Ex-Disney Boss Reveals Companies He Wanted to Buy

Disney’s expensive buying spree almost included James Bond and Twitter in addition to a merger with Apple.

In a recent article from the Financial Times, former Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed his ambitious plan to expand the House of Mouse. After Iger took over Disney in 2005, he began making big moves to acquire key companies and IP. This started with Pixar, and then he created a wishlist of future acquisitions. Iger’s list included Marvel and Lucasfilm, the company that created Star Wars and Indiana Jones. However, Iger had his eyes set on another major film franchise: James Bond.

“We put together a list of acquisition targets. Marvel was one, Star Wars was another, James Bond was one. We had a list and I figured let’s just tick them off and buy them all.” James Bond was the only thing on Iger’s list that didn’t come to fruition, and eventually, Amazon came in and took control of 007.

Iger also considered two other deals that likely would’ve completely changed the world. Disney nearly bought Twitter at an “attractive price” and planned to use it as a global distribution platform for Disney. Iger, however, backed out the morning of the deal as he felt it would be a “horrible distraction.” Had Disney bought Twitter, it’s hard to imagine Elon Musk acquiring the social media platform.

Finally, Iger revealed that Disney considered merging with Apple. However, Disney failed to reach any kind of advanced conversations, as Apple didn’t seem as interested. “We talked about it internally, and we had some conversations with Apple about it, but it never went anywhere,” said Iger.

Iger resigned as CEO of Disney earlier this year, passing the baton to Josh D’Amaro. Iger had previously been CEO of Disney from 2005 to 2020, but came back in 2022 when the company was in a bit of a crisis. Iger has been attributed as a key factor in a lot of Disney’s modern success and tried to steer Marvel back into a ‘quality over quantity’ mindset.