Ancient Disney CEO Bob Chapek said Monday that he expressed concerns about then-executive chairman Bob Iger “every week” to the company’s board during his brief tenure at the helm of the House of Mouse.
Chapek has remained tight-lipped about his firing from the media giant nearly four years ago, but has spoken about his experience in a revealing new memoir, “Behind Castle Walls: My Thirty Years in the Happiest Place on Earth,” and in an interview with CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”
Once the head of Disney’s theme parks and experiences division, Chapek was tapped to take the helm of the company just weeks before the Covid pandemic shut down movie theaters and theme parks around the world in 2020. As Chapek worked to navigate these challenges, Iger remained at the company to manage Disney’s content initiatives like Disney+.
However, Iger slowly began to regain control, Chapek says. The power struggle that followed was detailed in a CNBC report in 2023.
“When I started hearing about his lunches and dinners where he was completely destroying me, and I was hearing it two, three times in the same week, the same bullet points, the same talking points, I was like, ‘I have a problem,'” Chapek told CNBC.
He noted that when he raised concerns with the Disney board about Iger, he was told, “‘He’ll be gone in two years. It’s no big deal. It’s Bob being Bob.'”
But nearly three years after being named CEO, Chapek was ousted and replaced by Iger, who returned to the role until March 2026.
“It would have been great if, like other CEOs, he had acted as a steward of my new role,” Chapek said. “It would have been one thing if he was neutral, but to actively work against me, I thought that was just incredible.”
Gn bussni
