The Disney community is mourning the loss of Dave Hollis, who worked as an executive for the company for seven years between 2011 and 2018. He passed away peacefully inside his home in Austin, Texas on Saturday night – his death was confirmed by a family representative. A cause of death wasn’t revealed.
According to his family, Hollis – who was 47 years old at the time of his death – spent some time in the hospital recently due to heart complications, which may or may not have contributed to his death. He is survived by his ex-wife, Rachel Hollis, and four loving children – Noah, Jackson, Sawyer, and Ford.
Rachel took to Instagram on Tuesday to express the grief her family is going through during this difficult time. “We are devastated. I have no words and my heart is too broken to find them. Please wrap the kids up in prayers as we try and navigate through the unthinkable,” she wrote – adding a broken heart emoji.
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Dave Hollis played a large part in the success of Disney during his time with the company. He was the president of worldwide distribution for their movie studio and was a key contributor to several coveted projects that many of us have fallen in love with over the years. His legacy will continue to live on forever.
Some of the projects he helped bring to life were the Avengers series, Frozen, Black Panther, and the relaunch of the Star Wars saga. He helped the company break plenty of records, but his most impressive was helping the studio reach $7 billion in global ticket sales in 2016 – the studio did $6 billion in 2017.
Sometime around 2002, Dave Hollis met his future wife, Rachel Hollis, at Miramax, where she was working at the time. The two started dating shortly after and eventually tied the knot in May 2004. They remained together for 16 years, but their marriage started falling apart in 2017 and they divorced in 2020.
“We started out as best friends 18 years ago and the truth is, that core friendship and the parts of us that work so well, have become a band-aid for the parts of us that don’t,” she said in June 2020. After three years of struggling, they ultimately decided it was ‘healthier’ and ‘more respectful’ for them to call it quits.
Dave Hollis Left Disney in 2018 to Pursue Other Goals
In 2018, two years before he and his wife split, Dave Hollis left his job at Disney – much to everyone’s surprise. He decided to move his wife and children to Austin, Texas, where he lived at the time of his death, and subsequently became the CEO of his wife’s already-successful company, Chic Media.
Since the couple’s divorce, Dave has written several popular books that chronicled his life and some of the struggles he experienced. In 2020, he wrote a self-help book titled Get Out of Your Own Way – in which he wrote about his excessive drinking habits while at Disney and coming at odds with his wife.
On October 26, 2021, Hollis released yet another self-help book – Built Through Courage: Face Your Fears to Live the Life You Were Meant For. In the book, he wrote about taking control of his life and realizing that he had spent years chasing someone else’s goals, all while sacrificing his own goals.
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Most recently, Dave Hollis authored a children’s book titled Here’s to Your Dreams!: A Teatime with Noah Book – released on November 8, 2022 – that helps children learn how to believe in themselves. He was also the host of his own podcast called Rise Together – his last episode was released on February 8th.
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