As a new CEO takes the reins of Disney, TV chief Dana Walden will step up to add oversight of Disney’s film studio operations to her purview.
Starting March 18, Walden in her role as president and chief creative officer will oversee film and TV production and distribution activity within the Disney Entertainment unit. She also continues to run the operations of Hulu and Disney + and the TWDC Marketing arm.
ESPN remains a sports TV island within the Mouse House as chairman Jimmy Pitaro will continue to report to the CEO, which will soon shift from Bob Iger to Josh D’Amaro. Asad Ayaz last month was named Disney’s Chief Marketing and Brand Officer, reporting to Iger and as of next month, D’Amaro. Disney’s top film executive is Alan Bergman, who has spent the past few years as co-chairman of Disney Entertainment alongside Walden.
The transition for newly minted CEO D’Amaro and Walden will no doubt be a tricky one as the two were very publicly the final contenders to succeed Bob Iger as chief executive. In the final weeks, there’s no question that the horse race aspect of Disney’s long-running CEO succession drama became a big distraction and even put a strain on operations at a busy time of year for the entertainment side.
Walden’s newly created role is a first for Disney. Her leadership of the studio and general guidance on the entertainment aspects of Disney’s Magic Kingdom will be crucial for D’Amaro, who does not have much of a profile in Hollywood.
READ MORE: Disney Names Park Chief Josh D’Amaro as Next CEO, Succeeding Bob Iger
Walden, on the other hand, rose through the ranks at Fox starting in 1993. She came to Disney in 2019 with the 21st Century Fox acquisition. She was long seen as Iger’s top choice to succeed him as CEO. But the macro-economic shifts in Disney operations and the rightward political turn in the U.S. likely swayed the Disney board’s final vote. Walden has been prominent as a supporter of Democratic candidates and she has a personal friendship with former Vice President Kamala Harris. Amid the blunt force employed by the Trump administration in all aspects of business and culture, Walden’s ties to Harris clearly became a liability in this extraordinary political moment in the U.S.
D’Amaro’s elevation to CEO is also remarkable from a showbiz perspective. For decades, Disney’s film and TV studio was the company’s primary driver of profits. But the upheaval in the balance sheet as streaming has upended not just TV but also the foundations of the film business means that Disney’s parks and experiences realm is where the growth is seen as coming for the foreseeable future. Nothing underscores that more than the choice of D’Amaro for the top job rather than a showbiz veteran.
Disney’s Dana Walden, newly promoted to president and chief creative officer, and Disney’s new CEO Josh D’Amaro
However, as Disney experienced just a few years ago with the ill-fated handoff from Iger to Bob Chapek, whose background was also in Disney’s parks and consumer products units, the Hollywood operations and the company’s relationships in the creative community cannot be discounted. Chapek’s early missteps in alienating talent — and the talent representation community — helped seal his fate. After taking the CEO job in February 2020, Chapek was bounced out of the role by the Disney board after less than three years, in November 2022 when Iger was brought back.
As such, D’Amaro and Walden will need to adjust amid the larger shakeup and maintain a good working relationship to keep the studio side of the company healthy and contributing the characters and stories that drive the parks and consumer products. By all accounts, the two are friendly and have worked together closely in recent years on parks, experiences and consumer products initiatives that involved Disney’s expansive TV and streaming activities.
Per Disney’s Securities and Exchange Commission disclosures, Walden has signed a lucrative new employment contract that runs through March 2030.
More to come
