Josh D’Amaro attended his first D23: The Ultimate Disney Fan Event as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, having succeeded Bob Iger five months ago.
On Day 3 of the Disney event, D’Amaro had a sit down with Ginnifer Goodwin where he opened up about the future of Disney and how it’s been for him as the new CEO of the company.
For starters, the executive says “it’s still strange” for people to refer to him as CEO “because I’ve been here for 30 years,” adding, “I started at an entry-level position at Disneyland in 1998.”
“I loved Disney growing up,” he said. “I visited the parks with my family. I remember those moments so clearly. They truly have stuck with me. I’ve been a fan first for my entire life, and then to come and actually work for the company — the moment I got inside the walls, it’s cool to be working for Disney.”
D’Amaro gave a shoutout to the cast members and “the leaders behind the scenes,” who “care about this place, care about the company, care about the fans in a real, genuine way. To be here at D23, it takes a lot of work to pull an event like this, but to see the fandom, to see the rewards of all the hard work that’s been put into making these places and making these stories as special as they are, there’s nothing like it.”
In terms of opportunities that D’Amaro considers for the future of the company he said there are several important things that are important to him at the highest level.
“First is that we are a company that tells the world’s best stories, and we will never — I will never relent on that,” he explained. “So, making sure that we’re making great films like Zootopia, making sure that we’re making the next attraction that just blows people away, the next Broadway show that pulls people in. As simple as it sounds, that has to be the focus of all leaders, quite frankly, at the Disney Company.”
D’Amaro also pointed that currently the industry is at the “intersection of technology and media,” adding, “I don’t think it’s ever been more relevant and more powerful. And this company, the Walt Disney Company, has always thrived in these moments, all the way back to to Walt as he was thinking about film and how to change how films are made, or Disneyland and animatronics.”
He continued, “We’re in this moment where I want to push in to the technology that’s available to us, marry it with this beautiful story making, and push the company forward.”
Lastly, D’Amaro noted that the Walt Disney Company is an accumulation of different things, wether it’s ESPN, a streamer, a theme park, and a film producer.
“We’re the Walt Disney Company, and for anyone that’s looking around contextually at the entertainment landscape right now, it kind of looks like people are trying to look like Disney,” he said. “They’ll try to buy some of this stuff and that stuff. And for us, we have all of that. We have the the best IP in the world. We have the best collection of businesses in the world. We have scale around the globe like nobody else has, and we have talent that everyone wishes they had. So if we now pull this whole company together in one, and show up as one company wherever that is-Disney+, or in a theme park, or at a place like D23-no one can compete with us. There’s nothing like the Walt Disney Company where we can operate as one.”
