Disney's New CEO Is An Insurance Policy Against AI Killing Hollywood As We Know It
What happens when AI makes movies cheap? Disney just hired someone who knows.
Disney has a new CEO taking over for Bob Iger, and his name is Josh D’Amaro. And like Iger’s previous successor, Bob Chapek (who lasted almost three years), D’Amaro has been plucked from his duties running Disney’s theme parks and cruises division, the in-person business that is responsible for the majority of the company’s profit, despite the high profile of the studio’s films and television franchises and networks.
Chapek took over from Iger in February 2020, just a couple of weeks before a global pandemic was officially declared. An executive whose skill was navigating Disney’s in-person business watched as IRL businesses were shuttered for nearly two years, and streaming TV and movies, something Chapek had little experience in, became the priority. Along the way, Chapek didn’t win many friends among the Hollywood elite as he needed to keep Disney afloat as its resorts, theme parks, and cruises were stalled, most notably Scarlett Johansson, who ended up suing the studio due to Chapek’s handling of her Black Widow movie.
So what’s different this time? Well, this go round, the succession process was a lot more intentional, and not executed in the shadow of a chaotic virus-fueled upending of the entire entertainment industry. New Disney Chairman James Gorman, along with Iger, vetted what they say were over 100 candidates for the CEO slot. The leading contender next to D’Amaro was Dana Walden, who was overseeing Disney’s television business but is much better connected in Hollywood compared to D’Amaro. Instead of becoming CEO, Walden is now President and Chief Creative Officer of Disney, which means she’ll add the studio’s film concerns to her plate.
The Politics of the Mouse House
Then there’s the insider chatter as to why Disney picked D’Amaro over Walden, especially since the last parks-and-cruises guy didn’t work out. The logic is two-fold. Disney has to protect its primary profit engine, and D’Amaro has done a great job with that. As for film and TV, the pesky topic of politics has been raised as a possible handicap for Walden’s CEO ambitions. There was President Trump’s ugly fight with Jimmy Kimmel, whose show airs on Disney’s ABC.
Most inconveniently, there’s the fact that Walden is known to be very good friends with former presidential candidate Kamala Harris. Despite defeating her handily in the 2024 election, Harris remains one of Trump’s primary targets. If Walden were Disney’s CEO, the dynamic could immediately put the company on the bad side of a president who has become increasingly critical, and at times even involved, in the media businesses covering his administration.
Walden would have likely made a fantastic CEO and the first woman to ever lead Disney, but it probably would have set the company up to fight the White House for the next three years on a myriad of issues. Strategically, at this moment, it would have been risky. The alternative, Walden working as a powerful lieutenant to D’Amaro, keeps shareholders happy and likely dispels any of their nervousness about potential politically charged skirmishes between Disney and Trump.
Meanwhile, Walden takes her decades of executive experience and steers Disney into a challenging new era of AI, streaming continuing to chip away at terrestrial TV, the precarious state of movie theaters, and a 24/7 fight for audience attention. With such challenges ahead, someone focused on just those issues presents an advantage for Disney.
The new structure is a solid bet on the present, and if, for some reason, D’Amaro doesn’t work out, Walden would be an easy pick in 2028 to take over, just as Trump exits office.
Disney’s AI Safety Net
One of the biggest legacy accomplishments of Iger will be his move to acquire and blend Apple founder Steve Jobs’ Pixar 3D animation studio into the Disney fold in 2006. The injection of a completely new animation style and additional tech-driven productions gave Disney new life, just as it was beginning to settle into the background as an “old school” animation studio.
Iger is attempting to pull off the same kind of legacy trick on his way out with his stewardship of Disney’s $1 billion investment in OpenAI, integration of its AI video tools on Disney+, and a three-year licensing deal for Disney characters for OpenAI’s Sora app users.
“We view AI as having a number of possible advantages or opportunities for the company. One is as a tool to help the creative process. Another is productivity…”
—Bob Iger
“It’s our hope that we will use the Sora tools to enable subscribers of Disney+ to create short-form videos on our platform,” said Iger during the company’s earnings call on Monday. “We view AI as having a number of possible advantages or opportunities for the company. One is as a tool to help the creative process. Another is productivity, which is simply being more efficient. And the third, I’ll call connectivity, which is creating basically a more intimate relationship with the consumer. Enabling the consumer and enabling us to, with the consumer, have a more engaged, more effective relationship.”
What is less talked about is Iger’s behind-the-scenes role in OpenAI’s future. In December, OpenAI took an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings, an investment vehicle under Thrive Capital, where Iger serves as a venture partner. So before the OpenAI and Disney deal was even struck, Iger was already close to the AI startup. Oh, and let’s not forget politics again. Thrive Capital happens to be owned by Josh Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner, who is the husband of Ivanka Trump, which makes him President Trump’s son-in-law. So from a business perspective, the Disney and OpenAI deal was a kind of extended family affair, with Iger playing the role of virtual second cousin, a fact not likely to be missed by the White House.
What the New Disney Thinks About AI
Although Iger has frontloaded potential new innovations into Disney’s media entertainment future, he will be stepping down on March 18 (and will remain employed as a consultant for the remainder of 2026). So the OpenAI deal with Disney will need a good shepherd, and D’Amaro, a 28-year veteran of the company, seems game. During an ABC News interview not long after the CEO announcement, D’Amaro gave his thoughts on AI and Disney.
“The reason this company is so special is because of how creative we are and the human beings who are generating that creativity. In my mind, that never gets replaced,” said D’Amaro, sitting alongside Iger during the interview. “This is not even theory anymore. This is real. AI is here, and it’s something we’re embracing. And you’re seeing it supercharge creatives in amazing ways, and they have embraced artificial intelligence. If you were to walk to their studios today, you would see them using AI and harnessing 70 years of history. This is when The Walt Disney Company thrives, when technology intersects with brilliant people and creativity, and we are in that moment right now.”
Those are bold words from someone who is generally more focused on the in-person businesses of Disney rather than the digital arms. And I have to wonder if Walden is as lockstep with this notion of AI being integrated into Disney entertainment’s film and TV projects, whether as enhancement tools, or possibly as a Pixar-style wholesale revamping of how animation and even live-action video is produced.
In December, as speculation heated up about whether she or D’Amaro would get the CEO chair, Walden appeared for a rare interview with Bloomberg, where she spoke about AI.
“In terms of our premium stories and how we think about AI, we see it as either a way to bend the cost curve, or to help us move faster and more efficiently,” said Walden. “We are approaching all of that together with the actors, writers, and directors who are our partners and who have very strong feelings about what constitutes a uniquely human story and how to protect the contributors in that process…Disney magic is storytelling. It does not have to take any one form. I think the fundamentals of a story are Disney. The technology has evolved rapidly throughout the history of the company.”
On the surface, D’Amaro and Walden appear to be aligned: technology in service of good storytelling, not as a replacement for humans telling those stories in various ways.
The Future of the Magic Kingdom
Ok, so everyone at the top of Disney is saying the right things about AI. And maybe those words will offer some solace to members of the Directors Guild of America (DGA), SAG-AFTRA (actors’ union), and the Writers Guild of America, just as all of those unions prepare to negotiate new contracts this year, mostly focused on reining in AI as a potential threat to human jobs in Hollywood.
But there’s something about D’Amaro’s appointment that isn’t a particularly strong sign for Disney’s media entertainment. Sure, Disney now has a toehold in the AI game and will work to see what can be done to optimize productions across animation and, perhaps, live-action properties. Whether that means AI VFX or wholesale synthetic performances, we can’t know for sure. But let’s set that aside for a second and think a decade or two ahead. If AI does indeed make film and TV dramatically cheaper for all studios, and video media effectively becomes commoditized, rendering Disney’s moat of distinct and beloved IP mostly irrelevant in a sea of content, what then? I think that’s exactly why the company is betting on D’Amaro and his expertise with theme parks and cruises as the future of the company.
“In terms of our premium stories and how we think about AI, we see it as either a way to bend the cost curve, or to help us move faster and more efficiently.”
—Dana Walden
Right now, Netflix’s $337 billion market cap dwarfs Disney’s $184 billion market cap. But that’s only through the lens of a pre-AI reconstructed media landscape. If AI ends up making film and TV “so” cheap that its value plummets to nearly unimaginable depths, Disney’s in-person business, which accounts for the majority of Disney’s operating profit, will be the company’s lifeline. This, by the way, isn’t lost on Netflix, which is aggressively pursuing its own in-person business venture (Netflix House and live events) to similarly cycle its IP from digital into the real world.
Will AI be the grim reaper for premium TV and film, leading to the eventual primacy of in-person experiences as they were before the age of TV and the Internet, or merely a cost-efficient enhancer that helps Hollywood make a better version of what we have today? Based on Disney’s latest stock signals, the market is playing it safe either way. Much like when Iger took over for Michael Eisner in 2005, Disney’s stock price barely moved after D’Amaro was announced as Iger’s successor on Tuesday, a strong signal that most believe he was the right pick…for 2026.
Still, as AI has shown us in the last few years, it is anything but predictable. What works in 2026 cannot possibly account for what AI may yield in the next three years. In-person entertainment is one of the few things—barring pandemics—that we can confidently say will be with us forever. But streaming, theaters, virtual reality, and augmented reality are all part of the flux of this shift in media that will bend in unimaginable ways as AI has its way with all of them. For Disney, whether AI productions or in-person experiences, the only real risk is forgetting its focus, which is the people.
Former Disney CEO Eisner emphasized that sentiment on Tuesday in a public note to D’Amaro via X.com: “My advice to Josh is continue Bob Iger’s strategy that creativity will handle profits, always protect the brand, and keep close the words of Walt Disney: ‘We love to entertain kings and queens, but the vital thing to remember is this—every guest receives the VIP treatment.’ Good luck.”