By Ryan Nakashima, Business Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) --Tom Staggs, the presumed front-runner to replace Bob Iger as CEO of The Walt Disney Co., is leaving the company next month.
The surprise announcement Monday means Disney will have to look further for Iger's successor after he steps down in June 2018, a date the popular chief executive has extended twice.
Staggs, a 26-year Disney veteran and its chief operating officer, had been assumed to be on track for the top job after the next leading candidate, Jay Rasulo, resigned last June as chief financial officer.
Staggs was promoted to COO in February 2015, a promotion taken as a sign that he had won the internal competition to eventually take the Disney reins.
Disney said in a statement Monday that it would "broaden" its search for CEO candidates.
Top executives will go back to reporting to Iger.
Staggs, 55, had been CFO for 12 years since 1998, playing a critical role as Disney made huge acquisitions to bolster its movie studio, including the $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar in 2006 and $4.1 billion purchase of Marvel in 2009.
He led the parks and resorts unit since 2010 in a job swap with Rasulo intended to give each executive the rounded experience required to become CEO.
However, Staggs lacked experience in the TV and film businesses, which face challenges as consumers rapidly adopt new technology and change their viewing habits.
Robin Diedrich, a senior analyst with Edward Jones, said Iger's shoes will be tough to fill. Disney's stock has more than tripled since he took over in 2005 after a raucous shareholder campaign against then-CEO Michael Eisner.
"Disney is a creative company and that's really the driving engine behind their earnings power," she said. "They're also entering a technologically focused decade. They know they need to get that right. That may be what the board is looking for."
Monday's announcement may draw out external candidates. But it also raises the profile of other top internal contenders, such as Kevin Mayer, who became chief strategy officer last June, or John Skipper, the president of ESPN.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More