As Disney Chief Executive Officer Robert Iger’s departure nears, speculation concerning who will replace him intensifies, everyone in the corporate world scrambling to email their resumés to Burbank. Expect his exit no earlier than 2026 when his contract ends. Iger’s fill-in will be tasked with overseeing a listless Star Wars universe, the MCU (pretty much just Deadpool at this juncture), a back catalog of animated films, and some miscellaneous franchises like Willow and Indiana Jones inherited from the George Lucas deal. Also, there will be the matter of maintaining a stable online streaming platform, not to mention the massive theme park system. It’s less an entertainment company than a lifestyle brand, and Disney is at a major crossroads.
New blood is needed, and as the outgoing boss prepares to retire (a second time), once again, the fate of the company will rest heavily on the shoulders of a new leader who could make or break its reputation. One name that has consistently popped up in discussions is that of long-time Electronic Arts CEO Andrew Wilson. Wilson — current board chairman of the gaming empire known for the yearly sports moneymakers FIFA and Madden — has experience running a billion-dollar company and has some ties with Star Wars. Whether that will reflect positively on him is not clear. He’s made plenty of enemies. It’s complicated. We’ll get into it.
Why on earth would Disney want to invite such scrutiny and bad vibes when the last five years have already been so rocky? They have reasons. The head honcho at EA since 2013, Wilson’s regime has coincided with record profits for the company, but that comes with a Jupiter-sized asterisk. When it comes to rapacity and pure sliminess, Wilson is undeniably skilled at the black arts, which has drawn criminal investigations. Should he make the shortlist, it’s because he’s consistently made it rain on shareholders. To those in the corporate world, Andrew Wilson is a prodigy. In the eyes of consumer watchdogs, he’s a hustler. Among gamers, he’s public enemy #1.
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Mind you, thus far, Disney has been silent on the succession of their CEO or any timetable as Iger hunts for someone to protect his legacy. Following the bumbling hand-off of the baton from Iger to Robert Chapek during the last transition, they need to get it right this time. If Disney selects the EA chief, they will only give detractors free ammunition to mock them because Wilson comes with an alarming amount of baggage.
There’s no reason to bury the lede anymore. In 2018, the video game industry’s nastiest little secret was widely exposed, EA singled out for their “loot boxes” — a business term for a feature hidden in games, prominently utilized in their Star Wars online game to encourage more spending. Without shedding his signature grin or ruffling his magnificent quaffed hair, Wilson shrugged off the accusation that EA peddled virtual slot machine games to children. The legality of the practice remains unsettled as scant legislation has been passed to address the exploitative mechanic, the US Federal Trade Commission launching their own probe in 2018, according to NBC News.
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It’s little surprise that nickel-and-diming customers is the primary revenue-generating strategy under Wilson’s watch. EA isn’t renowned for making masterpieces that press the artistic envelope or innovate in any meaningful way, perfecting the concept of releasing reskinned versions of the same game they sold you last year with minimal updates. Their business model is painfully predictable, and so is the reaction from (former) fans. One look at Madden 23‘s Metacritic user score says it all: Wilson’s leadership is viewed as a pox. It’s a little shocking how a man in charge of shepherding the flagship properties remains in the company’s good graces despite being the catalyst for international oversight for an entire industry. Alas, that headache still wasn’t over.
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EA, if known outside the video game sphere at all, became infamous for being voted the “Worst Company in America” multiple times in the 2010s for antagonizing its customers and acting like smug used-car salesmen. Tarnished as LucasFilm may be, it pales in comparison to the EA loot-box PR nightmare, exacerbated by the guy in charge. True, Wilson and EA weathered the storm financially, but not without absorbing some lasting reputational damage.
The Game Awards have no significant history or clout, but if it had one memorable moment, it was when presenter Zachary Levi called out the stupidity of “microtransactions” in 2017, lambasting EA at the lone, prestigious event in the gaming community. The crowd erupted in laughter, understanding the scorn was directed squarely at EA and their Australian-born CEO.
Under Wilson’s aegis, EA set the record for the most down-voted comment in Reddit history, justifying their egregious microtransactions and monetization schemes, which are devised as psychological traps to take advantage of young children without impulse control and are likely to promote gambling addiction. Which game, in particular, earned the ire of the Redditors on the hate bandwagon? Star Wars: Battlefront II.
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EA was blindsided by the rebuke. Truth be told, they had spoiled so much goodwill over the years that they assumed they could get away with anything because of their control over so many beloved franchises. EA’s unpopular decisions go well beyond the Star Wars IP, a story for another day.
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Star Wars fans desperately want another great video game, even as Star Wars nostalgia wanes among the mainstream. Tough luck. The Star Wars-themed first-person-shooting game was canceled this year, and the 670 employees who were supposed to work on it are gone too. 800 roles in the company were canned the year before, many of those programmers and developers working on other crucial projects. EA must be in turmoil to drastically slash costs, right? Nope. Not judging by the stock awards and bonuses of the EA top positions. Stock prices are up almost double from where they stood five years ago.
Earlier this year, Wilson revealed that EA was “moving away from development of future licensed IP that we do not believe will be successful in our changing industry.” In other words, he thinks Star Wars is worthless, a move so confusing that Forbes questioned the statement as “baffling.” One thing is clear: Wilson just wiped out thousands of jobs to subsidize his $25-million-dollar compensation package, according to EA’s official documentation for 2024. At a time when the gaming business is coming to grips with a crash, EA is still raking in cash by gouging fans and screwing over the nameless people in the trenches, pledging to produce more controversial live-service games which have shown to be an ill-advised gamble in recent years.
Note that Iger worked his way up one promotion at a time after decades within the ABC/Disney offices, masterminding ABC sports and primetime programming in the ’80s and ’90s. He proved himself an apt judge of what audiences craved and delivered it to them, barring a few notorious fumbles. Chapek also toiled for years in obscurity at Disney before taking the CEO spot. Wilson opted for the opposite path, chasing the easy money every single time, even when it harmed long-term credibility.
A new approach could be the difference needed to shake up a stagnant environment. Disney is on the cusp of a new era. Wilson’s an outsider and, to anyone in the know, extremely polarizing. For the record, we don’t think he’s poised to take over, but stranger things have happened. If Disney is simply looking for a man who can spout nonsense at conferences with a straight face and look photogenic as hell doing so, they couldn’t find a better candidate.