Bob Iger, who stepped down from his second stint as Disney CEO in March, gave an exit interview to Financial Times in which he revealed that he tried to acquire the James Bond franchise for Disney amid a spending spree that included the acquisitions of Pixar, Marvel and “Star Wars.” Pixar was priority number one for Iger, and the studio “felt unstoppable” when it acquired Pixar in May 2006 for $7.4 billion.
“It was like the clouds lifted and the sun started to shine again,” Iger said. “We put together a list of acquisition targets. Marvel was one, ‘Star Wars’ was another, James Bond was one. We had a list and I figured let’s just tick them off and buy them all.”
James Bond is the franchise that got away (Amazon is its current owner). Other companies did, too. Iger told FT that he was close to buying Twitter from owner Jack Dorsey “at a very attractive price.” The plan was to turn Twitter into a global distribution platform for Disney, but Iger admitted he got cold feet on the morning of the deal and worried it would be “a horrible distraction.” Elon Musk ended up buying Twitter and transforming it into X.
Disney also flirted with an Apple merger. Iger first revealed in his 2019 memoir that he believed the two companies would’ve combined or “at least discussed the possibility” of merging “very seriously” if Steve Jobs “were still alive.” But now Iger revealed that “some conversations” did actually take place between Apple and Disney about a merger that Iger thinks would have been “truly transformational and equal.”
“We talked about it internally, and we had some conversations with Apple about it, but it never went anywhere,” Iger said. Apple didn’t show that much interest.”
Iger stepped down as Disney CEO in March and was succeeded by Josh D’Amaro. News broke in April that Iger had taken a role as an adviser to venture-capital firm Thrive Capital. The New York-based company was founded in 2009 by Josh Kushner, the younger brother of Jared Kushner, who is Donald Trump’s son-in-law. In September 2022, Iger joined Thrive Capital as a venture partner.
