Bob Iger Calls Pixar Acquisition His “Proudest Decision” as Disney CEO

In an interview this week on ‘Squawk on the Street’ with CNBC’s David Faber, former Disney CEO Bob Iger said the acquisition of Pixar is his “proudest decision” because it put Walt Disney on the path to other meaningful investments.

“I’m proud of a lot of the decisions that were made,” he said. “Certainly, the acquisitions — I’d say of all of them — Pixar, because it was the first. And it put us on the path to achieving what I wanted to achieve, which is scale when it comes to storytelling. That was probably the best.”

Since Pixar’s first film ‘Toy Story’ debuted in 1995, the animation studio has generated over $14.7 billion in sales at the global box office. Iger also highlighted how Disney’s integration of Pixar into its company helped persuade other brand owners.

“You look at ‘Frozen’ and you look at ‘Moana’ and you look at ‘Zootopia’ and you look at ‘Wreck It Ralph’ and you look at ‘Tangled’ and the number of Academy Awards and the box-office success, and all of the IP that that created — generated,” Iger said. “You know, it all was tied really, everything that we’ve done at Disney animation since then was tied to the Pixar acquisition.”

Iger, who stepped down as the CEO of Disney in 2020, also helped broker deals to acquire Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 20th Century Fox.