A spokeswoman for Mr Iger said he was unavailable for an interview.
In recent months, as Disney’s troubles mounted, senior executives privately urged Mr. Iger to extend his contract extension. In its Wednesday statement, Disney emphasized that it was the board, and not Mr. Iger, who was pushing for an extension. Given his series contract extensions, the narrative has – rightly or wrongly – formed in Hollywood that he’s reluctant to step down from power. “The board has determined that it is in the best interests of shareholders to extend his term and has approved our motion,” Disney chief executive Mark G. Parker said in the statement, adding that Mr. Iger already ” Put Disney on the right strategic path for continued value creation.”
Disney shares traded at around $90, down 3 percent from a year ago and down 54 percent from their peak in March 2021. Following the news of Mr. Iger’s extension, shares were broadly flat in after-hours trading.
The challenge is that in addition to succession, Disney has also grappled with issues on almost every front, including fresh questions about its film studios amid disappointing summer box office results for Elemental, Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Fortune. and, to a lesser extent, The Little Mermaid. Disney has attempted to acquire full control of Hulu, but such a purchase would be expensive, and Disney has around $45 billion in debt, due in part to the pandemic.
Meanwhile, Disney’s revenue engine of the past 30 years — traditional television, including ESPN — has become a shadow of its former self, driven by cable cuts, advertising weakness, and rising sports programming costs. Mr. Iger is betting that streaming services will get the company back on track for growth. But Disney+ has been losing subscribers, and a broader streaming division remains unprofitable, having lost nearly $2 billion since the start of the fiscal year.
Disney is also grappling with an ongoing writers’ strike; and contract negotiations between the studios and SAG-AFTRA, the guild representing some 160,000 actors, have gone badly and could result in a strike as early as Thursday.