot’s sprawling portfolio of television, film, and streaming falling under Walden’s suddenly supersize jurisdiction, it remains to be seen how much freedom D’Amaro gives her — or if, like Warner Bros., things quickly get … awkward. —C.L.
Who Does Walden’s Old Job?
While Disney included Walden’s promotion in its press release naming D’Amaro CEO, it didn’t say anything about how, or whether, her new role would impact the day-to-day running of Disney’s TV and streaming businesses. Right now, Walden serves as co-chair of Disney Entertainment with Alan Bergman, the film boss, with both reporting to Iger. Once D’Amaro takes over, Walden will report to D’Amaro, while Bergman will report to Walden. It will then be up to Walden to decide whether Bergman takes over as sole chairman of Disney Entertainment — or someone else replaces her as his partner.
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Bergman isn’t a TV guy, but he has been very involved working on Marvel- and Star Wars–branded content for Disney+, and of course he has decades of relationships with Hollywood creatives (most of whom now make both TV shows and movies). And it’s hardly unprecedented for a film vet to get handed oversight of TV: Comcast has had former Universal film chief Donna Langley running both sides of the business since 2023. Bergman and Walden have developed a good working relationship, and he was also in the mix for the CEO gig that went to D’Amaro. Given the success of Disney’s movie business under Bergman, he’s clearly earned a promotion. Whether he has the desire for an expanded portfolio, and the headaches it entails, is another question.
If Walden decides to elevate one of her underlings to co-chair of Disney Entertainment, there are several strong contenders from which to choose. Joe Earley, who heads streaming and direct-to-consumer, has worked with Walden for decades and is one of her most trusted advisers. Like Walden, he’s a former PR exec who knows the creative side of the business, though he’s never been an in-the-trenches development exec at Disney. If that’s the skill set Walden decides the role needs, she could turn to 20th Television boss Karey Burke or Hulu/ABC chief Craig Erwich, both of whom are widely respected in Hollywood and have also worked with Walden for years. Another outside possibility is Debra OConnell, who oversees Disney’s linear networks, has been with the company for nearly 30 years across multiple roles, and most recently helped Walden deal (successfully) with a messy period at ABC News. —J.A.
Can Disney Coax Kids Back to the Movie Theater?
In an era when video-game movie adaptations are replacing superhero fare as Hollywood’s dominant IP, Disney invested $1.5 billion to acquire an equity stake in Epic Games. D’Amaro finds himself now tasked with leading the “persistent universe” partnership with Epic, cross-pollinating its ever-popular Fortnite with content and characters (and skins!) from Marvel, Star Wars, Avatar, Pixar, and Disney Animation. Zillennials and Gen-Alpha boys are known to be an especially tough sell for big-screen content. But as unlikely movie–video-game integrations including the One Battle After Another x Fortnite mini-game and “playable experience” for A24’s horror hit Talk to Me demonstrate, Fortnite has come to be regarded as a kind of Pied Piper leading the vanishing generational attention span. As such, D’Amaro has been saddled with a not inconsiderable responsibility: bridging those digital experiences with the physical act of getting the youth to the multiplex. —C.L.
How Many Price Hikes Can Disney’s Parks Take?
Under D’Amaro’s tenure in charge of Disney Experiences, microtransactions and price hikes have bedeviled customers since the COVID era. Gone are the days of a free-ish FastPass: Nowadays, Lightning Lane Multi Passes can cost over $40 a day to skip the lines on certain attractions sorted into different tiers. And on the busiest days, such as holidays, at popular parks like the Magic Kingdom and Disneyland, entry-level tickets can now cost over $200. Recent park attendance, meanwhile, shows signs of flattening, if not outright dipping. Disney has also raised prices on Disney+ and Hulu several times in recent years, and it’s clear to see why the company loves this model. But how many extractive pricing plays can the company’s customers handle before attendance really drops? —R.A.
