Retired Disney CEO Bob Iger Extends ‘Battle of Bobs’ with Book War

The Battle of the Bobs has been extended by popular (?) demand, with retired CEO Bob Iger announcing his upcoming book, One Last Time, about his second tour of duty leading the Walt Disney Company. He couldn’t let Chapek fire the final shots, so this is presumably his indirect answer to Behind the Castle Walls.

This is the latest development in the Disney’s Bob Swap™️ drama, which has been rebooted and adapted for bookshelves. With the announcement of Bob Iger’s One Last Time: Managing Crisis and Building Resilience at Disney book, the Disney CEO soap opera has been renewed for yet another season, and will now continue its multi-year run through at least Spring 2027.

This was probably inevitable. Right as Bob Chapek started his media blitz for Behind the Castle Walls, the two Bobs traded barbs. Bob Iger had an interview with Harvard Business Review in which he took the opportunity to besmirch the other Bob. Most of the interview revolved around leadership and is not a direct rebuttal to Chapek or his book. To the contrary, the word “Chapek” was not uttered even once during the interview. That will probably be more difficult to accomplish over the course of a 256 page book.

As for the announcement of Bob Iger’s second memoir, One Last Time: Managing Crisis and Building Resilience at Disney is the follow-up to Ride of a Lifetime by former CEO and newly-minted Disney Legend Bob Iger. The book is now available for pre-order from Amazon and other booksellers, and will be published by Random House with a release on March 2, 2027. An audiobook edition, read by the author, will be released simultaneously by Penguin Random House Audio.

One Last Time: Managing Crisis and Building Resilience at Disney, written by Iger with Dan Schwerin, is billed by Random House as the candid inside story of the sometimes bumpy, never boring journey to reconnect a great company to its core values, while building a new, lasting foundation in a rapidly changing world.

In his second go-round as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, Bob Iger was challenged in ways he never imagined, according to the publisher. He returned to a company facing not just disruption, but a constant drumbeat of all-consuming crises. It was this perpetual crisis that required Iger to learn new lessons about leadership and resilience.

Iger thought he understood what it took to be a CEO, but his second stint at Disney was a crash course in answering today’s thorniest leadership challenges, including two hostile proxy battles, and steering through the 2023 writers’ and actors’ strikes. Random House describes One Last Time as a book aimed at addressing the following questions that arose during Iger’s second tenure as Disney CEO, from late 2022 through 2026:

• How do you make hard calls, under high pressure and intense scrutiny, with imperfect information and conflicting priorities?
• How can companies stay true to their missions and values amid growing polarization, public and political scrutiny, and rapidly evolving challenge, from the rise of AI to high-profile controversies such as ABC’s temporary suspension of Jimmy Kimmel?
• How do leaders own up to mistakes and persevere through constant crisis?

To survive, the Walt Disney Company and Bob Iger would have to become more resilient, innovative, and above all, creative. “This is a comeback story,” Iger says. “It’s about what Disney needed to find its way back to its core values and what that journey taught me about leading in a time of unprecedented challenge and change.”

One Last Time will actually be the third about the post-COVID era of tumult and turnover in leading the Walt Disney Company, with The House of Mouse: Bob Iger and The War of Succession at Disney  being the one that ‘bridges the gap’ and independently covers the Battle of the Bobs. That book is slated to be released on December 1, 2026.

The House of Mouse is written by veteran Wall Street Journal reporter Robbie Whelan about the last decade of leadership at the Walt Disney Company. As you might recall, Disney ‘disputed’ the contents of that book, and hired a pitbull attorney, Charles Harder, to push back on the upcoming title.

Harder reportedly sent multiple letters to publisher HarperCollins, seeking information about its contents. They contended that Whelan has covered Iger and Disney negatively in the past, claiming it was a biased “hit job” on Iger and Disney per Puck. It’s been referred to as the “Bob vs. Bob” book, with a strong focus on the relationship between the Bobs.

Although Bob Iger’s forthcoming book appears to be an indirect response to Behind the Castle Walls, it could just as easily be about telling his side of the story following The House of Mouse, or both.

Obviously, Iger will focus on much more than just the ‘Battle of the Bobs,’ which isn’t even mentioned in the publisher’s description. But he’ll undoubtedly address the elephant in the room, and it seems possible that One Last Time would not even exist but for the other two books.

Or at least, One Last Time wouldn’t be coming out in 2027 but for the other books. Bob Iger was never going to quietly retire and sail off into the sunset. That’s just not in his nature. But we figured he’d wait a little longer to let the dust settle before publishing his next book, which probably still is not truly the last one.

Our Commentary

Some words of wisdom come to mind with regard to One Last Time: “Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.”

As we’ve covered elsewhere, Bob Chapek’s media appearances and interviews to promote his book were an unmitigated disaster, to put it mildly. He wrote this book to tell his side of the story in order to rehabilitate his image, reframe his legacy at Disney, and make himself hireable again. He accomplished exactly zero of that with his first public appearances in nearly 4 years.

If anything, Chapek came across considerably worse than he did in 2022. It’s as if what we saw when he was Disney CEO was the most media trained and personable the Bobot2000 could be. During the last few years of seclusion, he’s reverted back to his factory defaults.

Chapek defended the wrong decisions, doubled-down on his penchant for price increases and cost-cutting, and continued to express his open disdain for Disney fans. Everything he has said thus far reinforces his own past admissions that he has low EQ or emotional intelligence, and is oddly proud of it. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, Bob Chapek has proven that he did not and still does not “get” what made Disney…Disney.

What I’ve read of Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth thus far has been a similar story. It’s shockingly candid, contains countless interesting anecdotes, and gives insight into Chapek’s thinking. It’s a really fascinating read, and clearly was not polished by a PR team or editors trying to massage the messaging.

Whereas Ride of a Lifetime is more calculated and offers leadership lessons, Behind the Castle Walls feels less contrived. There have already been a few occasions when I’ve wondered “why would you publish these words?!”

It feels like a quasi DisneyWar spin-off or sequel, but written by one of the main characters who didn’t quite comprehend how to paint himself as a sympathetic figure, even as he tries to blame Bob Iger for his failures.

With that said, Chapek is an unreliable narrator of his own story at best, or telling half truths or lying by omission at worst. In light of that and the upcoming House of Mouse book, it seems like Bob Iger now wants to ‘set the record straight’ with his own book, even if that’s not how the One Last Time is being framed.

But given how badly Bob Chapek defended himself, is prolonging the Battle of the Bobs really advantageous to Iger? As we’ve said before, Chapek is better at making Iger look worse than he is at making himself look better.

The media tour that accompanies One Last Time will inevitably result in Chapek reemerging yet again, and will give him even more incentive to go scorched earth on Iger. There will be no winners from all of that. They’ll both manage to make themselves look worse.

As we’ve also noted elsewhere, the biggest takeaway from Chapek’s book has been an indictment of Bob Iger’s judgment. How could he talk to Chapek for more than 10 minutes and come away thinking he’d be suitable as the public face of the Walt Disney Company?!

It’s obvious that Iger had buyer’s remorse with Chapek. Based on subsequent interviews and articles, we know that choosing Chapek as his successor was the “worst mistake” of Iger’s career. Even Michael Eisner has chimed in about the Chapek era, calling it a “marriage made hell” and “mistake.”

The problem with this is that it feels at least a little revisionist. Bob Chapek was a known quantity even before becoming CEO. Both Bobs knew that Chapek lacked Iger’s charisma and wasn’t a natural communicator. Even Chapek acknowledged that he had low “E.Q.,” or emotional intelligence.

It’s difficult to believe that Iger didn’t know exactly what he was getting with Bob Chapek. It feels like an eternity ago, but Bob Chapek was well-known among Disney theme park fans and was widely disliked even before 2020. This is despite Chapek presiding over Parks & Resorts during an era of expansion.

Chapek obviously is responsible for his own actions, mistakes, and countless unforced errors. At the same time, it’s fair to say that Iger did not set the Walt Disney Company up for success by choosing Chapek in the first place, and then second-guessing and undermining his decisions.

Chapek was clearly chosen as a matter of expediency. He was picked to be the hatchet man who made unpopular and difficult decisions to get the Walt Disney Company through a tough time, presumably before the company hit refresh with a clean slate, or the triumphant return of Iger once those unpopular decisions had been made.

Between the choice of Chapek and Iger’s abrupt departure in the lead-up to COVID, a book in which he talks about “managing crisis” and rebuilding the company during a time of constant challenges is going to be tricky. (Mild understatement.)

Readers are going to come to this book with the knowledge that Bob Iger stepped down as Disney CEO quickly in February 2020, and was responsible for unleashing Chapek onto the world. His book will have to reckon with that along with other questionable decisions made even before 2020-2022, which is what I hope is part of what’s intended by “own up to mistakes” in the description.

Iger was surprisingly candid in Ride of a Lifetime, but this will need to go even further than that if fans are to take it seriously as an accounting of that challenging time. Chapek’s book comes across as overly defensive, lacking accountability, self-awareness or introspection.

I say all of this as someone who has been more charitable towards Bob Iger than the average Disney fan. To this day, I remain glad Iger returned and stuck around until 2026. I’ve said it before, but I don’t think anyone else was equipped to navigate Disney through the rough waters of the last few years.

I’m also glad that Iger has since left, and seemingly handled succession planning the right way this go-round. Even with the mostly favorable impression that I have of Bob Iger, I’m not looking for a book that takes a victory lap or celebrates his legacy; that feels a bit unearned at this point.

What Bob Iger does have the opportunity to do is actually get the last word in the Battle of the Bobs by engaging in more reflection about his own culpability in these crises. He doesn’t need to be downright contrite or offer a mea culpa, but it would be nice to understand the “why” behind some of his decisions, what he views as mistakes, and how he could’ve done things differently to achieve better outcomes.

I don’t think many fans are going to be interested in more petty back and forth between the Bobs as they play the blame game. Nobody feels sorry for these guys as they earned hundreds of millions of dollars in the process. That’s why Bob Chapek’s book only sold a reported 2,400 copies in its first week!

I hope One Last Time: Managing Crisis and Building Resilience at Disney recognizes this. The book could end up being something actually worth reading, but not if it’s just aimed at polishing and recalibrating Bob Iger’s own legacy in response to other books that he views as “unfair.”

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YOUR THOUGHTS

What are your thoughts on One Last Time? Are you interested in this book if Iger actually takes a sober look at the mistakes he made, and his own role the Chapek era? Will you read it regardless, or are you sick of hearing from the two Bobs? What about anything else covered here? Agree or disagree with our assessment? Hearing your perspective–even when you disagree with us–is both interesting to us and helpful to other readers, so please share your thoughts below in the comments!