'I can't survive another two years of this,' ex-Disney CEO said before Bob Iger took back the job

He added that his predecessor, long-time Disney CEO Bob Iger, is “not going to leave. He’ll be here until he dies,” according to a new exposé of Chapek’s two-year reign over the media giant published Sunday in the New York Times.

Chapek’s statement was prescient: Just two years later, Iger retuned to the company in 2022, taking his job back as CEO.

The New York Times’s deep-dive into the tumultuous relationship between the two business leaders comes as Disney is gearing up to find Iger’s next successor.

Iger, who has been with the media giant for four decades, served as its CEO from 2005 to 2020. He later became executive chairman before retiring from the company completely in 2021.

Iger returned to the company just a year later to serve a two-year term as CEO, which has since been extended. He is now expected to leave the company in 2026.

When Iger first stepped down as CEO in 2020, he hand-picked Chapek as his successor. Iger remained at the company as its “creative director” and the executive chairman of the board. He also required that Chapek report both to him and to the board.

Iger and Chapek’s relationship soured almost immediately due to differences in leadership style, the New York Times reported. A central disagreement among them was Chapek’s corporate restructuring plan that would prioritize the company’s streaming services.

Things got worse when Iger wrote in an email about the pandemic to the New York Times’s media columnist Ben Smith: “a crisis of this magnitude, and its impact on Disney, would necessarily result in my actively helping Bob [Chapek] and the company contend with it, particularly since I ran the company for 15 years!”

Smith ended up writing in his column: “After a few weeks of letting Mr. Chapek take charge, Mr. Iger smoothly reasserted control” and speculated that the CEO position “may be open again.”

Eventually, after the company’s stock price continued to dwindle under Chapek and a $1.5 billion quarterly loss in the company’s streaming division, the board asked Iger to return in 2022.

Now, two years later, the board is gearing up to find a new CEO.

Disney’s board in August named Morgan Stanley $MS executive chairman James Gorman as chair of its succession planning committee. Disney said the committee is looking at both internal and external candidates.

Additionally, internal candidates are undergoing a preparation process that includes mentorship from Iger and external coaching. The frontrunners for the role include Disney Entertainment co-chairs Dana Walden and Alan Bergman; Disney Experiences chairman Josh D’Amaro, and ESPN Chairman Jimmy Pitaro.