Disney names Chapek to lead theme parks
Walt Disney Co has promoted the head of its consumer-products unit, Bob Chapek, to theme-parks chairman, replacing Tom Staggs.
Chapek starts immediately, Burbank, California-based Disney said on Monday in a statement. Staggs became chief operating officer earlier this month, putting him in line to succeed Bob Iger as chief executive officer of the world’s largest entertainment company.
The appointment puts Chapek, 55, in charge of Disney’s biggest division in terms of employees and its second-largest by revenue. He previously ran the company’s film-distribution and home-entertainment businesses. Chapek has been president of Disney Consumer Products, which sells toys and other merchandise, since 2011.
He assumes his new position as Iger is trying to create more rides and attractions based on the company’s film and television properties. Chapek made a similar shift in strategy at the consumerproducts unit.
“There are clearly more opportunities to mine some of these great franchises across the parks,” Iger said on a conference call this month. He said he planned to sharply increase Star Wars attractions in locations around the world.
Chapek, who joined Disney in 1993, will supervise the opening of the Shanghai Disney Resort in China next year and an Avatar attraction in Orlando, Florida, in 2017.
As head of consumer products, he shifted its focus to film and TV franchises, like SpiderMan, Star Wars and Frozen, from categories of merchandise, such as apparel. Disney’s retail stores were redesigned in line with the shift.
“That’s the way the consumer shops,” Chapek said in an interview in December. “They don’t go looking for bedsheets. They go looking for something that’s Frozen and then find bedsheets.”
Frozen, the top-grossing animated film of all time, has provided Disney with a particularly lucrative merchandising line.
Operating income for the consumer-products division rose 22 percent to almost $1.4 billion on sales of $4 billion last year.
Disney shares rose less than 1 percent to close at $104.99. They are up 11 percent this year.