Former Disney CEO Makes Mickey Mouse Move

Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek is releasing a forthcoming book, Behind the Castle Walls, that blames predecessor and successor Bob Iger for much of what went wrong during Chapek’s tenure and takes little apparent responsibility for his own record.

In the book, Chapek faults Iger for everything from his own indecisive leadership to Disney’s litigation with Scarlett Johansson. He also claims credit for current CEO Josh D’Amaro, writing that D’Amaro was a “relative unknown in the corporate hierarchy before I singled him out.”

Most sharply, Chapek portrays Iger — who earned hundreds of millions of dollars across his tenures as one of America’s highest-paid CEOs — as “complaining about his compensation, that it was inadequate relative to others in the industry.” 

That account tracks with earlier reports from Disney executives that Iger privately lamented making less than CBS’s Les Moonves, who oversaw a smaller set of assets.

Chapek, Iger

The book is already drawing criticism as a “revenge” memoir and a “loser move.” Chapek appears unlikely to win many new supporters if he continues to avoid accountability for the failures associated with his time as CEO: the “Don’t Say Gay” controversy, a reorganization that stripped power from creative executives and angered them, the decision to dump Pixar films onto Disney+, and a broader loss of confidence among top executives and key stakeholders.

Iger, for his part, is not emerging unscathed either by publicly trading blows with Chapek now.