Working at Disney wouldn’t be the happiest place on earth, at least according to Ted Sarandos. The Netflix co-CEO said Tuesday he’s not considering jumping over to Disney, despite the high-profile job opening coming with the company looking to replace Bob Iger as chief executive in early 2026.
“It’s not even on my mind,” Sarandos said about the top job at Disney, while speaking at the WSJ Tech Live conference in Laguna Beach, California.
He added: “Honestly, I think what we are doing is so exciting.”
Sarandos’ answer comes a day after Disney announced it would name James Gorman chairman of the board. Gorman is currently the head of its succession planning committee as the company looks to find a replacement for Iger, who came back to the company as chief executive in 2022; he’d previously run Disney from 2005-2020.
Netflix is coming off a strong Q3 report last week in which the company said it added 5.07 million subscribers, bringing the streamer’s global subscriber count to 282.7 million. The company’s stock price — which has already enjoyed a strong 2024 — jumped up following Netflix’s Q3 report, with the company hitting its new all-time high on Monday. On the year, Netflix is up 63% to $764.24 per share.
Sarandos joined Netflix in 2000 and was named the company’s co-chief executive in 2020 after helping the company gain a first-mover advantage in the streaming world. On Tuesday, he said “it’s hard for me to recommend” a co-CEO model to a company like Disney. “I understand their business pretty well, but not their business structure.”
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