Do we like Disney?
US entertainment giant: studios, Disney+ and Hulu, ABC, ESPN, theme parks, resorts and cruises.
Our score: 6 out of 10. Mostly a decent business with a clean new leadership handover, but we'd hold back on a full thumbs-up. It has a kids' privacy penalty, a big wage settlement and a bruising Kimmel episode.
Disney spent years in a messy succession saga. Bob Iger handed over to Bob Chapek, the board ousted Chapek in November 2022, and Iger came back. Variety called the original handoff a disaster. The board then set up a formal succession committee led by chair James Gorman.
The new boss is Josh D'Amaro, a Disney lifer who joined in 1998 and ran the theme parks. He took over on March 18, 2026, with Dana Walden as president and chief creative officer. Iger stays on as a senior adviser until the end of 2026. The board's vote for D'Amaro was unanimous.
Not all clean, though. A federal judge approved a $10M settlement after the FTC alleged Disney let data be collected from kids watching its YouTube videos without proper labelling or parental consent. Disney neither admitted nor denied the allegations, and a private class action followed.
On workers, Disney agreed to pay $233M to settle a class action by Disneyland staff who said they were underpaid under an Anaheim wage law. An appeals court had sided with the workers. A later union deal set a $24 minimum base wage, which is a real step up.
In September 2025 ABC pulled Jimmy Kimmel's show hours after FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened action. Critics, including an FCC commissioner, called it self-censorship, and some viewers boycotted. Kimmel was back within days. That, plus the FTC and wage cases, is why we land at a middling 6.