{"id":722357,"date":"2026-06-24T02:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-06-24T02:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/722357\/"},"modified":"2026-06-24T02:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T02:06:09","slug":"bob-iger-resists-using-name-of-successor-bob-chapek-calls-undermining-claim-a-misperception","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/722357\/","title":{"rendered":"Bob Iger Resists Using Name Of Successor Bob Chapek, Calls Undermining Claim “A Misperception”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tFormer Disney<\/a> CEO Bob Iger<\/a> believes his successor, Bob Chapek<\/a>, did too much too fast after taking the mantle in 2020. <\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere was no urgent need to make drastic changes,\u201d Iger recalled. \u201cAnd yet he did, and he brought in bureaucracy and he brought in layers of management.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe result in November 2022 was Chapek\u2019s ouster from the company and Iger\u2019s return as CEO. Under pressure to improve the long-troubled track record of succession at Disney, Iger passed the CEO baton to Josh D\u2019Amaro<\/a> last February and has formally exited the company. The Financial Times spoke with Iger, D\u2019Amaro and others in a series of interviews conducted during the springtime for a 5,000-word article<\/a> published last weekend.<\/p>\n

\n\tIger pushed back on longtime rumors that he maneuvered against Chapek, using his connections with the board to poison them against the new CEO. \u201cAnother misperception is that when I was out of Disney, I was fomenting and trying to undermine him, which was completely untrue,\u201d Iger said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe article\u2019s writer, FT global media editor Daniel Thomas, recounts from his visits with Iger that the exec \u201cprefers not to even say Chapek\u2019s name now \u2013 instead habitually referring to him as \u2018my former successor.’\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tEven though \u201cwe were humming\u201d at the end of 2019, Iger was looking for a solution to succession, a part of corporate governance that had long bedeviled Disney. Board member Mark Parker\u2019s move to become executive chairman at Nike seemed to offer a blueprint. \u201cI thought, that\u2019s the model. I\u2019ll be executive chairman. I\u2019ll focus on creativity. We will avoid going through a public succession process,\u201d Iger is quoted as saying.\u2009\u201dIt was a construct which, I\u2019ve not clarified this publicly, would have me basically managing the creative side of the company.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tChapek did not respond to the FT\u2018s requests for comment, the outlet said. Apart from a synergistic sit-down with ABC News anchor David Muir on the day of the succession announcement, Disney has kept a lid on the former and current top execs, making Iger\u2019s comments the first extensive inside account of that previous set of missteps. A number of press reports have characterized the management team\u2019s actions during that period, advancing the widely held view that Iger undermined Chapek.<\/p>\n

\n\tEven though Chapek and the board had signed off on the structure after Iger\u2019s exit as CEO, \u201cthat became the tension quite quickly after that,\u201d the exec said. \u201cIt quickly went bad. Covid made that a lot harder, in fairness to him and everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tCut to 2023, when Iger said he had \u201cno time to think about\u201d the board\u2019s offer to have him return on a rescue mission. Wife Willow Bay told him, \u201cYou have to say yes,\u2019\u201d the exec remembered. \u201cShe said: \u2018You know you love those people, and you love the company.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWithin a couple short days, Iger was back in his old corner office, sitting behind the 1930s desk that Chapek had jettisoned when he took the helm. \u201cThe team had done their best to put the office back the way it was the last day I had been in it,\u201d Iger said.\u2009From there, \u201cIt was off and running.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhile he is a minor voice in the article, D\u2019Amaro does nothing to contradict Iger\u2019s depiction of events. Under Chapek\u2019s leadership and at a time when Covid was decimating the company\u2019s theme parks, sports and theatrical businesses, \u201cit felt like the world was falling apart,\u201d the new CEO said. \u201cAre we going to survive this? It was a very difficult time.\u201d <\/p>\n

\n\tThe lengthy article contains a few other small nuggets, many of which date to Iger\u2019s first run as CEO, the go-go span from 2006 to 2020 that cemented his reputation as an all-time entertainment boss. <\/p>\n

\n\tIger, 75, says Disney discussed making a run at the James Bond franchise and acquiring Twitter. They also talked about trying to merge with Apple and held brief talks with the tech giant, but \u201cthey didn\u2019t seem interested.\u201d Late Apple CEO Steve Jobs and Iger became close after Iger came in as CEO, smoothed relations with Pixar and then engineered an acquisition of the animation house. He also pulled off a game-changing distribution deal with Apple, putting ABC shows like Lost and Desperate Housewives onto iTunes, a then-unimaginable deal.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also acknowledges that an expensive, bruising proxy war with activist investor Nelson Peltz<\/a> got \u201ca little ugly.\u201d Shareholders ultimately spurned the attacks on Iger\u2019s leadership that were mounted by Peltz, who blasted what he deemed as the studio\u2019s \u201cwoke\u201d shift toward projects like Black Panther, the first superhero film to feature a primarily Black cast. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Disney CEO Bob Iger believes his successor, Bob Chapek, did too much too fast after taking the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":722358,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[210171,46632,117943,3716,88,9135,186187,92],"class_list":["post-722357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-bob-chapek","tag-bob-iger","tag-disney-ceo","tag-disney","tag-entertainment","tag-executives","tag-nelson-peltz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722357\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/722358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}