In perhaps a sign that the search for a successor to The Walt Disney Co., chairman and CEO Bob Iger may take a little longer than expected, the content giant extended his employment deal for another year, sweetening the deal with a $5 million cash bonus if he stays in the top spot until 2019.

This is the latest in a string of employment extensions Iger has received from the company since he first announced his intention to retire in 2015. But since then Disney’s succession plans have hit a snag. The former heir apparent, Chief Operating Officer Thomas Staggs resigned in 2016 after reports said that he had lost the backing of Disney’s board of directors. And Iger said earlier his year after agreeing to stay on until 2018 that he was open to extending his tenure.

Disney is in need of a steady hand, as subscriber declines at its flagship cable network ESPN have overshadowed strong performance at its film studio and theme park divisions. And Iger has been the one to provide it.

“Given Bob Iger’s outstanding leadership, his record of success in a changing media landscape, and his clear strategic vision for Disney’s future, it is obvious that the Company and its shareholders will be best served by his continued leadership as the Board conducts the robust process of identifying a successor and ensuring a smooth transition,” Disney independent lead director Orin Smith said in a statement.

According to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission Thursday, Disney amended Iger’s already amended employment deal on March 22, extending the period of the contract another year from June 30, 2018 to July 2, 2019.

Iger’s annual base salary of $2.5 million will be the same as he received in 2016, as will his targeted annual bonus and target equity awards. The terms of any equity grants made for fiscal 2019 will be on the same terms and conditions as would have applied to the grants made in fiscal 2018.

According to Disney’s annual proxy statement, Iger received $43.88 million in total compensation in fiscal 2016, including $20 million in non-equity incentive plan compensation, stock awards of $8.8 million and option awards of $8.45 million.   

According to the most recent SEC document, if Iger stays until 2019, he will receive a cash bonus of $5 million in addition to his other incentive awards. Following his termination of employment in 2019, Iger will serve as a consultant to Disney for three years, where he will provide assistance to the new CEO as requested. For those services he will receive a quarterly fee of $500,000 for each of the first 8 quarters during the Consulting Period and $250,000 for each of the last four quarters of the Consulting Period. For the three years following termination of employment, Disney will provide Iger with the same security services (other than the personal use of a company provided aircraft) as was made available to him as CEO.

The past 12 months have been rough on The Walt Disney Co., with cord-cutting, cord-shaving and skinny bundles eating away at its flagship cable network ESPN’s subscriber base and, more recently, with the abrupt resignation of chief operating officer Thomas Staggs, heir apparent to the CEO throne.

As the perennially rock-solid Disney’s foundation begins to show some cracks, some analysts are calling for some radical changes, like opening its wallet wide to purchase subscription video-on-demand pioneer Netflix.

BTIG media analyst Rich Greenfield, a sharp critic of Disney’s failure to develop a direct-to-consumer strategy for its content and what he calls its overpayment for sports rights, believes a Netflix buy could solve two looming Disney problems in one swoop.

Greenfield in a blog called a Netflix deal an “acquihire,” made to bring in additional management expertise as well as assets.

While a Netflix-Disney pairing would create a formidable programming offering across all devices, mixing Disney’s movie studio, cable and sports content with Netflix’s original shows and deep library, the best part of the deal could be what it potentially adds to the C-suite.

With Disney chairman and CEO Bob Iger slated to retire in 2018, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, whom Greenfield calls “a visionary CEO who understands the future of content and video programming,” could easily slip into the top role. Netflix could also solve Disney’s direct-to-consumer dilemma. It would make an over-the-top ESPN service more palatable and fill Netflix’s one programming hole, live sports.

But the price would likely be enormous. Greenfield doubted Netflix would sell for less than $100 billion. That’s well outside the $4 billion to $7 billion range of Iger’s most recent deals with Pixar Animation Studios, Lucasfilm Ltd. (which brought Disney the Star Wars movie franchise) and Marvel Entertainment (solidifying its superhero content slate).

“Buying Netflix is an awfully expensive acquihire, but it could be Disney’s only hope,” Greenfield wrote.

Pivotal Research Group CEO and senior media & communications analyst Jeff Wlodarczak is not so sure. He was an earlier proponent of Disney buying a stake in Netflix back when the stock was in the $40 per share range, when a Netflix stake would have let Disney capture some of the upside in the SVOD business early on and when Disney would have strengthened Netflix with more content.

An outright purchase of Netflix today, when it is at the height of its value — it was priced at $110 per share last week — could be throwing large sums of money at a bad idea.

With Netflix’s enterprise value of $45 billion, Wlodarczak said a deal could be done at $65 billion (representing a 50% premium) but would be too expensive for Disney. And it would likely remind investors of another illtimed and value-sucking mega-merger: Time Warner Inc.’s $64 billion marriage with AOL in 2000, considered to be the worst media deal of the 20th century.

Disney already has a content deal with Netflix, Wlodarczak noted. If it wants to go direct-to-consumer, he said, it has the content through ESPN, ABC and Disney Channel to do so on its own.

“The risk, of course, is that no one monetizes the current pay TV ecosystem better than Disney,” Wlodarczak said, adding that it would not be in Disney’s interest to create a low-cost alternative to subscription TV.

An ESPN-Netflix pairing could also mean the consumer price for Netflix would rise materially, were Disney to try to emulate what it gets from distributors today. And reportedly only 20%-30% of TV viewers watch sports.

“At this point Disney is better served letting SVOD develop and trying to continue to mark up the price of their content as much as possible to multiplying SVOD players,” Wlodarczak said.