The Walt Disney Company’s board has chosen Josh D’Amaro to succeed Bob Iger as chief executive, with D’Amaro set to assume the role in March. Iger, who has led Disney across nearly two decades in total, will remain a senior adviser and board member through the end of the year before retiring.
D’Amaro, 54, is a 28-year Disney veteran who most recently served as chairman of Disney Experiences, where he managed the company’s theme parks, resorts and cruise operations and helped lead plans for a park in Abu Dhabi. Disney credits him as the driving force behind what it describes as the largest global expansion in the history of its experiences division, a project with roughly a $36 billion scope.
The move comes after earlier corporate controversy in September when ABC briefly suspended late-night host Jimmy Kimmel over on-air remarks; the episode drew intense media attention at the time. The board’s selection of D’Amaro follows a period of executive turnover and strategic changes at Disney.
Iger first stepped down as CEO in 2020 after serving from 2005 to 2020, becoming creative chairman while Bob Chapek took over; tensions between the two leaders were widely reported. The board asked Iger to return in 2022 when the company was facing steep losses—around $1 billion per quarter—and he is credited with stabilizing the business through restructuring and about $5.5 billion in cost reductions and workforce reductions.
In announcing the change, Iger called D’Amaro “the right person to become our next CEO” and said his own return was intended to address immediate problems and set the company up for the future. He expressed confidence that D’Amaro would push Disney forward rather than maintain the status quo.
As CEO, D’Amaro will oversee Disney’s studios—including 20th Century Studios, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Pixar—its television businesses such as ABC, FX and Hulu, and the company’s parks and consumer experiences. He will also take part in managing new commercial arrangements, including a licensing deal involving OpenAI’s Sora.