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The Walt Disney Company, commonly known as Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate that is headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was started on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Disney as Disney Brothers Studio; it also operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before changing its name to The Walt Disney Company in 1986.
 | This article may have too many red links. (December 2011) |
 The corporate variant of the Disney logo | |
 The Walt Disney Studios corporate headquarters in Burbank, California, 2016 | |
| Disney | |
| Formerly |
|
| Company type | Public |
| Industry |
|
| Predecessors | Laugh-O-Gram Studio |
| Founded | October 16, 1923 |
| Founders | |
| Headquarters | Team Disney Building, Walt Disney Studios, , U.S. |
Area served | Worldwide |
Key people |
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| Products | |
| Services | |
| Revenue |  US$82.722 billion (2022) |
| US$12.121 billion (2022) | |
| US$3.145 billion (2022) | |
| Total assets | US$203.631 billion (2022) |
| Total equity | US$98.879 billion (2022) |
Number of employees | c. 220,000 (2022) |
| Divisions |
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| Subsidiaries | |
| Website | thewaltdisneycompany |
| Footnotes / references [1][2] | |
Disney is known for Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Winnie the Pooh, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, The Lion King, Mary Poppins, Aladdin, Frozen, Beauty and the Beast and Pinocchio. Pixar famous movies are Toy Story and Cars. Marvel Comics well known famous original comics such as Spider-Man and Hulk. Lucasfilm media franchises such as Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Jim Henson original franchise like The Muppets.
In its early days the company established itself as a leader in the animation industry with the short film Steamboat Willie, which used synchronized sound to become the first post-produced sound cartoon and debuted the widely popular character Mickey Mouse, who would go on to become the company's mascot and corporate icon.
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The company's main units are Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks and Consumer Products.
Studio Entertainment
This unit, also called the Walt Disney Studios, is headed by Chairman Dick Cook. It consists of:
- The Walt Disney Studios – movie studios Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Lucasfilm, Marvel Studios and Hollywood Pictures.
- The Disney Music Group – Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records, Lyric Street Records and Hollywood Records.
- Distribution companies: Buena Vista International and Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.
One of the Studios' largest assets lies in Walt Disney Animation Studios, which has made a successful string of animated movies for almost seven decades. Because of failures with most of their recent additions, it has changed its focus from traditional hand-drawn to CGI movies. Pixar, also owned by Disney, is one of the first studios to create CGI movies. Since 2006, Disney has bought three movie studios: Marvel Comics, Lucasfilm and Pixar.
On April 1, 2027, The Walt Disney Company bought PBS for $17.3 billion USD and moving to new headquarters in Florida located in Walt Disney World.
Parks and Resorts
Worldwide, Disney has eleven theme parks (as of November 2024):
- Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California
- Disneyland Park in California
- Disney's California Adventure in California
- Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida
- Magic Kingdom in Florida
- PBS's new headquarters moving to Disney World in Florida
- Epcot in Florida
- Disney's Hollywood Studios in Florida
- Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida
- Disneyland Paris in France
- Walt Disney Studios in France
- Tokyo Disneyland in Japan
- Tokyo DisneySea in Japan
- Hong Kong Disneyland Resort
- Shanghai Disneyland Park in China
Disney once owned the sports teams, the Angels (baseball) and the Mighty Ducks (ice hockey), both based in Anaheim, California. These teams were later sold to other people.
Disney Enterprises Inc.
Disney Enterprises Inc. is a subsidiary of the company; the name is found in many of its franchises.
Media Networks
The ABC television network, which Disney bought in 1995, serves as the center of this unit. Cable television channels within it include Disney Channel, Disney XD, Freeform, ESPN and PBS (which Disney's ABC owns the Public TV network). It also partly owns Lifetime, A&E and E!.
Buena Vista Television, responsible for the syndication of many Disney series, produces some of its own as well: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Live with Regis and Kelly, and Ebert & Roeper.
Consumer Products
Merchandising and licensing within the company are overseen in this division. Disney Publishing Worldwide, part of this unit, has Disney Press, Disney Editions and Hyperion Books as its brands.
It once owned the Disney Store shopping chain until 2004, when it sold all the stores to The Children's Place.
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- 1923: Disney is founded
- 1925: First appearance of Pegleg Pete cartoon, Alice Solves the Puzzle
- 1928: First Mickey Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy
- 1928: First appearance of Minnie Mouse cartoon, Plane Crazy
- 1928: First official Mickey Mouse cartoon, Steamboat Willie
- 1929: Start of the Silly Symphonies: The Skeleton Dance
- 1929: First Silly Symphony episode, The Skeleton Dance
- 1930: First appearance of Pluto cartoon, The Chain Gang
- 1932: First appearance of Goofy cartoon, Mickey's Revue (Columbia Pictures Studios)
- 1932: First full-colour cartoon, Flowers and Trees
- 1933: First appearance of Fifi the Peke cartoons, Puppy Love
- 1933: First Donald Duck Theme Music #1, The Steeplechase
- 1933: First Pluto's Devil cartoons, Mickey's Pal Pluto
- 1933: First Pluto's Angel cartoons, Mickey's Pal Pluto
- 1934: First Walt Disney segment, The Hot Choco-Late Soldiers
- 1934: First Donald Duck cartoon, The Wise Little Hen
- 1937: First Daisy Duck cartoon, Don Donald
- 1937: First Pluto, Jr. cartoons. Pluto's Quin-Puplets
- 1937: First full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- 1938: First Huey, Dewey and Louie cartoons, Donald's Nephews
- 1939: First Goofy episode, Goofy and Wilbur
- 1939: First Mickey Mouse Theme #1, The Standard Parade
- 1940: First Disney movie failed at the box office, Pinocchio
- 1940: First Pluto episode, Bone Trouble
- 1940: First Donald Duck Theme #2, Window Cleaners
- 1940: First Goofy Theme #1, Goofy's Glider
- 1940: First Pluto #1, Private Parate
- 1940: Studio moves to Burbank, California
- 1940: Fantasia's debut
- 1941: Dumbo's debut
- 1942: Bambi's debut
- 1942: First P.J. cartoons, Bellboy Donald
- 1943: First Scrooge McDuck cartoons, The Spirit of '43
- 1943: First Chip 'n' Dale cartoons, Private Pluto
- 1944: First Pluto Theme #2, Springtime for Pluto
- 1945: First Dutch cartoons, Canine Casanova
- 1946: Song of the South's debut
- 1947: First Pluto Theme #3, Pluto's Housewarming
- 1947: First Donald Duck Theme #3, Donald's Dilemma
- 1947: First Mickey Mouse #2, Mickey's Delayed Date
- 1950: Cinderella's debut
- 1950: First Goofy Theme #2, Motor Mania
- 1954: Walt Disney anthology series starts
- 1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California
- 1955: First widescreen cartoon, Lady and the Tramp
- 1964: Mary Poppins becomes the first Disney movie to be nominated for Best Picture
- 1966: Walt Disney dies; his brother Roy takes over the studio
- 1967: Last animated movie from producer Walt Disney, The Jungle Book
- 1971: Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida
- 1979: Don Bluth and friends leave the studio
- 1979: The Black Hole, Disney's first PG movie, is a failure with critics.
- 1981: Disney's last movie that has any of the Nine Old Men as the animators: The Fox and the Hound
- 1983: Disney Channel is launched
- 1984: Touchstone Pictures starts with Splash
- 1984: Michael Eisner became the CEO of Disney
- 1984: Disney Television Animation is founded
- 1985: Disney's first animated movie that was rated PG: The Black Cauldron
- 1985: Disney's first two animated series for television The Adventures of the Gummi Bears and The Wuzzles premiere on NBC and CBS’ Saturday Morning lineups.
- 1987: Disney animated television series DuckTales
- 1988: Who framed Roger Rabbit's debut
- 1988: DisneyToons Studios opens
- 1989: The Little Mermaid brings new life in the animation division as well as the genre; studio gets its first Oscar in eighteen years for this movie
- 1990: Hollywood Pictures starts with Arachnophobia
- 1991: Beauty and the Beast becomes the first animated movie to be nominated for Best Picture
- 1992: Disney releases Aladdin
- 1993: The Nightmare Before Christmas's debut
- 1993: Disney buys the Miramax movie studio.
- 1994: Studio president Frank Wells was killed in a helicopter crash
- 1994: The Lion King is released. It becomes the highest grossing hand drawn animated movie of all time.
- 1994: Jeffrey Katzenberg resigns from Disney.
- 1995: First Pixar movie, Toy Story
- 1996: Disney acquires American Broadcasting Company (ABC) and ESPN
- 2001: Disney Channel television series Lizzie McGuire
- 2001: First Pixar movie that was nominated for Best Animated Feature, Monsters Inc.
- 2003: First Pixar movie that won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature, Finding Nemo
- 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean becomes studio's first family movie with a rating of PG-13
- 2004: Disney acquired the Muppets franchise from Henson
- 2004: Home on the Range is Disney's last traditionally animated movie to use CAPS
- 2004: First Pixar movie that is rated PG, The Incredibles
- 2005: Disneyland celebrates fiftieth birthday
- 2005: Michael Eisner resigns from Disney. He was replaced by Bob Iger.
- 2005:The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe's debut
- 2005: First self-made CGI movie, Chicken Little
- 2009: Up becomes the first Pixar animated feature to be nominated for Best Picture
- 2009: Disney buys comic book publisher Marvel Comics for 4 billion US dollars.
- 2010: Disney sells one of its movie studios, Miramax Films, to Filmyard Holdings.
- 2012: Disney buys movie studio Lucasfilm for 4 billion US dollars.
- 2013: Disney releases Frozen, which becomes the studio's first non-Pixar movie to win an Oscar for Best Animated Feature.
- 2016: Disney releases Moana.
- 2018: DisneyToon Studios was closed down
- 2018: John Lasseter left Disney
- 2018: Touchstone Pictures was closed down
- 2019: Disney acquired 21st Century Fox’s assets
- 2019: Disney's acquisition of PBS soon by 2027.
- 2019: Ed Catmull retires
- 2019: Disney creates their own streaming service, Disney+ (including Pixar, Marvel Comics and Star Wars) in November 2019.
- 2020: Bob Iger resigns as the CEO of Disney. He was replaced by Bob Chapek as CEO.
- 2021: Disney closes its radio station, Radio Disney.
- 2021: Disney+ creates Disney Channel and Disney XD outside of the US, which has Disney movies and television programs for kids.
- 2021: The Walt Disney Company Latin America rebrands all the channels with the Disney name in Latin America, to Disney-PBS.
- 2022: The Walt Disney Company Latin America closes Star Premium in January 31st, 2022.
- 2022: Bob Chapek got fired, and Bob Iger returned as a CEO of Disney.
- 2023: Disney celebrates the 100th Anniversary.
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- On November 12, 2019, Disney launched their own streaming service, Disney+. The platform features almost all of their cartoons, short movies, movies and TV shows along with those made by properties bought by Disney, such as Disney, The Muppets, Pixar, Lucasfilm, and Marvel. It also features original content, such as several Marvel and Star Wars programs. R rated movies and shows appear on Hulu and PBS, and movies, cartoons, and TV shows that feature smoking, swear words, violence, and stereotypical depictions of Native Americans, Asians, and other minorities come with a warning.
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- Walt Disney Pictures
- List of Disney animated movies
- List of Disney characters
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