Bob Iger's Disney Wanted Apple, Twitter, and 007

In an exit interview with The Financial Times (paywalled), former Disney CEO Bob Iger says the company seriously considered buying Twitter, explored a potential merger with Apple, and pursued the James Bond franchise during his tenure. The Verge reports: According to Iger, Disney came close to buying Twitter from co-founder Jack Dorsey "at a very attractive price," sometime prior to Elon Musk buying the social media platform in 2022 and changing its name to X. Iger had plans to turn Twitter into a global distribution platform for Disney, but walked away on the morning of the deal over concerns that it would be "a horrible distraction."

Disney was also at one point involved in early conversations regarding a potential merger with Apple, something Iger thinks would have been "truly transformational." In the end, Iger says these conversations "never went anywhere," and that "Apple didn't show that much interest." The two companies have a mixed history -- Iger was an Apple board member from 2011 to 2019, and notably a driving force behind Disney acquiring Pixar in 2006, which was led by Apple co-founder Steve Jobs at the time. According to Iger, his first call with Jobs resulted in an almost immediate deal to put Disney content on the first video iPod. "All of a sudden, I'm now someone Steve likes and respects," Iger told The Financial Times. "The old Disney that he knew was lumbering in terms of bureaucracy. And so he thought, this is a new day."

The Pixar acquisition spurred Iger to find more companies to bring under Disney's wing, though not every attempt was successful. "We felt unstoppable. We put together a list of acquisition targets," said Iger. "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." Iger provides no details about Disney's attempt to buy the James Bond franchise, but we know it obviously failed -- Amazon bought the 007 distribution rights when it acquired MGM in 2022, and later paid more than $1 billion to take full creative control of the franchise in February 2025.

If Iger thinks he’s on par

[hdyoung]

With Apple, he’s got delusions of grandeur. One of these companies is hands-down the strongest consumer electronics powerhouse in the world, with a major manufacturing footprint.

The other one makes cute cartoons and fantasy entertainment.

Trust

[JBMcB]

This is the underlying problem. The CEOs don't trust their own company. When the studio was churning out hits in the 1990s, the should have thrown everything they had at the studio team. Instead they cut the budgets and strangled wages, so half the people went to work for Dreamworks and Sony. Same thing happened with Pixar. Brad Bird (The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, Ratatouille, etc...) wanted to direct a live-action movie. Disney eventually nixed the project, so he left for a few years.

If you trust the people working for you, you pay them well and fund their projects. If you don't trust them, you keep buying other companies hoping to fill in the creative void.

Re:

[Black Parrot]

If you trust the people working for you, you pay them well and fund their projects.

That's no longer the American Way (if it ever was).

Re:

[JBMcB]

That's no longer the American Way (if it ever was).

It still is, for successful companies, and when it's not, you go work for Sony or Dreamworks :)

Re:

[Himmy32]

First, Iger was on the board of Apple for 8 years ending in 2019. Disney wanting to merge when Apple was starting to move into the entertainment industry with Apple TV (also in 2019), sure doesn't seem outside the realm of possibility.

Apple now also makes cute cartoons and fantasy entertainment. [wikipedia.org]

Re:

[OrangeTide]

Would have been a big deal to have something like Disney+ being an Apple-only service. So there were potential upsides to both companies, but the devil is in the details. It would have had to be structured like a holding company with CEOs remaining in each respective division so that very little changes from the outside.

The minnow thinks it can swallow the whale

[Vecna!]

* Disney Market Cap: $180 billion
* Apple Market Cap: $4.32 trillion.

That's an acquisition Bob, not a merger.

Re:

[taustin]

It's also disingenuous to call a merger "swallowing." While the bigger company (if it was bigger at the time) usually comes out on top, it's not a guarantee. Smaller companies often have far more agile political chops and end up taking control. There are several examples in the banking industry.

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[EMB Numbers]

Oh yah. It's like when Apple purchased NeXT and 6 months later, Steve Jobs was CEO of Apple. Next employees took over almost every important management function. I was at a Mac OS X 1.0 Release Party at a winery in Sonoma, and people described the sequence of events as NeXT's takeover of Apple for negative $400M.

Self serving revisionism by Bob Iger ?

[Mirnotoriety]

Framing it as entirely his personal moral epiphany is classic executive revisionism. Gets to look like a visionary who anticipated the convergence of big tech and massive content libraries.

Thank fucking god

[anoncoward69]

That Musk got it before Disney could get it's hands on Twitter and trash it. Twitter / X is just about the only major platform you can post and consume porn

Re:

[alvinrod]

Why do you need a social media platform for porn? Not that I think it ought to be banned or anything like that, but what utility does being able to retweet some girl posting pictures of her butthole add? Do you have some kind of fetish where you want your grandmother to see that you follow multiple accounts where people post videos of themselves getting pegged while wearing fur suits? I honestly don't understand what value that adds to the platform.

Re:

[anoncoward69]

Because you like trading pictures with other real people and not watching fake ass model porn.

Disney vs Amazon with regards to James Bond

[sarren1901]

It's rather hard to say which would abuse the franchise more, but at this point, James Bond is dead as far as I'm concerned. Sure, they'll say he some how miracles escaped the ending of the last movie but give me a break.

James Bond, Star Wars and at this point Marvel are all overdone and need to be put out to pasture so new ideas can come to the front.

I'd say these days, the graphic adult comic books and books in general seem to make better source material then continuing with dated and overdone IP.

Of course, from Disney's perspective and most media at this point, it's easier to used old ideas and market them to teens/young adults that didn't see all the other content. Much easier to see to a 20 year old with vastly less world exposure then a 45 year old that is picky as shit and has higher expectations. From that perspective, why waste time on the unpleasable when you can pull the wool over the eyes of a child that thinks every "new to them" idea is actually new.

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[anoncoward69]

If Disney got a hold of Bond we would be on the 30th Bond movie by now. They would probably be cranking out AI Bond moves every 6 months. Just look at their track record with grinding other franchises into the ground like Starwars.

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[techno-vampire]

Yes! And considering Disney's penchant for recycling old stories, I'm surprised that they've never tried to remake the old Andy Hardy [wikipedia.org] movies from the 30s and 40s.

They also tried to buy America Online

[kriston]

Allegedly, they also tried to buy America Online (AOL).

This was a persistent rumor in the 1990s and 2000s.