Dana Walden on Kimmel's Future and Why Live-Action 'Moana' Sank

Disney president and chief creative officer Dana Walden says she is working to keep Jimmy Kimmel at ABC beyond his current contract, calling the late-night host's future an open question of business math and partnership.

"It's a very challenging daypart, late-night," Walden said Thursday during a conversation at Bloomberg's Screentime. "That's not to say that Jimmy is not doing a phenomenal job, and his ratings are up, but they're up relative to a smaller audience that's watching late night on broadcast television."

Kimmel's contract expires in May 2027, which would mark 24 years on the air. Page Six reported in September that he would step back from late-night after that date. ABC denied the report, telling multiple outlets that news of the host's departure is "inaccurate" and that "any reports about the future of the show at this point are purely speculative."

Walden acknowledged that the show's digital reach does not pay its bills. "Obviously, there's a YouTube channel. Millions of people are watching, on demand, parts of that show. That is not a lucrative opportunity for a very premium talk show, so we're trying to make sense of the business while also honoring a deep partnership," she said. "I love Jimmy. We have a great friendship. He's close to a number of the people at Disney, and again, we're trying to work through it and make sense of both. What does Jimmy want? What's the right thing to do, and what's the right thing for our business?"

The contract negotiation unfolds against an extraordinary backdrop. Kimmel and his show have become symbols of free speech and resistance during President Donald Trump's second-term media crackdown. Roughly a year ago, ABC pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" off the air "indefinitely" after Nexstar Media, one of the biggest TV station owners in the U.S., said it would pre-empt airings of the talk show over on-air jokes Kimmel made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

FCC chair Brendan Carr threatened action against ABC over Kimmel's remarks. "These companies can find ways to change conduct and take action, frankly, on Kimmel or there's going to be additional work for the FCC ahead," Carr said on Benny Johnson's podcast.

In April, the FCC ordered ABC to submit its license renewal applications early, days after Trump called for Kimmel to be fired over a joke about First Lady Melania Trump. In early September, Kimmel revealed in his opening monologue that "Live!" was moving an interview with Texas state Rep. James Talarico to YouTube, fearing retaliation from Carr's FCC.

Elsewhere in the interview, Walden addressed the live-action "Moana," which reached theaters in July and underperformed. She blamed its proximity to "Moana 2," the animated sequel released in November 2024.

"It's so competitive right now that you have to have … the right film at the right time, with audiences feeling a certain degree of demand. I would say our live-action 'Moana,' which is excellent, I think it was hurt by the proximity to our second animated version of 'Moana,' which came together under unusual circumstances, but premiered about 18 months before this one," Walden said. "So perhaps there was not enough time to create a lot of pent-up demand for another film."

The numbers bear out the gap. The original 2016 "Moana" grossed $643 million worldwide. "Moana 2," assembled from a scrapped TV show, exceeded expectations with just over $1 billion. The live-action remake managed $323 million worldwide against a production budget of $250 million.

Walden argued that box office is only one measure of value for franchise IP, which also feeds theme parks, consumer products and streaming. "Our job is to deliver the highest quality. Try to create content which endures and is going to be of value years and years and years from now. That is what has built this unmatched canon of IP," she said. "So there will be an event. There will be something."

She also defended Disney's recent layoffs, which cut a few hundred employees across multiple departments — the third round this year under newly appointed CEO Josh D'Amaro. "This past round was a voluntary retirement program, which was extremely generous and gave a number of our long-tenured executives agency and the opportunity to make their own decisions around whether the timing was right to leave or to stay," Walden said. "This evolution will never stop, technology set their sights on our business, and we must survive and thrive and grow, and that's what we're going to do."

With Kimmel's contract running to May 2027 and the FCC still scrutinizing ABC, Walden's answers leave the network's most prominent late-night voice in limbo — and its most valuable franchises under pressure to prove they can still open a movie.