Bob Iger, the 74-year-old current CEO of the Walt Disney Company, was scheduled to leave his position when his contract was up at the end of the year. But according to a report from The Wall Street Journal (via Variety), it may happen even sooner. According to the report, Iger has told “associates” that he plans to step down as CEO and “pull back from daily management” before the Dec. 3, 2026, end of his contract. The announcement of Iger’s replacement as Disney’s CEO will apparently come soon. Apparently, well before Iger’s contract ends.
Bob Iger has had one of the most legendary leadership regimes in Disney’s entire history. He took over the company after an inglorious end to former CEO Michael Eisner’s tenure in 2005. In his first fifteen years in the job, he acquired companies and IPs like Thanos collected Infinity Stones. First came Pixar, then Marvel Comics, then Lucasfilm, and finally, Twentieth Century Fox. In his final year in the job, 2019, Disney was such an enormous entertainment giant that seven of its films that year made a billion dollars each, with Avengers: Endgame alone making over $2 billion. Iger turned Disney into the biggest movie studio on Earth, for a time.
However, when Iger left the job in 2020, his replacement, Bob Chapek, was a disaster by most measurements. By the end of 2022, Iger came back, replacing Chapek, in order to save the company’s reputation. But his second term has had its share of controversy, too. For starters, the firing (and rehiring) of Jimmy Kimmel. Also, signing massive deals allowing many of the company’s most iconic characters for AI usage. Whoever takes his place, they will have as much cleaning up to do as Iger himself did after Eisner’s tenure. We’re eager to see how this all plays out, with a company that has shaped global pop culture for a century.