title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) houses 20th century and contemporary works of art. It moved to its current building in the South of Market neighborhood in 1995 and attracted more than 600,000 visitors annually. SFMOMA closed for renovation and expansion in 2013. The museum reopened on May 14, 2016, with an addition, designed by Snøhetta, that has doubled the museum's size.


title: San Francisco

text: The Palace of the Legion of Honor holds primarily European antiquities and works of art at its Lincoln Park building modeled after its Parisian namesake. The de Young Museum in Golden Gate Park features American decorative pieces and anthropological holdings from Africa, Oceania and the Americas, while Asian art is housed in the Asian Art Museum. Opposite the de Young stands the California Academy of Sciences, a natural history museum that also hosts the Morrison Planetarium and Steinhart Aquarium. Located on Pier 15 on the Embarcadero, the Exploratorium is an interactive science museum. The Contemporary Jewish Museum is a non-collecting institution that hosts a broad array of temporary exhibitions. On Nob Hill, the Cable Car Museum is a working museum featuring the cable car powerhouse, which drives the cables.


title: San Francisco

text: Major League Baseball's San Francisco Giants have played in San Francisco since moving from New York in 1958. The Giants play at Oracle Park, which opened in 2000. The Giants won World Series titles in 2010, 2012, and in 2014. The Giants have boasted such stars as Willie Mays, Willie McCovey and Barry Bonds. In 2012, San Francisco was ranked No. 1 in a study that examined which U.S. metro areas have produced the most Major Leaguers since 1920.


title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco 49ers of the National Football League (NFL) began play in 1946 as an All-America Football Conference (AAFC) league charter member, moved to the NFL in 1950 and into Candlestick Park in 1971. The team began playing its home games at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara in 2014. The 49ers won five Super Bowl titles between 1982 and 1995.


title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco Warriors played in the NBA from 1962 to 1971, before being renamed the Golden State Warriors prior to the 1971–1972 season in an attempt to present the team as a representation of the whole state of California, which had already adopted "The Golden State" nickname. The Warriors' arena, Chase Center, is located in San Francisco. They have won seven championships, and made five consecutive NBA Finals from 2015 to 2019, winning three of them. They won again in 2022, the franchise's first championship while residing in San Francisco proper.


title: San Francisco

text: At the collegiate level, the San Francisco Dons compete in NCAA Division I. Bill Russell led the Dons basketball team to NCAA championships in 1955 and 1956. There is also the San Francisco State Gators, who compete in NCAA Division II. Oracle Park hosted the annual Fight Hunger Bowl college football game from 2002 through 2013 before it moved to Santa Clara.


title: San Francisco

text: The Bay to Breakers footrace, held annually since 1912, is best known for colorful costumes and a celebratory community spirit. The San Francisco Marathon attracts more than 21,000 participants. The Escape from Alcatraz triathlon has, since 1980, attracted 2,000 top professional and amateur triathletes for its annual race. The Olympic Club, founded in 1860, is the oldest athletic club in the United States. Its private golf course has hosted the U.S. Open on five occasions. San Francisco hosted the 2013 America's Cup yacht racing competition.


title: San Francisco

text: With an ideal climate for outdoor activities, San Francisco has ample resources and opportunities for amateur and participatory sports and recreation. There are more than of bicycle paths, lanes and bike routes in the city.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco residents have often ranked among the fittest in the country. Golden Gate Park has miles of paved and unpaved running trails as well as a golf course and disc golf course.


title: San Francisco

text: Boating, sailing, windsurfing and kitesurfing are among the popular activities on San Francisco Bay, and the city maintains a yacht harbor in the Marina District.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco also has had Esports teams, such as the Overwatch League's San Francisco Shock. Established in 2017, they won two back-to-back championship titles in 2019 and 2020.


title: San Francisco

text: Several of San Francisco's parks and nearly all of its beaches form part of the regional Golden Gate National Recreation Area, one of the most visited units of the National Park system in the United States with over 13 million visitors a year. Among the GGNRA's attractions within the city are Ocean Beach, which runs along the Pacific Ocean shoreline and is frequented by a vibrant surfing community, and Baker Beach, which is located in a cove west of the Golden Gate and part of the Presidio, a former military base. Also within the Presidio is Crissy Field, a former airfield that was restored to its natural salt marsh ecosystem. The GGNRA also administers Fort Funston, Lands End, Fort Mason, and Alcatraz. The National Park Service separately administers the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park – a fleet of historic ships and waterfront property around Aquatic Park.


title: San Francisco

text: There are more than 220 parks maintained by the San Francisco Recreation & Parks Department. The largest and best-known city park is Golden Gate Park, which stretches from the center of the city west to the Pacific Ocean. Once covered in native grasses and sand dunes, the park was conceived in the 1860s and was created by the extensive planting of thousands of non-native trees and plants. The large park is rich with cultural and natural attractions such as the Conservatory of Flowers, Japanese Tea Garden and San Francisco Botanical Garden. Lake Merced is a fresh-water lake surrounded by parkland and near the San Francisco Zoo, a city-owned park that houses more than 250 animal species, many of which are endangered. The only park managed by the California State Park system located principally in San Francisco, Candlestick Point was the state's first urban recreation area.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco is the first city in the U.S. to have a park within a 10-Minute Walk of every resident. It also ranks fifth in the U.S. for park access and quality in the 2018 ParkScore ranking of the top 100 park systems across the United States, according to the nonprofit Trust for Public Land.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco—officially known as the City and County of San Francisco—is a consolidated city-county, a status it has held since the 1856 secession of what is now San Mateo County. It is the only such consolidation in California. The mayor is also the county executive, and the county Board of Supervisors acts as the city council. The government of San Francisco is a charter city and is constituted of two co-equal branches: the executive branch is headed by the mayor and includes other citywide elected and appointed officials as well as the civil service; the 11-member Board of Supervisors, the legislative branch, is headed by a president and is responsible for passing laws and budgets, though San Franciscans also make use of direct ballot initiatives to pass legislation.


title: San Francisco

text: The members of the Board of Supervisors are elected as representatives of specific districts within the city. Upon the death or resignation of the mayor, the President of the Board of Supervisors becomes acting mayor until the full Board elects an interim replacement for the remainder of the term. In 1978, Dianne Feinstein assumed the office following the assassination of George Moscone and was later selected by the board to finish the term. In 2011, Ed Lee was selected by the board to finish the term of Gavin Newsom, who resigned to take office as Lieutenant Governor of California. Lee (who won two elections to remain mayor) was temporarily replaced by San Francisco Board of Supervisors President London Breed after he died on December 12, 2017. Supervisor Mark Farrell was appointed by the Board of Supervisors to finish Lee's term on January 23, 2018.


title: San Francisco

text: Because of its unique city-county status, the local government is able to exercise jurisdiction over certain property outside city limits. San Francisco International Airport, though located in San Mateo County, is owned and operated by the City and County of San Francisco. San Francisco's largest jail complex (County Jail No. 5) is located in San Mateo County, in an unincorporated area adjacent to San Bruno. San Francisco was also granted a perpetual leasehold over the Hetch Hetchy Valley and watershed in Yosemite National Park by the Raker Act in 1913.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco serves as the regional hub for many arms of the federal bureaucracy, including the U.S. Court of Appeals, the Federal Reserve Bank, and the U.S. Mint. Until decommissioning in the early 1990s, the city had major military installations at the Presidio, Treasure Island, and Hunters Point—a legacy still reflected in the annual celebration of Fleet Week. The State of California uses San Francisco as the home of the state supreme court and other state agencies. Foreign governments maintain more than seventy consulates in San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: The municipal budget for fiscal year 2015–16 was $8.99 billion, and is one of the largest city budgets in the United States. The City of San Francisco spends more per resident than any city other than Washington D.C, over $10,000 in FY 2015–2016. The city employs around 27,000 workers.


title: San Francisco

text: In the United States House of Representatives, San Francisco is split between California's 12th and 14th districts. The city has voted strongly along Democratic Party lines for decades; in 2020, the city voted 85% to 13% in favor of President Joe Biden over Donald Trump.


title: San Francisco

text: The University of California, San Francisco is the sole campus of the University of California system entirely dedicated to graduate education in health and biomedical sciences. It is ranked among the top five medical schools in the United States and operates the UCSF Medical Center, which ranks as the number one hospital in California and the number 5 in the country. UCSF is a major local employer, second in size only to the city and county government. A Mission Bay campus was opened in 2003, complementing its original facility in Parnassus Heights. It contains research space and facilities to foster biotechnology and life sciences entrepreneurship and will double the size of UCSF's research enterprise. All in all, UCSF operates more than 20 facilities across San Francisco. The University of California, Hastings College of the Law, founded in Civic Center in 1878, is the oldest law school in California and claims more judges on the state bench than any other institution.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco's two University of California institutions have recently formed an official affiliation in the UCSF/UC Hastings Consortium on Law, Science & Health Policy.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco State University is part of the California State University system and is located near Lake Merced. The school has approximately 30,000 students and awards undergraduate, master's and doctoral degrees in more than 100 disciplines. The City College of San Francisco, with its main facility in the Ingleside district, is one of the largest two-year community colleges in the country. It has an enrollment of about 100,000 students and offers an extensive continuing education program.


title: San Francisco

text: Founded in 1855, the University of San Francisco, a private Jesuit university located on Lone Mountain, is the oldest institution of higher education in San Francisco and one of the oldest universities established west of the Mississippi River. Golden Gate University is a private, nonsectarian, coeducational university formed in 1901 and located in the Financial District.


title: San Francisco

text: With an enrollment of 13,000 students, the Academy of Art University is the largest institute of art and design in the nation. Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute is the oldest art school west of the Mississippi. The California College of the Arts, located north of Potrero Hill, has programs in architecture, fine arts, design, and writing. The San Francisco Conservatory of Music, the only independent music school on the West Coast, grants degrees in orchestral instruments, chamber music, composition, and conducting. The California Culinary Academy, associated with the Le Cordon Bleu program, offers programs in the culinary arts, baking and pastry arts, and hospitality and restaurant management.


title: San Francisco

text: California Institute of Integral Studies, founded in 1968, offers a variety of graduate programs in its Schools of Professional Psychology & Health, and Consciousness and Transformation.


title: San Francisco

text: Public schools are run by the San Francisco Unified School District, which covers the entire city and county, as well as the California State Board of Education for some charter schools. Lowell High School, the oldest public high school in the U.S. west of the Mississippi, and the smaller School of the Arts High School are two of San Francisco's magnet schools at the secondary level. Public school students attend schools based on an assignment system rather than neighborhood proximity.


title: San Francisco

text: Just under 30% of the city's school-age population attends one of San Francisco's more than 100 private or parochial schools, compared to a 10% rate nationwide. Nearly 40 of those schools are Catholic schools managed by the Archdiocese of San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has nearly 300 preschool programs primarily operated by Head Start, San Francisco Unified School District, private for-profit, private non-profit and family child care providers. All 4-year-old children living in San Francisco are offered universal access to preschool through the Preschool for All program.


title: San Francisco

text: The major daily newspaper in San Francisco is the "San Francisco Chronicle", which is currently Northern California's most widely circulated newspaper. The Chronicle is most famous for a former columnist, the late Herb Caen, whose daily musings attracted critical acclaim and represented the "voice of San Francisco". "The San Francisco Examiner", once the cornerstone of William Randolph Hearst's media empire and the home of Ambrose Bierce, declined in circulation over the years and now takes the form of a free daily tabloid, under new ownership. "Sing Tao Daily" claims to be the largest of several Chinese language dailies that serve the Bay Area. "SF Weekly" is the city's alternative weekly newspaper. "San Francisco" and "7x7" are major glossy magazines about San Francisco. The national newsmagazine "Mother Jones" is also based in San Francisco. San Francisco is home to online-only media publications such as SFist, and "AsianWeek", which was the first and the largest English language publication focusing on Asian Americans.


title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco Bay Area is the sixth-largest television market and the fourth-largest radio market in the U.S. The city's oldest radio station, KCBS, began as an experimental station in San Jose in 1909, before the beginning of commercial broadcasting. KALW was the city's first FM radio station when it signed on the air in 1941. The city's first television station was KPIX, which began broadcasting in 1948.


title: San Francisco

text: All major U.S. television networks have affiliates serving the region, with most of them based in the city. CNN, MSNBC, BBC, Russia Today, and CCTV America also have regional news bureaus in San Francisco. Bloomberg West was launched in 2011 from a studio on the Embarcadero and CNBC broadcasts from One Market Plaza since 2015. ESPN uses the local ABC studio for their broadcasting. The regional sports network, Comcast SportsNet Bay Area and its sister station Comcast SportsNet California, are both located in San Francisco. The Pac-12 Network is also based in San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: Public broadcasting outlets include both a television station and a radio station, both broadcasting under the call letters KQED from a facility near the Potrero Hill neighborhood. KQED-FM is the most-listened-to National Public Radio affiliate in the country. Another local broadcaster, KPOO, is an independent, African-American owned and operated noncommercial radio station established in 1971. CNET, founded 1994, and Salon.com, 1995, are based in San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco-based inventors made important contributions to modern media. During the 1870s, Eadweard Muybridge began recording motion photographically and invented a zoopraxiscope with which to view his recordings. These were the first motion pictures. Then in 1927, Philo Farnsworth's image dissector camera tube transmitted its first image. This was a refinement of the first television system which was invented by John Logie Baird in 1926.


title: San Francisco

text: Transit is the most used form of transportation every day in San Francisco. Every weekday, more than 560,000 people travel on Muni's 69 bus routes and more than 140,000 customers ride the Muni Metro light rail system. 32% of San Francisco residents use public transportation for their daily commute to work, ranking it first on the West Coast and third overall in the United States. The San Francisco Municipal Railway, primarily known as Muni, is the primary public transit system of San Francisco. Muni is the seventh-largest transit system in the United States, with 210,848,310 rides in 2006. The system operates a combined light rail and subway system, the Muni Metro, as well as large bus and trolley coach networks. Additionally, it runs a historic streetcar line, which runs on Market Street from Castro Street to Fisherman's Wharf. It also operates the famous cable cars, which have been designated as a National Historic Landmark and are a major tourist attraction.


title: San Francisco

text: Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART), a regional Rapid Transit system, connects San Francisco with the East Bay and San Jose through the underwater Transbay Tube. The line runs under Market Street to Civic Center where it turns south to the Mission District, the southern part of the city, and through northern San Mateo County, to the San Francisco International Airport, and Millbrae.


title: San Francisco

text: Another commuter rail system, Caltrain, runs from San Francisco along the San Francisco Peninsula to San Jose. Historically, trains operated by Southern Pacific Lines ran from San Francisco to Los Angeles, via Palo Alto and San Jose.


title: San Francisco

text: Amtrak California Thruway Motorcoach runs a shuttle bus from three locations in San Francisco to its station across the bay in Emeryville. Additionally, BART offers connections to San Francisco from Amtrak's stations in Emeryville, Oakland and Richmond, and Caltrain offers connections in San Jose and Santa Clara. Thruway service also runs south to San Luis Obispo with connection to the Pacific Surfliner.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco Bay Ferry operates from the Ferry Building and Pier 39 to points in Oakland, Alameda, Bay Farm Island, South San Francisco, and north to Vallejo in Solano County. The Golden Gate Ferry is the other ferry operator with service between San Francisco and Marin County. SolTrans runs supplemental bus service between the Ferry Building and Vallejo.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco was an early adopter of carsharing in America. The non-profit City CarShare opened in 2001. Zipcar closely followed.


title: San Francisco

text: To accommodate the large amount of San Francisco citizens who commute to the Silicon Valley daily, employers like Genentech, Google, and Apple have begun to provide private bus transportation for their employees, from San Francisco locations. These buses have quickly become a heated topic of debate within the city, as protesters claim they block bus lanes and delay public buses.


title: San Francisco

text: In 2014, only 41.3% of residents commuted by driving alone or carpooling in private vehicles in San Francisco, a decline from 48.6% in 2000. There are 1,088 miles of streets in San Francisco with 946 miles of these streets being surface streets, and 59 miles of freeways. Due to its unique geography, and the freeway revolts of the late 1950s,


title: San Francisco

text: Interstate 80 begins at the approach to the Bay Bridge and is the only direct automobile link to the East Bay. U.S. Route 101 connects to the western terminus of Interstate 80 and provides access to the south of the city along San Francisco Bay toward Silicon Valley. Northward, the routing for U.S. 101 uses arterial streets to connect to the Golden Gate Bridge, the only direct automobile link to Marin County and the North Bay.


title: San Francisco

text: As part of the retrofitting of the Golden Gate Bridge and installation of a suicide barrier, starting in 2019 the railings on the west side of the pedestrian walkway were replaced with thinner, more flexible slats in order to improve the bridge's aerodynamic tolerance of high wind to . Starting in June 2020, reports were received of a loud hum produced by the new railing slats, heard across the city when a strong west wind was blowing.


title: San Francisco

text: State Route 1 also enters San Francisco from the north via the Golden Gate Bridge and bisects the city as the 19th Avenue arterial thoroughfare, joining with Interstate 280 at the city's southern border. Interstate 280 continues south from San Francisco, and also turns to the east along the southern edge of the city, terminating just south of the Bay Bridge in the South of Market neighborhood. After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, city leaders demolished the Embarcadero Freeway and a portion of the Central Freeway, converting them into street-level boulevards.


title: San Francisco

text: State Route 35 enters the city from the south as Skyline Boulevard and terminates at its intersection with Highway 1. State Route 82 enters San Francisco from the south as Mission Street, and terminates shortly thereafter at its junction with 280. The western terminus of the historic transcontinental Lincoln Highway, the first road across America, is in San Francisco's Lincoln Park.


title: San Francisco

text: In 2014, San Francisco committed to Vision Zero, with the goal of ending all traffic fatalities caused by motor vehicles within the city by 2024. San Francisco's Vision Zero plan calls for investing in engineering, enforcement, and education, and focusing on dangerous intersections. In 2013, 25 people were killed by car and truck drivers while walking and biking in the city and 9 car drivers and passengers were killed in collisions. In 2019, 42 people were killed in traffic collisions in San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: Though located south of downtown in unincorporated San Mateo County, San Francisco International Airport (SFO) is under the jurisdiction of the City and County of San Francisco. SFO is a hub for United Airlines and Alaska Airlines. SFO is a major international gateway to Asia and Europe, with the largest international terminal in North America. In 2011, SFO was the eighth-busiest airport in the U.S. and the 22nd-busiest in the world, handling over 40.9 million passengers.


title: San Francisco

text: Located across the bay, Oakland International Airport is a popular, low-cost alternative to SFO. Geographically, Oakland Airport is approximately the same distance from downtown San Francisco as SFO, but due to its location across San Francisco Bay, it is greater driving distance from San Francisco.


title: San Francisco

text: Cycling is a popular mode of transportation in San Francisco, with 75,000 residents commuting by bicycle each day. In recent years, the city has installed better cycling infrastructure such as protected bike lanes and parking racks. Bay Wheels, previously named Bay Area Bike Share at inception, launched in August 2013 with 700 bikes in downtown San Francisco, selected cities in the East Bay, and San Jose. The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency and Bay Area Air Quality Management District are responsible for the operation with management provided by Motivate. A major expansion started in 2017, along with a rebranding as Ford GoBike; the company received its current name in 2019.


title: San Francisco

text: Pedestrian traffic is also widespread. In 2015, Walk Score ranked San Francisco the second-most walkable city in the United States.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has significantly higher rates of pedestrian and bicyclist traffic deaths than the United States on average. In 2013, 21 pedestrians were killed in vehicle collisions, the highest since 2001, which is 2.5 deaths per 100,000 population – 70% higher than the national average of 1.5.


title: San Francisco

text: Cycling is becoming increasingly popular in the city. Annual bicycle counts conducted by the Municipal Transportation Agency (MTA) in 2010 showed the number of cyclists at 33 locations had increased 58% from the 2006 baseline counts. In 2008, the MTA estimated that about 128,000 trips were made by bicycle each day in the city, or 6% of total trips. As of 2019, 2.6% of the city's streets have protected bike lanes, with 28 miles of protected bike lanes in the city. Since 2006, San Francisco has received a Bicycle Friendly Community status of "Gold" from the League of American Bicyclists. In 2022 a measure on the ballot passed to protect JFK drive in Golden Gate Park as a pedestrian and biking space with 59% of voters in favor.


title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco Police Department was founded in 1849. The portions of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area located within the city, including the Presidio and Ocean Beach, are patrolled by the United States Park Police.


title: San Francisco

text: The San Francisco Fire Department provides both fire suppression and emergency medical services to the city.


title: San Francisco

text: Bay Area residents generally refer to San Francisco as "the City". For residents of San Francisco living in the more suburban parts of the city, "the City" generally refers to the densely populated areas around Market Street. Its use, or lack thereof, is a common way for locals to distinguish long time residents from tourists and recent arrivals (as a shibboleth).


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco has several nicknames, including "The City by the Bay", "Golden Gate City", "Frisco", "SF", "San Fran", and "Fog City"; as well as older ones like "The City that Knows How", "Baghdad by the Bay", or "The Paris of the West". "San Fran" and "Frisco" are controversial as nicknames among San Francisco residents.


title: San Francisco

text: San Francisco participates in the Sister Cities program. A total of 41 consulates general and 23 honorary consulates have offices in the San Francisco Bay Area.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney (), is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was originally founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney as the Disney Brothers Studio; it also operated under the names the Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before changing its name to the Walt Disney Company in 1986. Early on, the company established itself as a leader in the animation industry, with the creation of the widely popular character Mickey Mouse, who is the company's mascot, and the start of animated films.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: After becoming a major success by the early 1940s, the company started to diversify into live-action films, television, and theme parks in the 1950s. Following Walt's death in 1966, the company's profits began to decline, especially in the animation division. Once Disney's shareholders voted in Michael Eisner as the head of the company in 1984, the studio began to see an overwhelming amount of success during a period called the Disney Renaissance. In 2005, under new CEO Bob Iger, the company started to expand and acquire other corporations. Bob Chapek became the head of Disney in 2020 after Iger's retirement. Iger would be reinstated as CEO after Chapek was ousted in 2022.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Since the 1980s, Disney has created and acquired corporate divisions in order to market more mature content than is typically associated with its flagship family-oriented brands. The company is known for its film studio division Walt Disney Studios, which includes Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar, Marvel Studios, Lucasfilm, 20th Century Studios, 20th Century Animation, and Searchlight Pictures. Disney's other main business units include divisions in television, broadcasting, streaming media, theme park resorts, consumer products, publishing, and international operations. Through these various segments, Disney owns and operates the ABC broadcast network; cable television networks such as Disney Channel, ESPN, Freeform, FX, and National Geographic; publishing, merchandising, music, and theater divisions; direct-to-consumer streaming services such as Disney+, Star+, ESPN+, Hulu, and Hotstar; and Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, which includes several theme parks, resort hotels, and cruise lines around the world.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Disney is one of the biggest and most well-known companies in the world and has been ranked number 53 on the 2022 "Fortune 500" list of biggest companies in the United States by revenue. Since its founding, the company has won a total of 135 Academy Awards, with 26 awarded to Walt. The company has also been said to have produced some of the greatest films of all time as well as revolutionizing the theme park industry. Disney has been criticized for alleged plagiarism, depicting racial stereotypes in the past, and both including and lacking LGBT-related elements in its films. The company, which has been public since 1940, trades on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) with ticker symbol DIS and has been a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average since 1991. In August 2020, just under two-thirds of the stock was owned by large financial institutions.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: At Laugh-O-Gram Studio, a film studio in Kansas City founded by Walt Disney and his friend and animator Ub Iwerks, Walt made a short film entitled "Alice's Wonderland." It featured child actress Virginia Davis interacting with animated characters. In 1923, soon after the short was made, Laugh-O-Gram Studio went bankrupt, but the short later became a hit after New York film distributor Margaret J. Winkler purchased it. Walt signed a contract to create six "Alice Comedies" series, with an option for two further series of six episodes each. Before the signing, Walt decided to move to Hollywood to join his brother Roy O. Disney because Roy had tuberculosis. This allowed them to co-found the Disney Brothers Studio on October 16, the official start of the company, to produce the films. Walt later convinced Iwerks and Davis' family to move to Hollywood as well. In January 1926, the Disney studio on Hyperion Street was completed, and The Disney Brothers Studio's name was changed to Walt Disney Studio. After producing several Alice films for the next four years, Winkler handed the role of distributing films to her husband, Charles Mintz. In 1927, Mintz asked for a new series of films under Universal Pictures to be made. In response, Walt created his first series of fully animated films, featuring the character Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. Walt Disney Studio would create 26 films with Oswald in them.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1928, Walt wanted a larger fee for his films, but Mintz wanted to reduce the price. Soon after Walt found out that Universal owned the intellectual property rights to Oswald, Mintz threatened to produce the films without him if he did not take the reductions in payment. Walt declined, and Mintz signed four of the Walt Disney Studio's primary animators to start his own studio; Iwerks would be the only top animator to stay with the Studio. Because of the loss of Oswald, Walt and Iwerks replaced him with a mouse originally named Mortimer Mouse. The character's name would be changed after Walt's wife urged him to change it to Mickey Mouse, who is now the company's mascot. In May, the studio made two silent films, "Plane Crazy" and "The Gallopin' Gaucho", with the character as test screenings. Later, the studio created its first sound film and third short to the Mickey series "Steamboat Willie." It was made with synchronized sound, creating the first post-produced sound cartoon. Pat Powers’ distribution company would distribute the film, and "Steamboat Willie" became an immediate hit, leading the way for the companies dominance in the animation industry. The sound was created using Powers’ Cinephone system, which used Lee de Forest's Phonofilm system. The company successfully re-released the two earlier films with synchronized sound in 1929.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: After the release of "Steamboat Willie" at the Colony Theater in New York, Mickey Mouse became an immensely popular character. Disney would go on to make several cartoons featuring him and other characters. In August, Disney began the "Silly Symphony" series with Columbia Pictures signing on as the series' distributor, because Walt and Roy felt that they were not getting their share of the profits with Powers. Powers would then sign off Iwerks, who would later start his own studio. Carl Starling was said to have played a pivotal role in getting the series started and composed the music for the earlier films in the series, but would later leave the company after Iwerks did. In September, theater manager Harry Woodin requested permission to start a Mickey Mouse Club at his theater, the Fox Dome, to boost attendance. Walt agreed, but David E. Dow started the first ever club at Elsinore Theatre before Woodin could start his. It is unknown why Woodin did not create the first one, but on December 21, the first ever meeting for the club at Elsinore had around 1,200 children in attendance. The Mickey Mouse Clubs ended up spanning over 800 theaters across the country, with one million kids as members. On July 24, Joseph Conley, president of King Features Syndicate, mailed the Disney studio asking for them to make a Mickey Mouse comic strip. They started in November and sent samples of the strip to them, which were approved. On December 16, the Walt Disney Studios partnership was reorganized as a corporation with the name of Walt Disney Productions, Limited, with a merchandising division – Walt Disney Enterprises, and two subsidiaries – Disney Film Recording Company, Limited; and Liled Realty and Investment Company, for real estate holdings. Walt and his wife held 60 percent (6,000 shares) of the company and Roy owned 40 percent.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: The comic strip "Mickey Mouse" debuted on January 13, 1930, in the "New York Daily Mirror" and by 1931, the strip was published in 60 newspapers in the U.S., as well as papers in twenty other countries. After finding out that coming out with merchandise for the characters would generate more revenue for the company, Walt met a man at a hotel in New York who asked him for the license to put Mickey Mouse on some writing tablets that he was manufacturing for $300. Walt agreed and Mickey became the first licensed character ever, beginning the start of Disney merchandising. In 1933, Walt asked a man who owned a Kansas City advertising firm named Kay Kamen to run Disney's merchandising. He agreed and was considered to completely transform Disney's merchandising. Within a year, Kamen had 40 licenses for Mickey and within two years, $35 million worth of sales were made. In 1934, Walt claimed that he made more money from the merchandising of Mickey than from the Mickey films. Later, as a part of Disney's merchandising push, the Waterbury Clock Company created a Mickey Mouse watch. It became so popular that it saved Waterbury from bankruptcy during the Great Depression. During a promotional event at Macy's, 11,000 Mickey Mouse watches sold in one day and within two years, 2.5 million watches were sold. As Mickey started to become more of the heroic type instead of a mischievous mouse, Disney needed another character that could produce gags. When Walt was listing to the radio, he heard the voice of Clarence Nash and invited him to the studio. After hearing his voice again, Walt wanted to use it for a talking duck named Donald Duck, who would be the studio's new gag character. Donald made his first appearance in 1934 in "The Wise Little Hen." Though he did not become popular as fast as Mickey did, he got his own featured role in "Donald and Pluto" (1936) and eventually got his own series.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: After a fallout with Colombia Pictures for the "Silly Symphonies", Walt signed a distribution contract with United Artist from 1932 to 1937 to distribute the series. In 1932, Disney signed an exclusive contract with Technicolor through the end of 1935 to produce cartoons in color, beginning with "Flowers and Trees" (1932), which was part of the "Silly Symphonies". The film was the first ever full-color cartoon and won the Academy Award for the Best Cartoon later that year. In 1933, "The Three Little Pigs" became another popular "Silly Symphonies" and also won the Academy Award for Best Cartoon. The song from the film "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?", composed by Frank Churchill, who also wrote other "Silly Symphonies" songs, became popular throughout the 1930s and remained one of the most well-known Disney songs. Films from "Silly Symphonies" would go on to win the Best Cartoon award from 1931 to 1939, except for in 1938 when another Disney film "Ferdinand the Bull" won it.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1934, Walt decided to make Disney's first ever feature-length animated film, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," and told his animators by acting out the story. Roy tried to stop Walt from making it saying it would bankrupt the studio, and Hollywood called it "Disney's Folly", but Walt continued production on the film. Walt decided to go for a realistic approach to the film and created scenes from the film as if it were live action. During the process of making the film, they created the multiplane camera, which was pieces of glass with drawings on them set at different distances, to create an illusion of depth for the backgrounds. After United Artist attempted to attain future television rights to the Disney shorts, Walt signed a distribution contract with RKO Radio Pictures on March 2, 1936. They ended up exceeding their original budget for "Snow White" of $150,000 by ten times the amount at $1.5 million.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: It took them three years to make, debuting on December 12, 1937. It became the highest-grossing film of all time up to that point at $8 million ; after several re-releases, the film would gross a total of $998,440,000 in the U.S. adjusted for inflation. After the profits of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs", Disney financed the construction of a new studio complex of 51 acres (20.6 ha) in Burbank, California, which the company fully moved into in 1940. On April 2 of the same year, Disney had its initial public offering, with the common stock remaining with Walt and his family. Walt did not want to go public, but the company needed the money. Shortly before "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs"' release, work on their next films "Pinocchio" and "Bambi" began, with Bambi being postponed. Though "Pinocchio" would win the Academy Awards for Best Song and Best Score, along with being said to have made groundbreaking achievements in animation, it would end up doing poorly in the box office during its release on February 23, 1940, because its international releases were cut off due to World War II.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Disney's next film "Fantasia" was also a box-office bomb, but made great achievements by creating Fantasound, an early development surround sound, to produce the films' soundtrack, making it the first commercial film shown in stereo. In 1941, Disney would have a major setback when 300 of its 800 animators, led mainly by one of the companies top animators Art Babbit, would go on strike for five weeks for unionization, because of the amount of payment some of them were getting. Walt thought that the people on strike were secretly Communist and would end up firing many of the studios' animators, including some of its best ones. Roy would try to get the company's main distributors to invest in the film company, trying to secure more production funds for the studio which could no longer afford to offset production costs with employee layoffs, but was unsuccessful in getting anyone. During the premiere of "The Reluctant Dragon," Disney's fourth film where Robert Benchley would tour the Disney Studio, protesters from the strike showed up; the film would fall $100,000 short of its production cost.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: While negotiations were being made for the strike, Walt accepted an offer from the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs to make a goodwill trip, along with some of his animators, to South America, making sure Walt would be gone during the deal because he knew the results would not be in his favor. During the twelve weeks there, they would start plotting for films and were inspired by the music. As a result of the strike, the studio recognized the Screen Cartoonist's Guild after being compelled to by Federal mediators and loss several animators, leaving the company with only 694 employees. To recover from their financial losses, Disney would create their fifth animated film, "Dumbo," in a rush with a lower budget. "Dumbo" performed successfully at the box office and would be a much needed financial gain for the company. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, many of the companies animators would be drafted into the army. Later, 500 soldiers from the United States Army began to occupy the studio for eight months to protect a nearby Lockheed aircraft plant. While they were there, they would fix equipment in large soundstages and convert storage sheds into ammunition depots. On December 8, the Navy asked Walt to create propaganda films to gain support for the war. He agreed and signed a contract with them to create 20 war-related shorts for $90,000. Most of the company's employees got to work on the project and created films such as "Victory Through Air Power" and included some of the company's characters in several of the films.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In August, 1942, "Bambi" was finally released as Disney's sixth animated film and did not do well in the box office. In 1943, Disney would go on to make "Saludos Amigos" and "The Three Caballeros" after their visit to South America, but they would do poorly upon their releases. The two films were "package films", several short cartoons grouped together to make a feature film, which Disney would go on to make more of such as "Make Mine Music" (1946)", Fun and Fancy Free" (1947)"," "Melody Time" (1948)"," and "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad" (1949) to try to recover from their financial losses. As less expensive to make, the studio started production on live-action films, with a mixture of animation, starting with "Song of the South," which would later become Disney's most controversial film. Because the company was short on money, in 1944, they planned to re-release their feature films, which would create much needed revenue. In 1948, Disney began the nature documentary series, "True-Life Adventures," which would run until 1960 and win eight Academy Awards. In 1949, while production on the animated film "Cinderella" was happening, the Walt Disney Music Company was founded in order to help with profits for merchandising, which the music from "Cinderella" was hoped to be a hit.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1950, Disney's first animated film in eight years "Cinderella" was released and was considered a return to form for Disney. It would be Disney's best box office success since "Snow White," making a total of $8 million in its first year in the box office and costing $2.2 million to make. Walt had not been as involved as he was with the previous films because he was distracted with trains and made a trip to England to create Disney's first ever fully live-action film "Treasure Island". Because it was a success, he went back to England to produce "The Story of Robin Hood and His Merry Men". In 1950, the television industry began to grow, and Disney got in it on Christmas Day when NBC aired the company's first television production One Hour in Wonderland, which was a promotional program for Disney's next animated film "Alice in Wonderland" and sponsored by Coca-Cola. During his trip in England, "Alice in Wonderland" was released and came as disappointment to the company falling $1 million short of the production budget. Upon his return, Walt started thinking about an amusement park he wanted to build called Mickey Mouse Park, an eight-acre (3.2 ha) piece of land near the studio with attractions such as a steamboat ride, but business kept getting in the way and production for a third British film "The Sword and the Rose" began. Walt would only supervise over it, but it would be financed by a new subsidiary of Disney called Walt Disney British Films Limited.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Walt recalled that he first came up with the idea of an amusement park during one of his visits to Griffith Park with his daughters. He said that he watched them ride the carousel there and said that he thought there "should be... some kind of amusement enterprise built where the parents and the children could have fun together.” As Walt continued to think about Mickey Mouse Park, he changed the name to Disneylandia before changing it to its final name Disneyland. Because Roy was doubtful about the park, Walt would form a new privately owned company called Walt Disney Enterprise on December 16, 1952, to fund the park. Shortly after, its name would change to Walt Disney Incorporated before changing its name to WED Enterprises (now Walt Disney Imagineering) in November 1953. He hired a group of designers to work on the plans and those who worked on it became dubbed as "Imagineers". Ever since Walt came up with the idea of a park, he and his friends would visit parks in the U.S. and Europe to get ideas on how to build one. His plan to have the park built in Burbank near the studio quickly changed when he realized that 8 (3.2 ha) acres would not be enough land. He acquired 160 acres (65 ha) of orange groves in Anaheim, southeast of Los Angeles in neighboring Orange County, at $6,200 per acre to build the park. As construction on the park began on July 12, 1954, Walt wanted it to be done by 1955, with storytelling attractions and areas, as well as being clean and perfect.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: They designed the park to have guests enter into Main Street U.S.A., themed to resemble American small towns during the early 20th Century based largely off of Walt's hometown in Marceline, Missouri, and walk down the street into the central hub, from which different themed lands branched out. At the end of the street in the central hub, would be a 77 ft (23 m) tall Sleeping Beauty Castle inspired by the Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany and based on the castle from the Disney film of the same name, which would be released four years later. The four original different themed lands of the park that branched out from the hub would consist of Frontierland, themed to the American Frontier of the 19th century; Adventureland, resembling a wild tropical jungle; Fantasyland, based on Disney's animated fairy tale films; and Tomorrowland, depicting views of the future, especially that of the Space Age. In total, by the time the park opened, it cost the company $17 million to construct.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In February 1953, Disney's next animated film "Peter Pan" was released and had been a success, but Walt wanted to figure out how to improve animation without raising the cost. When Disney wanted to create a feature with two short films, "The Living Desert", for the "True-Life" documentary, RKO's lawyer believed it would break the 1948 antitrust Supreme Court ruling if it sold as a package. Roy thought the company would do fine without RKO and the company created its own distribution company, Buena Vista Distribution, named after the street where the studio was located, to distribute their own films from then on. In 1954, Disney's first American live action film "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" was released, which was one of the first films to use CinemaScope. From the early to mid-1950s, Walt began to devote less attention to the animation department, entrusting most of its operations to his key animators the Nine Old Men, although he was always present at story meetings. Instead, he started concentrating on other things such as television and Disneyland.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: To get money to create the park, the company decided to promote it through a television series. After trying to get NBC and CBS to sign on, in 1954, ABC made a deal with Disney for an hour-long weekly series starting in October called "Disneyland," an anthology series consisting of animated cartoons, live-action features, other materials from the studio's library, and would go through four segments of the four different areas of the amusement park. The series was a success and garnered over 50% of viewers in their time slot, along with increasing audiences and praise from critics. In August, Walt formed another company Disneyland, Inc. to finance the theme park, with Disney, himself, Western Publishing, which had been the publisher of Disney books for over twenty years, and ABC all holding stock in the company.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In October, with the success of "Disneyland," ABC allowed Disney to produce another series "The Mickey Mouse Club", a variety show specifically for kids, showing things such as a daily Disney cartoon, a children's newsreel, and a talent show. It would consist of a host and talented kids and adults called "Mousketeers" and "Mooseketeers", respectively. After the first season, over 10 million children and half as many adults watched it every day, 2 million Mickey Mouse ears, which the cast wore, had sold, and the shows theme song "Mickey Mouse March", written by Jimmie Dodd one of the show's main host, had become a classic. On December 15, 1954, "Disneyland" aired an episode of the five-part miniseries "Davy Crockett," which starred Fess Parker as Crockett. According to writer Neal Gabler, "[It] became an overnight national sensation", selling 10 million Crockett coonskin caps. The shows theme song "The Ballad of Davy Crockett" had spread throughout American pop culture as much as the "Three Little Pig's ""Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf""" did, selling 10 million records"." The "Los Angeles Times" called it "the greatest merchandising fad the world had ever seen". In June 1955, Disney's 15th animated film, "Lady and the Tramp," was released and did better in the box office than any other Disney films since "Snow White".


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On Sunday, July 17, 1955, Disneyland opened with only Main Street completely done and the other lands offering some rides, coming to a total of 20 attractions. At the time, it cost $1 to get into the park and guests had to pay for each individual ride. They were ready for 11,000 guests, but around 28,000 people showed up, because of a rush of counterfeit tickets. The opening was aired on ABC with actors Art Linkletter, Bob Cummings, and Ronald Reagan, who were all friends of Walt, hosting it. It garnered over 90 million viewers, becoming the largest live broadcast to that date. The opening was so disastrous and rushed, it became dubbed as "Black Sunday" by the employees. Restaurants ran out of food, the Mark Twain Riverboat began to sink a little, several ride malfunctions occurred, and the drinking fountains were not working in the 100 °F. (38 °C) heat. Within its first week of being open, Disneyland had 161,657 guests show up, and by its first month of being open, the park had over 20,000 visitors each day. After its first year, 3.6 million people had visited the park, and after its second year 4 million more guests came, making it more popular than places such as the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone Park. That year Disney had a gross total of $24.5 million compared to the $11 million the previous year.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Though Walt was more busy with the park than the films, the company would stay busy and produce an average of five releases per year throughout the 1950s and 60s. The animated films created were features such as "Sleeping Beauty" (1959), "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" (1961), and "The Sword in the Stone" (1963). While "Sleeping Beauty" was a financial loss for the company, and Disney's highest production costs for a film up to that point at $6 million, "One Hundred and One Dalmatians" introduced a new way of animating using the xerography process to electromagnetically transfer the drawings to animation cels. In 1956, the Sherman brothers, Robert and Richard, were asked to create the theme song for the television series "Zorro". Disney would later hire them as exclusive staff songwriters, which would be a ten-year association. They wrote many of the songs for Disney's films at the time and some for the theme parks, with several of them being hits. In the late 1950s, Disney would venture into the comedy genre with the live-action films "The Shaggy Dog" (1959), which became the highest grossing film in the U.S. and Canada for Disney at over $9 million, and "The Absent Minded Professor" (1961), both starring Fred MacMurray.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Disney also made several live-action films based on children's books including "Pollyanna" (1960) and "Swiss Family Robinson" (1960). Child actor Hayley Mills would star in "Pollyanna", where she would win the Academy Juvenile Award, and five other Disney films, including her dual role as the twins in "The Parent Trap" (1961). Another child actor Kevin Corcoran was a prominent figure in many of the live-action Disney films, first appearing in a serial for "The Mickey Mouse Club," where he would play a boy named Moochie, a nickname that would stay with him. He worked alongside Mills in "Pollyanna" and starred in features such as "Old Yeller" (1957), "Toby Tyler" (1960), and "Swiss Family Robinson". In 1964, the live action/animation musical "Mary Poppins" was released and became the highest grossing film of the year. It won five Academy Awards, including Best Actress for Julie Andrews as Poppins and Best Song for the Sherman Brothers', who also won Best Score for the film, "Chim Chim Cher-ee".


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Throughout the 1960s, Dean Jones, who was called "the figure who most represented Walt Disney Productions in the 1960s" by "The Guardian", starred in ten Disney films, which included "That Darn Cat!" (1965), "The Ugly Dachshund" (1966), and "The Love Bug" (1968) and its second sequel Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo (1977). Disney's last child actor of the 1960s would be Kurt Russell, who had signed a ten-year contract with the company. He featured in films such as "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" (1969), "The Horse in the Gray Flannel Suit" (1968) alongside Dean Jones, "The Barefoot Executive" (1971), and "The Strongest Man in the World" (1975).


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In late 1959, Walt had an idea to build another park in Palm Beach, Florida, called the City of Tomorrow, a city that would be full of technological improvements. In 1964, the company chose land southwest of Orlando, Florida, as the area to build the park and quickly acquired 27,000 acres (10,927 ha) of land for it. On November 15, 1965, Walt, along with Roy and Florida's current governor at the time Haydon Burns, announced the plans for another park called Disney World, which included the Magic Kingdom—a larger and more elaborate version of Disneyland, with golf courses and resort hotels near it—and the City of Tomorrow, which would be at the heart of the park. By 1967, the company had made several expansions to Disneyland including a new area called New Orleans Square, which would be filled with mostly shops and would be based on the look of New Orleans, Louisiana. Through 1966 to 1967 they added three more rides It's a Small World, the Disneyland Railroad, and Pirates of the Caribbean. In all, the expansion costed $20 million, which was $3 million more than it cost to make the park. They also added several other rides before then such as Walt Disney's Enchanted Tiki Room, which was the first attraction to use audio-animatronics; Walt Disney's Carousel of Progress, which debuted at the 1964 New York World's Fair before moving to Disneyland in 1967; and Dumbo the Flying Elephant, which opened a month after the park did.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On November 20, 1964, Walt sold most of WED Enterprise to Walt Disney Productions for $3.75 million after being persuaded to by Roy, who thought that Walt having his own company would cause legal problems. Walt formed a new company called Retlaw to handle his personnel business, primarily the Disneyland Railroad and the Disneyland Monorail. When the company started looking for someone to sponsor the project, Walt renamed the City of Tomorrow to EPCOT, which stood for Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow. Because Walt had been a heavy smoker since World War I, his health started declining, and he visited the St. Joseph Hospital on November 2, 1966, for testing. The doctors discovered a walnut-sized spot on his left lung and removed it a few days later, finding out it was cancerous. After two weeks, he was released from the hospital, but overgrown lymph nodes showed that he did not have much longer to live. On December 15, 1966, at the age of 65, Walt died of circulatory collapse, caused by lung cancer.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1967, the last two films Walt had worked on were released, the animated film "The Jungle Book", which would be Disney's most successful film for the next two decades, and the live-action musical "The Happiest Millionaire". After Walt's death, the company largely abandoned the animation industry, but would still make several live-action films. Its staff in the field of animation began to decline from 500 workers to 125 employees, with the company only hiring 21 people from 1970 to 1977. Disney's first post-Walt animated film "The Aristocats" was released in 1970, where Dave Kehr of "Chicago Tribune" said, "the absence of his [Walt's] hand is evident." That following year the anti-fascist musical "Bedknobs and Broomsticks" was released and won the Oscar for Best Special Visual Effects. By the time Walt had died, Roy was ready to retire, but wanted to keep Walt's legacy alive and became the first CEO and chairman of the board of the company. In May 1967, he got a legislation passed by Florida's legislatures to grant Disney World to have its own quasi-government agency in an area called the Reedy Creek Improvement District, and he later changed the name from Disney World to Walt Disney World to remind people it was Walt's dream. Over time, EPCOT became less of the City of Tomorrow and developed more into another amusement park. After 18 months of construction that cost around $400 million, Walt Disney World's first park the Magic Kingdom, along with Disney's Contemporary Resort and Disney's Polynesian Resort, opened on October 1, 1971, with 10,400 visitors. A parade with over 1,000 band members, along with 4,000 Disney entertainers and choir from the U.S. Army, marched down Main Street led by composer Meredith Wilson. Unlike Disneyland, the icon of the park would be the Cinderella Castle instead of the Sleeping Beauty Castle. Three months later on Thanksgiving day, cars wanting to get into the Magic Kingdom were stretched miles along the interstate.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On December 21, 1971, Roy died of cerebral hemorrhage at the St. Joseph Hospital. After Roy's death, Donn Tatum, who was a senior executive for 25 years and former president of Disney, became the first non-Disney family member to become CEO and chairman of the board of the company, with Card Walker, who had been with the company since 1938, becoming president of the company. By June 30, 1973, Disney had over 23,000 employees and had a gross total of $257,751,000 over a nine months period, which is a raise compared to the year before when they made $220,026,000. In November, Disney released another animated film "Robin Hood", which became Disney's biggest international grossing movie at $18 million. Throughout the 1970s, Disney released several more live-action films such as "The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes" sequel "Now You See Him, Now You Don't," "The Love Bug's" two sequels "Herbie Rides Again" (1974) and "Herbie Goes to Monte Carlo" (1977)"," "Escape to Witch Mountain" (1975), and "Freaky Friday" (1976). In 1976, Card Walker took over as CEO of the company, with Tatum staying as the chairman until 1980 when Walker would replace him. In 1977, Roy E. Disney, Roy O. Disney's son and the only Disney working for the company, would resign from his job as an executive of the company because of disagreements with decisions the company was making.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1977, Disney created the successful animated film "The Rescuers," grossing $48 million at the box office. The live-acton/animated musical "Pete's Dragon" was released in 1977, grossing $16 million in the U.S. and Canada, but was considered a disappointment to the company. In 1979, Disney's first ever PG rated film and most expensive film up to that point at $26 million dollars "The Black Hole" was released, showing that Disney could also use special effects. Grossing $35 million, which was a disappointment to the company who thought it was going to be a hit like "Star Wars" (1977), the film was in response to other sci-fi movies that were being released. In September, 12 animators, which was over 15 percent of the department, resigned from the studio. Led by Don Bluth, they left because of a conflict with the training program and the atmosphere at the studio, starting their own company Don Bluth Productions (which later became Sullivan Bluth Studios). In 1981, Disney released "Dumbo" to VHS and "Alice in Wonderland" the following year, eventually leading Disney to release all their films to home media. On July 24, Walt Disney World on Ice, a two year tour of ice shows featuring Disney charters, made its premiere at the Brendan Byrne Meadowlands Arena, after Disney licensed its characters to Feld Entertainment. The same month, Disney's animated film "The Fox and the Hound" was released and became the highest grossing animated film to that point at $39.9 million. It was the first film that Walt had nothing to do with and was the last major work done by Disney's Nine Old Men, making way for the younger animators to do more.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: As profits for the company started to slow down, On October 1, 1982, Epcot, then known as EPCOT Center, opened as the second theme park in Walt Disney World, with around 10,000 people in attendance during the opening. Costing the company over $900 million to construct, The park consisted of the Future World pavilion and the World Showcase, which represented nine countries including Mexico, China, Germany, Italy, America, Japan, France, United Kingdom, and Canada (Morocco and Norway would be added later in 1984 and 1988, respectively). The animation industry continued to decline and 69% of the company's profits were from its theme parks, with attendance of 12 million visitors to Walt Disney World which would decline by 5% next June. On July 9, Disney released one of the first films to majorly use computer-generated imagery (CGI) "Tron," which would a big influence on other CGI movies, although it only received mixed reviews. In total, in 1982, the company lost $27 million. On April 15, 1983, Disney's first ever foreign park Tokyo Disneyland, similar to Disneyland and the Magic Kingdom, opened in Urayasu, Japan. Costing around $1.4 billion, construction on the park started in 1979 when Disney and The Oriental Land Company agreed to build a park together. Within its first ten year, the park had been a hit with over 140 million visitors. After an investment of $100 million, on April 18, Disney started a pay to watch cable television series called Disney Channel, a sixteen hour-long series showing things such as Disney films, twelve different programs, and two magazines shows for adults. Although it was expected to do well, the company lost $48.3 million after its first year, with around 916,000 subscribers.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1983, Walt's son-in-law Ron W. Miller, who had been president of the company since 1978, became CEO of Disney, and Raymond Watson became chairman. Ron would push for more more mature films from the studio, and as a result, Disney founded the film distribution label Touchstone Pictures to produce movies geared toward adults and teenagers in 1984. "Splash" (1984), was the first film released under the label and would become a much needed success for the studio, grossing over $6.1 million in its first week of screening. Later, Disney's first R-rated film, "Down and Out in Beverly Hills" (1986), was released and was another hit for the company, grossing $62 million. The following year, Disney's first PG-13 rated film, "Adventures in Babysitting," was released. In 1984, Saul Steinberg attempted to buyout the company, holding 11.1% of the stocks in the company. He offered to buy 49% of the company for $1.3 billion or the entire company for $2.75 billion. Disney, which had less than $10 million, rejected and offered to buy all of his stock for $325.5 million. Steinberg agreed, and Disney paid it all with part of a $1.3 billion loan they got from the bank, putting the company at $866 million in debt.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1984, the company's shareholders, Roy E. Disney, Sid Bass, Lillian and Diana Disney, and Irwin L. Jacobs, who had a combined total of about 35.5% of the total shares of the company, forced Miller out as CEO and replaced him with Michael Eisner, who had previously been president of Paramount Pictures, as the new CEO, along with bringing in Frank Wells as president. Eisner's first move at Disney was to make it a major film studio, which at the time it was not considered. He brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg as chairman and Roy as head of the animation division to help with the animation industry. He wanted to produce an animated film every 18 months instead of every 4 years like the company had been doing. To help with the film division, they started making Saturday-morning cartoons to create new Disney characters for merchandising and producing several films through Touchstone. Eisner led Disney into the television industry more by creating Touchstone Television and producing "The Golden Girls", which was a hit. The company also started to promote their theme parks for the first time at $15 million, raising the attendance rate by 10%. In 1984, Disney created the most expensive animated movie at $40 million, and their first animated film to feature computer-generated imagery "The Black Cauldron", which was also their first PG rated animated film because of its darker themes. It ended up being a box office bomb, leading the company to move the animation department out of studio in Burbank and into a warehouse in Glendale, California. Organized in 1985, Silver Screen Partners II, LP financed films for Disney with $193 million. In January 1987, Silver Screen III began financing movies for Disney with $300 million raised, the largest amount raised for a film financing limited partnership by E.F. Hutton. Silver Screen IV was also set up to finance Disney's studios.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1986, the company changed its name from Walt Disney Productions to its current name the Walt Disney Company, stating that the old name only referred to the film industry. With Disney's animation industry declining, the animation department needed a hit with their next movie "The Great Mouse Detective". During its release, it grossed $25 million, becoming a much needed financial success for the company in the animation industry. To generate more revenue from merchandising, the company opened their first retail store the Disney Store in Glendale in 1987. Because of its success, they opened two more stores in California, and by 1990 they had 215 stores throughout the country. In 1989, the company saw financial success with $411 million in revenue and a profit of $187 million. In 1987, the company signed an agreement with the French government to build a resort in Paris named Euro Disneyland, consisting of two theme parks named Disneyland Park and Walt Disney Studios Park, a golf course, and six hotels.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1988, Disney's 27th animated film "Oliver & Company" was released the same day as former animator Don Bluth's "The Land Before Time. Oliver & Company" beat out "The Land Before Time," becoming the first animated film to gross over $100 million in its initial release and the highest grossing animated film from its initial run. At the time, Disney became the box office leader out of all the studios in Hollywood for the first time, with films such as "Who Framed Rodger Rabbit" (1988), "Three Men and a Baby" (1987)"," and "Good Morning, Vietnam" (1987). Gross revenue in 1983 was $165 million and went up to $876 million in 1987, and operating income went from a negative $33 million in 1983 to a positive 130 million in 1987. Their net income went up 66% along with a 26% growth in revenue. The "Los Angeles Times" called Disney's bounce back "a real rarity in the corporate world". On May 1, 1989, Disney opened their third amusement park at Walt Disney World, Hollywood Studios, which at the time went under the name Disney-MGM Studios. The park was mainly about how movies were made, until it changed by 2008 to make guests feel like they are in movies. Following the opening of Hollywood Studios, Disney opened water park Typhoon Lagoon on June 1, 1989; in 2008, the water park had a total of 2.8 million people in attendance. In 1989, Disney signed an agreement-in-principle to acquire Jim Henson Productions from its founder, Muppet creator Jim Henson. The deal included Henson's programming library and Muppet characters (excluding the Muppets created for "Sesame Street"), as well as Jim Henson's personal creative services. However, Henson died suddenly in May 1990 before the deal was completed, resulting in the two companies terminating merger negotiations the following December.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On November 17, 1989, "The Little Mermaid" was released and is considered to be the start of the Disney Renaissance, a period in which the company released hugely successful and critically acclaimed animated films. During its release, it became the animated film with the highest gross from its initial run and garnered $233 million at the box office; it also earned two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Original Song for “Under the Sea”. During the Disney Renaissance, several of Disney's songs were written by composer Alan Menken and lyricist Howard Ashman, until Howard died in 1991. Together they wrote six songs that were nominated for Academy Awards, with two winning, "Under The Sea" and "Beauty and the Beast". To produce music geared for the mainstream music, including music for movie soundtracks, Disney founded the recording label Hollywood Records on January 1, 1990. In September 1990, Disney arranged for financing up to $200 million by a unit of Nomura Securities for Interscope films made for Disney. On October 23, Disney formed Touchwood Pacific Partners which would supplant the Silver Screen Partnership series as their movie studios' primary source of funding. Disney's first animated sequel "The Rescuers Down Under" was released on November 16, 1990, and was created using Computer Animation Production System (CAPS), a digital software which was developed by Disney and the computer division of Lucasfilm Pixar, becoming the first feature film to be fully created digitally. Although the film struggled in the box office, grossing $47.4 million, it received positive reviews from critics. In 1991, Disney and Pixar agreed to a deal to make three films together, with the first one being "Toy Story".


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: With Dow Jones & Company looking to replace three companies in its industrial average, Disney was chosen to fill one of the spots in May, with the statement saying that Disney reflects "The importance of entertainment and leisure activities in the economy". Disney's next animated film "Beauty and the Beast" was released on November 13, 1991, and grossed nearly $430 million. It was the first animated film to win a Golden Globe for Best Picture, and it received six Academy Award nominations, becoming the first animated film to be nominated for Best Picture Oscar; It won Best Score, Best Sound, and Best Song for "Beauty and the Beast". The film was critically acclaimed, with some considering it to be the best Disney film. To coincide with their new release "The Mighty Ducks", Disney founded NHL team The Mighty Ducks of Anaheim in 1992. Disney's next animated feature "Aladdin" was released on November 11, 1992, and grossed $504 million, becoming the highest-grossing animated film up to that point, and the first animated film to reach the half-billion-dollar mark. It won two Academy Awards for Best Song for "A Whole New World" and Best Score; "A whole New World" was the first and only Disney song to win the Grammy for Song of the Year. For $60 million, Disney broadened their more mature films by acquiring independent film distributor Miramax Films in 1993. In a joint venture with The Nature Conservancy, Disney purchased 8,500 acres (3,439 ha) of Everglades headwaters in Florida in 1993 to protect native animals and plant species, establishing the Disney Wilderness Preserve.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On April 3, 1994, Frank Wells died in a helicopter crash, while on a vacation to go skiing. He, Eisner, and Katzenberg helped the company's market value go from $2 billion to $22 billion since taking office in 1984. On June 15, "The Lion King" was released and was a massive success. It became the second highest-grossing film of all time behind "Jurassic Park" and the highest-grossing animated film of all time, with a gross total of $968.5 million. It garnered two Academy Awards for Best Score and Best Song for "Can You Feel the Love Tonight" and was critically praised. Soon after its release, Katzenberg left the company after Eisner would not promote him to president. After leaving, he co-founded film studio DreamWorks SKG. Wells' spot was later replaced by one of Eisner's friends Michael Ovitz on August 13, 1995. In 1994, Disney had been looking to buy one of the big three networks, ABC, NBC, or CBS, which would give them guaranteed distribution for its programming. Eisner sought out to buy NBC, but the deal was cancelled once he heard General Electric wanted to keep a majority stake. In 1994, Disney reached $10.1 billion in revenue, with the film industry being 48% of the total, the theme parks being 34%, and 18% of it from merchandising. Disney's total net income was up 25% from the year before at $1.1 billion. Grossing over $346 million, "Pocahontas" was released on June 16, garnering the Academy Awards for Best Musical or Comedy Score and Best Song for "Colors of the Wind". Pixar and Disney's first release together was the first-ever fully computer-generated film "Toy Story." It was released on November 19, 1995, to critical acclaim and an end-run gross total of $361 million. The film won the Special Achievement Academy Award, as well as being the first animated film to be nominated for Best Original Screenplay.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 1995, Disney announced a $19 billion acquisition of Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which at the time was the second largest corporate takeover in US history. Through the deal, Disney would obtain broadcast network ABC, an 80% majority stake in sports network ESPN and ESPN 2, 50% in Lifetime Television, a majority stake of DIC Entertainment, and a 37.5% minority stake in A&E Television Networks. Following the deal, the company started a radio program focused for youth on ABC Radio Network called Radio Disney on November 18, 1996. The Walt Disney Company launched its official website disney.com on February 22, mainly to promote their theme parks and give information on its merchandise. On June 19, the company's next animated film "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" was released, grossing $325 million at the box office. Because Ovitz's management style was different from Eisner's, Ovitz was fired as president of the company in 1996. Disney lost a $10.4 million lawsuit in September 1997 to Marsu B.V. over Disney's failure to produce as contracted 13 half-hour "Marsupilami" cartoon shows. Instead, Disney felt other internal "hot properties" deserved the company's attention. With a 25% stake in the California Angels, Disney bought out the team in 1998 for $110 million, renaming the team the Anaheim Angels and renovating their stadium for $100 million. "Hercules" was released on June 13 and underperformed at the box office compared to the previous films, grossing $252 million. On February 24, Disney and Pixar signed a ten-year contract to make 5 films together, with Disney as the distributor. They would share the cost, profits, and logo credits, calling the films a Disney-Pixar production. During the Disney Renaissance, film division Touchstone Pictures also saw success, with film such as "Pretty Woman" (1990), which has the highest number of ticket sales in the U.S. for a romantic comedy and grossed $432 million; "Sister Act" (1992), which was one of the more financially successful comedies of the early 1990s, grossing $231 million; action film "Con Air" (1997), which grossed $224 million; and the highest-grossing film of 1998 at $553 million "Armageddon" (1998).


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: At Disney World, the company opened the largest theme park in the world covering 580 acres (230 ha) Disney's Animal Kingdom on Earth Day, April 22, 1998. It is made up of six lands based off zoological themes, with the Tree of Life as the park's centerpiece and over 2,000 animals. Receiving positive reviews, Disney's next animated films, Mulan and Disney-Pixar film "A Bug's Life," were released on June 5 and November 20, respectively. Mulan became the sixth highest-grossing film of 1998 at $304 million, and "A Bug's Life" was the fifth highest at $363 million. In a $770 million transaction, on June 18, Disney bought a 43% stake of Internet search engine Infoseek for $70 million, also giving Infoseek earlier acquired Starwave. With negotiations between Carnival and Royal Caribbean not going well, in 1994, Disney announced they would start their own cruise line operations starting in 1998. The first two ships part of the Disney Cruise Line would be named "Disney Magic" and "Disney Wonder" and would be built by Fincantieri in Italy. To accompany the cruises, Disney bought Gorda Cay as the line's private island and spent $25 million on remodeling it and renamed it Castaway Cay. On July 30, 1998, "Disney Magic" set sail as the line's first voyage. Starting web portal Go.com in a joint venture with Infoseek on January 12, 1999, Disney later acquired the rest of Infoseek that year.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Marking the end of the Disney Renaissance, "Tarzan" was released on June 12, garnering $448 million at the box office and critical acclaim; it also claimed the Academy Award for Best Original Song for Phil Collins' "You'll Be in My Heart". "Toy Story's" sequel and Disney-Pixar film "Toy Story 2" was released on November 13 as a successful film, garnering praise and $511 million at the box office"." Filling Ovitz spot, Eisner named ABC network chief Bob Iger president and COO of the company on January 25, 2000. In November, Disney sold DIC Entertainment back to Andy Heward, although still doing business with them. Disney had another huge success with Pixar when they released "Monsters, Inc." in 2001. Later, Disney bought children's cable network Fox Family Worldwide for $3 billion and the assumption of $2.3 billion in debt. The deal also included 76% stake in Fox Kids Europe, Latin American Fox Kids, more than 6,500 episodes from Saban Entertainment's programming library, and the Fox Family Channel. In 2001, Disney's operations declined with a net loss of $158 million in fiscal, a decline in viewership on the ABC television network, as well as decreased tourism due to the September 11 attacks. Disney earnings in fiscal 2001 were $120 million, heavily reduced from the previous year's $920 million. To help with costs savings, Disney announced they would be laying off 4,000 employees and closing 300 to 400 Disney stores. After winning the World Series in 2002, Disney sold the Angels to businessman Arturo Moreno for $180 million in 2003. In 2003, Disney became the first studio to garner $3 billion in a year at the box office. Roy Disney announced his retirement in 2003 because of the way the company was being run, calling on Eisner to retire; the same week, board member Stanley Gold retired for the same reasons, forming the "Save Disney" campaign together.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 2004, at the company's annual meeting, the shareholders, in a 43% vote, voted Eisner out of his position as chairman of the board. On March 4, George J. Mitchell, who was a member of the board, was named as Eisner's replacement. In April, Disney purchased the "Muppets" franchise from the Jim Henson Company for $75 million, founding the Muppets Holding Company, LLC in the process. Following the massive success of Disney-Pixar films "The Incredibles" (2004) and "Finding Nemo" (2003), which became the second highest-grossing animated film of all time at $936 million, Pixar looked for a new distributor once their deal with Disney ended in 2004. After the Disney Stores were struggling, Disney sold the chain of 313 stores to Children's Place on October 20. Disney also sold the Mighty Ducks NHL team to Henry Samueli and his wife Susan in 2005. Roy decided to rejoin the company and was given the role of a consultant with the title of "Director Emeritus".


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In March 2005, it was announced that Bob Iger, president of the company, would become CEO of Disney after Eisner's retirement in September; Iger was officially named head of the company on October 1. Disney's eleventh theme park Hong Kong Disneyland opened in Hong Kong, China, on September 12, costing the company $3.5 billion to make. On January 24, 2006, Disney made a move to acquire Pixar from Steve Jobs for $7.4 billion. Iger made Pixar CCO John Lasseter and president Ed Catmull the head of the Walt Disney Animation Studios. A week later, Disney traded ABC Sports commentator Al Michaels to NBCUniversal to get back the rights to Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and the old 26 Oswald shorts. On February 6, the company announced they would be merging its ABC Radio networks and 22 stations with Citadel Broadcasting in a $2.7 billion deal. Through the deal, Disney also acquired 52% of television broadcasting company Citadel Communications. Disney Channel movie "High School Musical" aired, and its soundtrack went triple platinum, becoming the first Disney Channel film to do so.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Disney's 2006 live-action film "" was Disney's biggest hit to that date and the third highest grossing film ever, making a little over $1 billion at the box office. On June 28, the company announced they would be replacing George Mitchell as chairman with one of their board members and former CEO of P&G John E. Pepper Jr. In 2007. The sequel "High School Musical 2" was released in 2007 on Disney Channel and broke several cable rating records. In April 2007, the Muppets Holding Company was moved from Disney Consumer Products to the Walt Disney Studios division and renamed the Muppets Studios as part of efforts to relaunch the division. "" became the highest-grossing film of 2007 at $960 million. Disney-Pixar films "Ratatouille" (2007) and "WALL-E" (2008) were a tremendous success, with WALL-E winning the Oscar for Best Animated Feature. After acquiring most of Jetix Europe through the acquisition of Fox Family Worldwide, Disney took full control of the company in 2008 for $318 million.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Bob Iger introduced D23 in 2009 as Disney's official fan club, with a biennial exposition event D23 Expo. In February, Disney announced a distribution deal with DreamWorks to distribute 30 of their films over the next 5 years through Touchstone Pictures, with Disney getting 10% of the gross. With the release of the widely popular film "Up", Disney garnered $735 million at the box office, with the film also winning Best Animated Feature at the Oscars. Later, Disney launched a television channel geared towards older children named Disney XD. Disney bought full control of Marvel Entertainment and its assets in August for $4 billion, adding superheros available for its merchandising. In September, Disney partnered with News Corporation and NBCUniversal in a deal to each get 27% equity in streaming service Hulu, adding ABC Family and Disney Channel to the streaming service. On December 16, Roy E. Disney died of stomach cancer as the last person in the Disney family to actively work for Disney. In March 2010, Haim Saban reacquired the "Power Rangers" franchise, including its 700-episode library, from Disney for around $100 million. Shortly after, Disney sold Miramax Films to an investment group headed by Ronald Tutor for $660 million. During that time, Disney released the live-action "Alice in Wonderland" and Disney-Pixar film "Toy Story 3" which both grossed a little over $1 billion, making it the sixth and seventh film to do so, with Toy Story 3 becoming the first animated film to make over $1 billion and highest-grossing animated film. That year, Disney became the first studio to release two $1 billion films in a single year. After starting ImageMovers Digital with ImageMovers in 2007, Disney announced that it would be closing by 2011 in 2010.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: The following year, Disney released their last traditionally animated film "Winnie the Pooh" to theaters. The release of "" took in a little over $1 billion, making it the eighth film to do so and Disney's highest-grossing film internationally, as well as the third highest ever. In January 2011, Disney Interactive Studios was downsized, laying off 200 employees. In April, Disney broke ground on new theme park Shanghai Disney Resort, costing $4.4 billion to build. Later, in August, Bob Iger stated on a conference call that after the success of the Pixar and Marvel purchases, he and the Walt Disney Company were looking to "buy either new characters or businesses that are capable of creating great characters and great stories." On October 30, 2012, Disney announced that they would be buying Lucasfilm Ltd. for $4.05 billion from George Lucas. Through the deal, Disney gained access to franchises such as "Star Wars", which they said that they would make a new film for every 2 to 3 years with the first one being released in 2015, and "Indiana Jones", as well as visual effects studio Industrial Light & Magic and video game developer LucasArts. The sale was later completed on December 21, 2012.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Later, in early February 2012, Disney completed its acquisition of UTV Software Communications, expanding their market further into India and Asia. By March, Iger assumed the role as chairman of the board. Marvel film "The Avengers" became the third highest-grossing film of all time at an initial release gross of $1.3 billion. Making over $1.2 billion at the box office, Marvel film "Iron Man 3" was released as a huge success in 2013. The same year, Disney's animated film "Frozen" was released and became the highest-grossing animated film of all time at $1.2 billion. Merchandising for the film became so popular that they made $1 billion off of it within a year and a global shortage of merchandise for the film occurred. In March 2013, Iger announced that there were no 2D animation films in development and a month later the hand-drawn division of animation was closed, with several veterans being laid off. On March 24, 2014, Disney acquired Maker Studios, an active multi-channel network on YouTube, for $950 million.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On February 5, 2015, it was announced that Thomas O. Staggs had been promoted to COO. In June, Disney stated that its consumer products and interactive divisions would merge together to create new a subsidiary of the company Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media. In August, Marvel Studios was reorganized and placed under division Walt Disney Studios. After the release of the successful animated film "Inside Out," which grossed over $800 million, Marvel film "" was released and grossed over $1.4 billion. "" was released and grossed over $2 billion, making it the third highest-grossing film of all time. In October, Disney announced that television channel ABC Family would be changing its name to Freeform in 2016, with the goal to broaden its audience coverage. On April 4, 2016, Disney announced that COO Thomas O. Staggs, who was thought to be next in line after Iger, and the company had mutually agreed to part ways, effective May 2016, ending his 26-year career with the company. After breaking ground in 2012, Shanghai Disneyland opened on June 16, 2016, as the company's sixth theme park resort. In a move to start a streaming service, Disney bought 33% of the stock in MLB technology company BAMtech for $1 billion in August. In 2016, Disney had four films that made over $1 billion, which were the animated film "Zootopia", Marvel film "", Pixar film "Finding Dory," and "," making Disney the first studio to surpass $3 billion at the domestic box office. Disney also made an attempt to buy social media platform Twitter to market their content and merchandise on, but ultimately dropped out of the deal. Iger stated that the reason was because he thought the company would be taking on responsibilities it didn't need to and that it didn't "feel Disney" to him.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On March 23, 2017, Disney announced that Iger had agreed to a one-year extension of his term as CEO through July 2, 2019, and had agreed to remain with the company as a consultant for three years after stepping down. On August 8, 2017, Disney announced it would be ending its distribution deal with streaming service Netflix, with the intent to launch its own streaming platform by 2019 built off BAMtech's technology. During that time, Disney made an investment of $1.5 billion to acquire a 75% stake in BAMtech. Disney also planned to start an ESPN streaming service with about "10,000 live regional, national, and international games and events a year" by 2018. In November, CCO John Lasseter said that he would take a six-month absence from the company because of "missteps", which was later reported to be sexual misconduct allegations. The same month, Disney and 21st Century Fox started negotiating a deal where Disney would acquire most of Fox's assets. Beginning in March 2018, a strategic reorganization of the company saw the creation of two business segments, Disney Parks, Experiences and Products and Direct-to-Consumer & International. Parks & Consumer Products was primarily a merger of Parks & Resorts and Consumer Products & Interactive Media, while Direct-to-Consumer & International took over for Disney International and global sales, distribution, and streaming units from Disney-ABC TV Group and Studios Entertainment plus Disney Digital Network. While CEO Iger described it as "strategically positioning our businesses for the future", "The New York Times" considered the reorganization done in expectation of the 21st Century Fox purchase.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In 2017, Disney had two films go over the $1 billion mark, the live-action "Beauty and the Beast" and "". Disney launched subscription sports streaming service ESPN+ on April 12. In June 2018, Disney declared that Lasseter would be leaving the company by the end of the year, staying as a consultant until then. As his replacements, Disney promoted Jennifer Lee, co-director of "Frozen" and co-writer of Wreck-it Ralph (2012), as head of Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Pete Docter, who had been with Pixar since 1990 and directed "Up, The Incredibles," and "Inside Out", as head of Pixar. Later that month, Comcast offered to buy 21st Century Fox for $65 billion over Disney's $51 billion bid, but withdrew from their offer after Disney countered at $71 billion, with Comcast shifting their focus to buy Fox's Sky plc instead. Disney also obtained an antitrust approval from the United States Department of Justice to acquire Fox. Disney made $7 billion at the box office again like they did in record-breaking year 2016 with three film that made $1 billion, Marvel films "Black Panther and " and Pixar film "Incredibles 2," with "Infinity War" surpassing $2 billion and becoming the fifth highest-grossing film ever.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: On March 20, 2019, Disney acquired 21st Century Fox's assets for $71.3 billion from owner Rupert Murdoch, making it the biggest acquisition in Disney's history. After the purchase, "The New York Times" described Disney as "an entertainment colossus the size of which the world has never seen." Through the acquisition, Disney gained 20th Century Fox, 20th Century Fox Television, Fox Searchlight, Fox Networks Group, Indian television broadcaster Star India, and streaming services Star+, Hotstar, and a 30% stake in Hulu, which brought its total up to 60% ownership of the company. Fox Corporation and its assets were excluded from the deal because of antitrust laws. Disney also became the first film studio to have seven films gross $1 billion, which were Marvel's "Captain Marvel," the live action "Aladdin," Pixar's "Toy Story 4," the CGI remake of "The Lion King, ," and the highest-grossing film of all time up to that point at $2.797 billion "," before "Avatar" (2009) was re-released in China in 2021. On November 12, Disney's subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service Disney+, which had 500 movies and 7,500 episodes of TV shows from Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic and other brands, was launched in the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands. Within the first day, the streaming platform had over 10 million subscriptions and by 2022 it had over 135 million subscribers and was in over 190 countries. At the beginning of 2020, Disney dropped the Fox name from all its assets rebranding it as 20th Century Studios and Searchlight Pictures.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: Bob Chapek, who had been with the company for 18 years and was chairman of Disney Parks, Experiences and Products, became CEO of Disney after Iger stepped down on February 25, 2020. Iger said that he would stay with the company as an executive chairmen until December 31, 2021, to help with the company's creative strategy. In April, Iger resumed operational duties of the company as executive chairman to help the company during the COVID-19 pandemic and Chapek was appointed to the board of directors. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Disney closed all of its theme parks, delayed several movies that were to be released, and stopped all operations on their cruise line. Due to the closures, Disney announced that they would stop paying 100,000 employees, but would still provide full healthcare benefits, along with urging the U.S. employees to apply for government benefits through the $2 trillion stimulus check, saving the company $500 million a month. In addition, Iger gave up his entire $47.5 million salary and Chapek took a 50% reduction in his salary.


title: The Walt Disney Company

text: In the company's second fiscal quarter of 2020, Disney reported a $1.4 billion loss, with their earnings dropping by 91% from the previous year's $5.4 billion down to $475 million. By August, two-thirds of the company was owned by large financial institutions.<ref name="2/3Stock"></ref> In September, the company had to fire 28,000 employees, 67% of which were part-time workers, from its Parks, Experiences and Products division. Chairman of the division Josh D'Amaro wrote, "We initially hoped that this situation would be short-lived, and that we would recover quickly and return to normal. Seven months later, we find that has not been the case." Additionally, Disney lost a total of $4.7 billion in its fiscal third quarter of 2020. In November, Disney laid off another 4,000 employees from the Parks, Experiences and Products division, rising the total to 32,000 employees. The following month, Disney named Alan Bergman as chairman of its Disney Studios Content division to oversee its film studios. Due to the COVID-19 recession, Disney shutdown 20th Century Studios' animation studio Blue Sky Studios in February 2021. With Touchstone Television ceasing operations in December, Disney announced in March 2021 that it would be launching a new division of the company 20th Television Animation to focus on mature audiences. In April, Disney and Sony agreed to a multiyear licensing deal that would give Disney access to Sony's films from 2022 to 2026 to air on their television networks or stream on Disney+ once Sony's deal with Netflix ends. Although it did not do well at the box office because of COVID-19, Disney's release of the animated film "Encanto" was one of the biggest hits during the pandemic, with its song "We Don't Talk About Bruno" becoming immensely popular.