Netflix’ Ted Sarandos Says Disney CEO Job “Not Even On My Mind”

Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the top job at Disney is not something he’s thinking about at all as the Mouse House seeks a successor to Bob Iger.

It’s “not even on my mind, really,” he told the WSJ Live conference when asked if he would take a call from James Gorman, incoming chair of the Disney board and head of the committee on succession planning.

Sarandos has been with Netflix for about 25 years.

“Honestly, I think what we are doing is so exciting,” he said during a Q&A.

Netflix is on the top of the streaming pile but still has lots of room to grow, he noted, recalling early days when the streamer rented physical DVDs by mail and he was in charge of buying them at Best Buy and Walmart. Founder Reed Hastings knew from early on the Internet would be the future (“he named it Netflix, not DVDflix for a reason”) and employees “had a party when we hit a million subscribers.” Now the platform is pushing 300 million worldwide. “At ten per cent of consumer engagement, it feels so small … So what’s it feel like to get to fifteen, to twenty?”

The Disney succession has consumer Hollywood and Wall Street with an internal candidate being the most likely but no formal announcement coming until early in 2026. Iger’s contract runs through the end of that year.

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