After an incredibly successful nine-year stint at the House of Mouse, Alan Horn is retiring from his role as Chief Creative Officer of Disney Studios Content on 31st December, capping off a fifty-year career in the industry.
Horn was renowned for his relationships with filmmaking talent and smoothing feature productions out. He is known for his gracious and astute approach to film production situations. He was unceremoniously cut loose from Warner Bros. as President and Chief Operating Officer in 2011, after a 12-year run with that Burbank, CA studio, after such hits as the Harry Potter franchise under his belt.
Following Horn’s arrival at Disney in 2012, he brought great stability to the studio after the Rich Ross era of massive flops, i.e. the $300M+ production John Carter and the costly Tron: Legacy. Horn came to Disney at a time when its acquisitions of platinum brands such as Marvel and Lucasfilm were added to its portfolio alongside its vibrant live-action division and Disney Animation and Pixar studios. 20th Century Fox and Searchlight would be added to that running list after Disney’s absorption of the previously owned Rupert Murdoch companies. Horn’s nine year track record saw Disney expand its productions beyond the big screen to streaming.
All in, during his reign, Disney set several box office records clicking past $7B in 2016 and 2018 and $11B in 2019, the only motion picture studio ever to hit such levels. Twenty movies at Disney surpassed the billion dollar mark globally, a dozen of which are in the top 20 and five of which are in the top 10 worldwide releases of all time. This includes the biggest domestic release of all time, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and the second biggest global release of all time, Avengers: Endgame, as well as the biggest animated releases of all time both domestically and globally, Incredibles 2 and Frozen 2, respectively.
I understand there aren’t any plans to replace Horn, particularly given the autonomy of the creative heads at Disney’s various labels, i.e. Kevin Feige at Marvel, Kathleen Kennedy at Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Studios President of Production Sean Bailey, President of 20th Century Studio, Steve Asbell; Chief Creative Officer, Pixar Animation Studios, Pete Docter; Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Jennifer Lee; President, Disney Theatrical Productions, Thomas Schumacher; and Searchlight presidents Matthew Greenfield and David Greenbaum. All of them will continue to report to Bergman.
Horn led The Walt Disney Studios as Chairman from June 2012 to May 2019, when he transitioned to Co-Chairman and Chief Creative Officer alongside Co-Chairman Bergman.
