Timeline

Pirates of the Caribbean is an American film series produced by Jerry Bruckheimer and based on Disney's theme park attraction. The film series serves as a major component of the Pirates of the Caribbean media franchise. The films are set primarily in the Caribbean, based on a fictionalized version of the Golden Age of Piracy (c. 1650–1726) while also leading to the range of a mid-1700s setting. Directors of the series include Gore Verbinski (films 1–3), Rob Marshall (4), Joachim Rønning (5), and Espen Sandberg (5).

(1901–1966) Walter Elias Disney was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the American animation industry, he introduced several developments in the production of cartoons. As a film producer, he holds the record for most Academy Awards won (22) and nominations (59) by an individual. He was presented with two Golden Globe Special Achievement Awards and an Emmy Award, among other honors. Several of his films are included in the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress and have also been named as some of the best by the American Film Institute.

Roy Oliver Disney was an American entrepreneur. He co-founded with his younger brother Walt what is now the Walt Disney Company in October 1923. Disney also served as the company's first chief executive officer and was the father of Roy E. Disney.

Walt Disney Pictures (also billed simply as Disney) is an American film production company that is a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Studios, a division of Disney Entertainment, which is owned by the Walt Disney Company. Founded on October 16, 1923, the studio is the flagship producer of live-action feature films within the Walt Disney Studios unit and is based at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. Animated films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar Animation Studios are also released under the studio banner. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures distributes and markets the films produced by Walt Disney Pictures.

Winnie-the-Pooh is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by the English author A. A. Milne and the English illustrator E. H. Shepard. Winnie-the-Pooh first appeared by name in a children's story commissioned by London's Evening News for Christmas Eve 1925. The character is inspired by a stuffed toy that Milne had bought for his son Christopher Robin in Harrods department store, and a bear named Winnie they had viewed at London Zoo.

Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), sometimes shortened to Disney Animation, is an American animation studio which produces animated feature films and short films for the Walt Disney Company. The studio's current production logo features a scene from its first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie (1928). Founded on October 16, 1923, by brothers Walt and Roy O. Disney after the closure of Laugh-O-Gram Studio, it is the longest-running animation studio in the world. It is currently organized as a division of Walt Disney Studios and is headquartered at the Roy E. Disney Animation Building at the Walt Disney Studios lot in Burbank, California.

Mickey Mouse is a cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks. The longtime corporate icon and mascot of the Walt Disney Company and a figurehead of American animation, Mickey is an anthropomorphic mouse who typically wears red shorts, large shoes, and white gloves. He is often depicted with a cast of characters including his girlfriend Minnie Mouse, his pet dog Pluto, his best friends Donald Duck and Goofy, and his nemesis Pete. Mickey was created as a replacement for a prior character created by Disney, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is a 1937 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney and released by RKO Radio Pictures, based on the 1812 German fairy tale "Snow White" by the Brothers Grimm. The film was supervised by David Hand and a team of five sequence directors: Perce Pearce, William Cottrell, Larry Morey, Wilfred Jackson, and Ben Sharpsteen. It is the first animated feature film produced in the United States and the first cel animated feature film. Snow White premiered at the Carthay Circle Theatre in Los Angeles, California, on December 21, 1937, and went into general release in the United States on February 4, 1938.

The American Broadcasting Company (ABC) is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network that serves as the flagship property of the Disney Television Group division of the Walt Disney Company. The youngest of the "Big Three" American television networks, the network is sometimes referred to as the Alphabet Network, as its initialism also represents the first three letters of the English alphabet in order. ABC launched as a radio network in 1943, as the successor to the NBC Blue Network, which had been purchased by Edward J. Noble. It extended its operations to television in 1948, following in the footsteps of established broadcast networks CBS and NBC, as well as the lesser-known DuMont. In the mid-1950s, ABC merged with United Paramount Theatres (UPT), a chain of movie theaters that formerly operated as a subsidiary of Paramount Pictures. Leonard Goldenson, who had been the head of UPT, made the then-new television network profitable by helping to develop and green-light many successful television series. In the 1980s, after purchasing an 80 percent interest in cable sports channel ESPN, the network's corporate parent, American Broadcasting Companies, Inc., merged with Capital Cities Communications, owner of several television and radio stations and print publications, to form Capital Cities/ABC Inc., which in turn merged into Disney in 1996. ABC has eight owned-and-operated and more than 230 affiliated television stations throughout the United States and it

Donn B. Tatum was an American businessman and the first non-Disney family member to be an executive of Walt Disney Productions. Tatum held senior leadership positions with Disney for 25 years, becoming president from 1968 to 1971, when he became CEO from 1971 until 1976. His final position was "Director Emeritus" from 1992 until his death. He played a major role in the creation of the Walt Disney World Resort, EPCOT Center and Tokyo Disneyland.

Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney Studios, a division of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. The studio started in 1974 as part of the Lucasfilm computer division. It was known as the Graphics Group before its spin-off as a corporation in 1986, with funding from Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who became its majority shareholder.

ESPN is an American basic cable sports broadcasting network and the flagship property of ESPN, LLC, a joint venture of the Walt Disney Company, Hearst Communications (18%) and the National Football League (10%). Founded on September 7, 1979, by Bill Rasmussen, Scott Rasmussen, and Ed Eagan, it is widely considered as the biggest sports network, with its title being the "Worldwide Leader in Sports", with a 20% share interest of sports as a rise from previous years. It rules through extended live rights for the NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA. With college sports, it has its own streaming service.

Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman and media proprietor who served as chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company from September 1984 to September 2005. Prior to Disney, Eisner was president of rival film studio Paramount Pictures from 1976 to 1984, and had brief stints at the major television networks NBC, CBS, and ABC.

Disney Television Animation, formerly known as Walt Disney Pictures Television Animation Group and Walt Disney Television Animation, is an American animation studio that serves as the television animation production arm of Disney Kids & Family, a division of Disney Entertainment Television, which is a division of Disney Entertainment, which is one of the three main divisions of The Walt Disney Company. The studio was originally established in 1984, by Gary Krisel during the reorganization and subsequent re-incorporation of Disney following the arrival of then CEO Michael Eisner that year.

The Walt Disney Company, commonly and globally known as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Founded on October 16, 1923, as an animation studio by brothers Walt Disney and Roy Oliver Disney as Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio, Disney operated under the names Walt Disney Studio and Walt Disney Productions before adopting its current name in 1986. In 1928, Disney established itself as a leader in the animation industry with the short film Steamboat Willie. The film used synchronized sound to become the first post-produced sound cartoon, and popularized Mickey Mouse, who became Disney's mascot and corporate icon.

Blue Sky Studios, Inc. was an American visual effects and computer animation studio, which was based in Greenwich, Connecticut. It was founded on February 22, 1987, by Chris Wedge, Michael Ferraro, Carl Ludwig, Alison Brown, David Brown and Eugene Troubetzkoy after their employer, Mathematical Applications Group (MAGI), one of the visual effects studios behind Tron (1982), shut down. Using its in-house rendering software, the studio created visual effects for commercials and films before dedicating itself to animated film production. It produced 13 feature films, the first being Ice Age (2002), and the final one being Spies in Disguise (2019).

Jeffrey David Katzenberg is an American media proprietor and film producer. He served as chair of Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and business operations for the company's feature films. Following his departure, he co-founded DreamWorks SKG in 1994, where he served as the company's chief executive officer (CEO) and executive producer of its animated franchises—including Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and How to Train Your Dragon—until stepping down from the title in 2016. He has since founded the venture capital firm WndrCo in the same year, which invests in digital media projects, and launched Quibi in 2020, a defunct short-form mobile video platform that lost US$1.35 billion in seven months.

The Lion King is a 1994 American animated musical drama film directed by Roger Allers and Rob Minkoff, produced by Don Hahn, and written by Irene Mecchi, Jonathan Roberts, and Linda Woolverton. It was produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation, and features an ensemble voice cast consisting of Matthew Broderick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Jonathan Taylor Thomas, Moira Kelly, Niketa Calame, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg, Cheech Marin, Rowan Atkinson, and Robert Guillaume. The story follows a young lion prince named Simba, who is exiled from his kingdom after his father Mufasa is murdered by his uncle Scar to seize the throne. As he grows up, Simba must decide whether to return home to confront Scar and reclaim his place as king.

Robert Alan Iger is an American media executive who was the chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company twice, from 2005 to 2020 and from 2022 to 2026. He previously was the president of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) between 1994 and 1995 and president and chief operating officer (COO) of Capital Cities/ABC, from 1995 until its acquisition by Disney in 1996.

Marvel Studios, LLC, formerly known as Marvel Films, is an American film and television production company. Marvel Studios is the creator of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), a media franchise and shared universe of films and television series produced by the studio, based on characters that appear in Marvel Comics publications. Producer Avi Arad initially founded Marvel Films in December 1993 as part of Marvel Entertainment Group, before forming Marvel Studios in August 1996 to have greater oversight of the development of Marvel adaptations. The studio originally licensed the film rights for several Marvel characters before beginning to produce its own films in 2004, and has since regained many of those rights. Since 2007, it has been led by producer Kevin Feige, who has served as its president since 2008. The Walt Disney Company acquired Marvel Studios's parent company, Marvel Entertainment, in 2009. Marvel Studios was transferred in 2015 to the Walt Disney Studios, which has been a part of the Disney Entertainment division since 2023. Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures has distributed most of the studio's films since The Avengers (2012). Marvel Studios began developing its own live-action and animated television series in 2018, most of which are connected to its films.

Lucasfilm Ltd. LLC is an American film and television production company founded by filmmaker George Lucas on December 10, 1971, in Marin County, California, in the city of San Rafael, and later moved to San Francisco in 2005. It is best known for creating and producing the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, as well as its leadership in developing special effects, sound, and computer animation for films. Since 2012, Lucasfilm has been a subsidiary of The Walt Disney Studios, who also owns former Lucasfilm subsidiary Pixar.

Frozen is a 2013 American animated musical fantasy film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios, loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's 1844 fairy tale "The Snow Queen". Directed by Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and written by Lee, it stars the voices of Kristen Bell, Idina Menzel, Jonathan Groff, Josh Gad, and Santino Fontana. It follows Anna, the princess of Arendelle, who sets off on a journey with the iceman Kristoff, his reindeer Sven, and the snowman Olaf, to find her estranged sister Elsa after she accidentally traps their kingdom in eternal winter with her icy powers. Frozen underwent several story treatments before it was commissioned in 2011.

Disney+ is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming media service owned and operated by Disney Streaming, the streaming division of Disney Entertainment, a major business segment of the Walt Disney Company. The service primarily distributes films and television shows produced by Walt Disney Studios and Disney Television Studios, with dedicated content hubs for Disney's flagship brands; Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Star Wars, National Geographic, ESPN (the US, Latin America, Caribbean, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa only), and Hulu as well as showcasing original and exclusive films and television shows. Disney+ is the third most-subscribed video on demand streaming media service after Amazon Prime Video and Netflix, with 131.6 million paid memberships. Disney+ relies on technology developed by Disney Streaming, which was originally established as BAMTech in 2015 when it was spun off from MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM). Disney increased its ownership share of BAMTech to a controlling stake in 2017 and subsequently transferred ownership to Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer & International, as part of a corporate restructuring in anticipation of Disney's acquisition of 21st Century Fox, through which the Star brand was inherited and got retooled as a content platform within the service in some regions, with Latin America having its own standalone service, Star+, until June 26 and July 24, 2024. The Star brand was phased out on October 8, 2025, being replaced w

Searchlight Pictures, Inc., formerly known as Fox Searchlight Pictures, is an American independent film production and distribution company, which since 2019 has been owned by Walt Disney Studios, a division of the Disney Entertainment segment of the Walt Disney Company. Founded on April 29, 1994 as a division of 20th Century Fox (now 20th Century Studios), the studio focuses primarily on producing, distributing, and acquiring independent and specialty films. Searchlight is most known for distributing the films Slumdog Millionaire, 12 Years a Slave, Birdman, The Shape of Water, and Nomadland, all of which have won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The studio's films has grossed over $5.3 billion worldwide and amassed 51 Academy Awards, 30 Golden Globe Awards, and 56 BAFTA awards.