Can Toy Story help Disney's new CEO get the magic back?

**Will Bain** (0:00)
In its century-long history, the Walt Disney Company has had only eight chief executives. Josh D'Amaro is then in a rare class, but he arguably faces a more difficult landscape ahead of him to lead Mickey and co. through than any of his predecessors. Hence, he and Disney are the subject of today's episode of Power Players from Business Daily. Yeah, welcome back, I'm Will Bain, here in the studio in the UK.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:28)
I'm Rahul Tandon, also in a studio here in the UK.

**Michelle Fleury** (0:31)
And I'm Michelle Fleury, not in the studio in the UK, but here in New York.

**Will Bain** (0:36)
Welcome back, everybody. This is a company, I think, guys, isn't it, that's hard to find anyone on the planet who hasn't interacted it in some way, even if it's not been for a long time. So have you guys, Rahul, you got a favourite film, a favourite Disney character?

**Rahul Tandon** (0:49)
I've got so many, Will, can I only have one?

**Will Bain** (0:51)
One of the villains, I'm sure you are.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:52)
No, no, well, you did get it. The Lion King, Aladdin, but I went for...

**Will Bain** (0:56)
You're Mufasa.

**Rahul Tandon** (0:56)
I went for, wait, wait, wait, wait, I went for Shere Khan from Jungle Book, who is the best villain in the history of cinema, I think.

**Will Bain** (1:06)
Good villain. Michelle?

**Michelle Fleury** (1:08)
Well, now you're making me rethink it. I'm like, oh, do I want to pick someone from the Jungle Book? I was originally going to go all sweet, Thumper.
The Rabbit from Bambi.

**Will Bain** (1:18)
Now there's a great Disney character as well. Unfortunately, neither of you got the right answer, which is the Aristocats. The only right answer for the best Disney film.

**Rahul Tandon** (1:25)
That's only because you like cats.

**Will Bain** (1:26)
If they don't mess up the live action version that's apparently being trailed, then that might change my mind on it. We're talking about all of that, because it's interesting that neither of you mentioned a couple of their other most famous characters, or certainly since they bought the Pixar studio, because Toy Story provided some good news for Disney with the fifth edition of the animated film, starring the likes of Jesse, Woody, Buzz Lightyear, Rex the Dinosaur, my favorite, as broken records for box office open in the franchise's 30 year history. Ticket sales more than $300 million around the world, and the film's theme tune written by no other than Taylor Swift, also number one in the US and the UK at the moment too.
Much needed win on the screen for Disney after a bumpy few years for the company. We'll come to that in a bit more depth and some of the challenges they've had in the new streaming wars world, Michelle, a little later on. But first of all, the man who's gonna lead them through this change in this transition, Josh D'Amaro, tell us a little bit about him.

**Michelle Fleury** (2:24)
Look, Josh D'Amaro is someone who grafted his way from the very bottom, from the car park, literally, to the top job as CEO. And it started in the 90s. He was, would you believe it, studying sculpture. So there you go. If you take an arts degree, one day you can end up a CEO. But apparently what happened was it was 2 a.m. and he was in the studio mid-world. He panicked and he thought, well, how on earth am I going to raise a family as an artist? And so he kind of downed tools and swapped to a business degree. And then he spent his summer holidays working in the Disneyland parking lot.
And then it wasn't until 1998 when he went back full time. And that was the start of a 28 year journey to the sort of corporate top of the ladder.

**Will Bain** (3:13)
Yeah, so amazing climb up that ladder, Rahul. Disney-esque some might say. The challenges though that he faces are not just sort of ones in the job, are they? It's who he's following and names. I mean, we said there's only been seven predecessors and one of them, Bob Iger, his direct predecessor, has had a couple of bites at the job in the past.

**Rahul Tandon** (3:31)
He has. And I think a lot of people would say that Bob Iger, after Walt Disney, is the seminal figure in the history of Disney. You know, he bought Pixar, he bought Star Wars, didn't he? He bought Marvel, he bought 21st Century Fox, he set up streaming as well and expanded the parks into China. And I think it's such an important job if you're in charge of Disney. I was talking about this with my daughter. And we were talking about shared entertainment experiences. You know, she's a Netflix, Spotify generation. The thing that we have in common is Disney. She's grown up with Disney, I've grown up with Disney. So if you're in charge of this company, you are a custodian of something that's not just a business, isn't it? It's part of something that's given many millions of generation happiness all over the world.