2019 has been a huge year for Disney and as a result, Bob Iger, CEO of the Walt Disney Company, has been named TIME Magazine’s “Businessperson of the Year.”
- Perhaps Iger’s biggest accomplishment of 2019 is, of course, Disney+. TIME notes that the new streaming service was quite a gamble but has been, at least thus far, a huge success.
- Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, who was on Disney’s board from 2010 to 2018, applauded Iger’s talents in regards to Disney+, saying “I think the Disney+ launch has been amazing. It’s a big risk, but Bob’s really good at understanding the landscape further out as well as executing a strategy. It’s rare to be able to do both.”
- Disney+ was far from Disney’s only accomplishment of 2019 though. Iger himself acknowledged the busy year, saying “This has been probably one of the most productive years we’ve had as a company in the 15 years that I’ve been in this job. This time last year, we had not closed the deal for Fox. We had not opened up two Star Wars Lands, we had not launched Disney+. We had not closed the deal for control of Hulu.”
- On top of all of that, Iger also became a best-selling author with the release of his memoir The Ride of a Lifetime, which became available in September.
- It was also a huge year for Disney films, with Avengers: Endgame becoming the highest grossing film of all-time.
- Disney also broke its own record for total box office earnings in a single year. That was accomplished back in July, when the company still had three films yet to release this year.
- Since then, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil and Frozen 2 have added roughly a combined $1.4 billion to the total, bringing the 2019 earnings to right around a staggering $9 billion, with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker still to come.
- Earlier this year, Iger was also named The Hollywood Reporter’s “Most Powerful Person in Entertainment.”
- It has certainly been a very successful year for Iger and the Walt Disney Company as a whole.