Tom Staggs, chief operating officer of Walt Disney, is to leave the company after losing the support of the board to succeed Bob Iger, its chairman and chief executive, in 2018. The move threatens a repeat of Disney’s troubles with succession under Michael Eisner, Mr Iger’s predecessor, which culminated in a shareholder revolt in 2004.

Mr Eisner’s cultivation and then rejection in turn of Jeffrey Katzenberg and Mike Ovitz as his second-in-command at Disney in the mid-1990s marred his tenure. In his 2005 book about the period, ‘DisneyWar’, James Stewart described the company as a place “deeply rooted in a culture of fantasy” where executives “take on the aura of hereditary royalty”. Mr Iger’s departure date has been put back three times.

Once upon a time in Disneyland, content was king but the king was not content.