Disney has named Josh D'Amaro as its new chief executive officer, putting the man in charge of the theme parks and cruise ships, which have become its biggest source of profits, atop America's best-known entertainment brand.
D'Amaro will succeed Bob Iger to become the ninth leader of Disney in its 102-year history. The CEO job requires not only running a sprawling empire but also serving as its high-profile, and highly scrutinized, public ambassador.
D'Amaro won a challenging bake-off for the job against Disney's entertainment co-Chairman Dana Walden that has been the talk of Hollywood for more than a year.
Disney's leadership has been determined to run this succession process as smoothly as possible after its disastrous last try. The company named previous parks' boss Bob Chapek as CEO in 2020, only to fire him and bring back Iger two years later in a dramatic corporate coup.
The CEO selection was overseen by Chairman James Gorman, who joined Disney's board in 2024 after managing a widely praised succession process at Morgan Stanley. Iger was chairman when the board picked Chapek.
Shareholders will now look to D'Amaro to lay out and execute a growth plan for the company, whose stock price is down by nearly half from its 2021 high and has been essentially stagnant for the past three years.
The 54-year-old spent most of his 28 years at Walt Disney working in the theme-parks business in the U.S. and overseas, including stints at California's Disneyland and Florida's Walt Disney World. Since 2020 he has been chairman of Disney's experiences unit, which includes theme parks, cruise ships and consumer products.
U.S.-listed shares of the company rose 1% in premarket trading.
His rise mirrors the shifting economics of the company, which used to be driven by profits from television networks. Experiences accounted for 38% of Disney's revenue in its past fiscal year and 57% of operating income. Disney is spending $60 billion to grow the theme-parks and cruise businesses in the decade ending in 2033 -- the biggest such investment in its history.
Current and former employees viewed D'Amaro as the most likely candidate to succeed Iger because of his expertise in the business Disney is counting on to fuel its growth.
His vision for Disney's future includes giving videogames a bigger role at the company and integrating gaming technology throughout its creative processes, said a person familiar with his thinking. D'Amaro championed a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games in 2024 and has overseen Disney's relationship with the "Fortnite" maker.
A common criticism of D'Amaro and past CEO candidates who came from the company's theme-parks and consumer-products businesses is that they lack expertise working with creative talent. Though Disney's entertainment unit is now smaller than experiences, it creates the characters and stories the attractions and toys are based on.
Most of D'Amaro's experience is in finance and theme-park operations. But since taking over the experiences unit, he has frequently collaborated with colleagues in entertainment and schmoozed with stars at movie premieres and events in the parks. He has also gotten involved in the primary creative unit that reported to him, Walt Disney Imagineering, by recruiting an experienced leader to reinvigorate the team that designs park attractions and cruise ships.
Still, some at Disney thought Walden, who joined the company in 2019 through its acquisition of most of 21st Century Fox, was a better choice because of her decades working closely with creative talent. She ran Fox's television studio and network before taking over Disney's TV business and co-heading streaming.
Profits from Disney+ and Hulu are rising but are a fraction of the size of experiences. And as at other media companies, Disney's streaming services haven't come close to generating the profits that television did at its peak in the 2010s.