Disney’s Near Misses: Bob Iger on the James Bond, Twitter, and Apple Deals That Almost Changed Hollywood

Bob Iger has always known how to control a narrative. Over two stints as Disney CEO spanning nearly two decades, he turned the company into the most formidable entertainment conglomerate on the planet — acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox along the way. But his exit interview with the Financial Times, published this week, reveals something far more interesting than the deals he closed: the ones that slipped through his fingers. And once you see the list, it’s hard not to think about what Hollywood — and your streaming subscriptions — would look like if even one of them had gone differently.

James Bond: The Franchise That Got Away

Let’s start with the most cinematic near-miss. Iger confirmed that Disney actively tried to acquire the James Bond franchise and failed. That’s not a small revelation. Bond is one of the last truly independent major intellectual properties in Hollywood — not owned by a conglomerate, not tethered to a streaming service’s content strategy. It’s controlled by EON Productions, the Broccoli family’s fiercely protective production company that has shepherded 007 through six decades and six different actors.

For Disney, adding Bond to a vault that already contained The Avengers, Star Wars, and the entire Pixar catalog would have been an almost absurd concentration of cultural IP. Imagine a Disney+ landing page with Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, and a Bond tab. The streaming wars would look fundamentally different. But the Broccolis have consistently resisted corporate absorption, and Iger’s confession confirms that even Disney’s checkbook and distribution muscle weren’t enough to change their minds. There’s something almost admirable about that — a family-run operation holding the line against the biggest media company in the world. The closest you’ll find on the site is Icons Unearthed: James Bond, which digs into the franchise’s behind-the-scenes history.

The Twitter Deal: Walking Away at the Last Hour

This one is genuinely wild. Disney came within hours of closing a deal to acquire Twitter — and Iger personally pulled the plug. His reasoning? He decided the platform’s toxicity would become a distraction Disney didn’t need. As he told the FT, the “nastiness” on the platform was “extraordinary,” and he didn’t want Disney’s brand associated with it.

Think about the timeline. This would have been around 2016-2017, before Elon Musk’s eventual $44 billion acquisition and the platform’s transformation into X. If Disney had bought Twitter, we’d be living in a world where the company that owns Mickey Mouse also owned the digital town square. The content moderation headaches alone would have been staggering — Disney’s family-friendly image constantly colliding with the realities of an unmoderated platform where political discourse, harassment, and misinformation run rampant. Iger, to his credit, saw the brand risk clearly and walked away even when the deal was on the one-yard line. Given everything that’s happened with Twitter since, it might be the best deal Disney never made.

Apple: “They Didn’t Show That Much Interest”

The most tantalizing revelation might be the quietest one. Iger confirmed that Disney and Apple held actual merger talks — and that they went nowhere because, as Iger put it with characteristic understatement, “Apple didn’t show that much interest.”

That sentence deserves to be unpacked. A combined Apple-Disney would have been the most valuable company in human history by a wide margin. Disney brings the world’s most valuable film library, the biggest theme park operation on Earth, ESPN’s sports rights, and the merchandising empire of Marvel and Star Wars. Apple brings the hardware ecosystem, the distribution platform, and a market capitalization that makes Disney’s look modest. The synergies are obvious: Apple TV+ gets instant access to a century of content; Disney gets Apple’s technology stack and global device reach.

Iger has written previously that he believed the merger might have happened if Steve Jobs were still alive. Jobs was Disney’s largest individual shareholder after the Pixar acquisition and served on Disney’s board. He and Iger had a genuinely close relationship. Tim Cook, by contrast, runs Apple with a different philosophy — more cautious about big transformative acquisitions, more focused on the company’s core businesses. Apple has shown it’s willing to spend on content, dropping $75 million on a deal with A24 just this month, but absorbing an entire media conglomerate is a different order of ambition. The fact that the conversation even happened, though, tells you how seriously both sides considered the possibility.

The Pixar-Lucasfilm-Marvel Blueprint That Actually Worked

It’s worth stepping back and appreciating what Iger did pull off, because the deals that closed are the reason Disney has dominated pop culture for two decades. Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006 gave Disney its animation future back. Marvel for $4 billion in 2009 was widely mocked at the time — “$4 billion for a comic book company?” — and has since generated over $30 billion at the box office alone. Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 brought Star Wars into the fold and immediately spawned a streaming empire on Disney+.

The Fox acquisition in 2019 was the most expensive at $71 billion, and it’s the one deal that’s been hardest to justify in hindsight. It loaded Disney with debt right before a global pandemic shut down theaters and theme parks. It also gave Disney control of National Geographic, FX, and a huge chunk of Hulu — assets that are valuable but haven’t yet produced the kind of returns the Marvel and Lucasfilm deals generated. Still, when you look at the combined portfolio, the track record is remarkable. Three of the four biggest acquisitions in entertainment history, and all of them worked.

What This Means for Streaming Now

Iger’s exit interview lands at a fascinating moment for the industry. Paramount just got DOJ approval for its $111 billion Warner Bros. Discovery takeover. Netflix is dominating with original series like I Will Find You pulling 24 million views in four days. Apple is quietly building its Cape Fear and Monsterverse slate while flirting with creative partnerships like the A24 deal. The streaming wars haven’t ended — they’ve just entered a new phase where consolidation, not differentiation, is the name of the game.

Iger’s near-misses tell us something about this moment. The Bond failure shows that even the biggest player can’t always get what it wants — some IP resists corporate absorption. The Twitter walkaway shows that brand judgment matters more than deal momentum. And the Apple non-merger reminds us that the most transformative combinations are often the ones that require two willing partners, not just one ambitious buyer.

For viewers, the practical takeaway is that Disney’s current shape — massive but not all-consuming, dominant in franchises but not in social media, partnered with but not owned by Big Tech — is probably healthier for the entertainment ecosystem than any of the alternative timelines Iger described. Competition between Netflix, Disney, Apple, Amazon, and the newly merged Paramount-WBD keeps each service honest. If Apple had bought Disney, or if Disney owned Twitter, the incentives would be fundamentally different — and probably worse for the people who just want to watch good shows.

Iger’s legacy is secure regardless. He’s the executive who turned a mid-tier media company into the defining cultural force of the 21st century. But his exit interview gives us something rarer than another victory lap: a candid look at the alternate histories that almost happened. For anyone who follows the streaming business, that’s more interesting than any earnings report.

Sources: Financial Times, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, Deadline