The Walt Disney Company was founded in 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as a small animation studio in Los Angeles. Mickey Mouse's 1928 debut in Steamboat Willie and the 1937 release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs showed that characters the studio owned could be reused, licensed and expanded for decades, which became the basis of Disney's business.
The Iger acquisitions: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox
When Bob Iger became CEO in 2005, Disney Animation was struggling and the Pixar relationship was strained. Iger bought Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006, Marvel for about $4 billion in 2009, Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012 and 21st Century Fox's entertainment assets for $71.3 billion in 2019. Those deals gave Disney many of the most valuable film franchises of the 21st century.
The flywheel: parks, cruises and consumer products
A Disney hit earns money well after its box office run. The same characters drive Disney+ viewing, merchandise licensing, and park lands such as Avengers Campus and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge. Experiences, which includes parks, cruises and consumer products, earned a record $10.0 billion of segment operating income in fiscal 2025, about 57% of Disney's total.
The streaming pivot
As cord-cutting eroded cable TV, Disney launched Disney+ in 2019 and pulled its content from Netflix. Streaming lost billions in its early years before turning profitable in fiscal 2024 through price increases, advertising tiers and password-sharing limits. ESPN followed with a full direct-to-consumer service in August 2025.
From Chapek to Iger to D'Amaro
Bob Chapek succeeded Iger in 2020 and led Disney through pandemic closures, but the board brought Iger back in November 2022 amid rising streaming losses. Iger reorganized the company into Entertainment, ESPN and Experiences, cut costs and won a 2024 proxy fight against Trian. On March 18, 2026, former Experiences chairman Josh D'Amaro became CEO, putting the parks and franchise business at the center of Disney's next era.
