Former Disney CEO Bob Chapek to Publish Memoir 'Behind the Castle Walls' in September
Former Disney chief executive Bob Chapek will publish a memoir titled Behind the Castle Walls: My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth on 29 September, Gallery Books has announced. Gallery is an imprint of Simon & Schuster, one of the largest trade publishers in the United States. (Publishers Marketplace)
Chapek spent nearly three decades at the Walt Disney Company. He joined in 1993 and rose through the ranks to the top job, serving as CEO for two years, from 2020 to 2022. His tenure was cut short: Disney fired him a full year before his contract was set to expire, replacing him with his own predecessor, Bob Iger — the man who had hand-picked him for the role.
The memoir's title invokes Disney's theme-park iconography, but its subtitle claims a scope well beyond the turbulent CEO years. "My Thirty Years at the Happiest Place on Earth" suggests a career-length arc, not merely a recounting of the brief and contentious period at the top that made headlines.
The book arrives roughly four years after Chapek's departure. According to the announcement, that gap was deliberate — a period of reflection and distance before putting his account on the page. The timing also means the memoir will land in a publishing season already crowded with attention on Disney's leadership, as Iger continues to steer the company through a second stint that has included restructuring, layoffs and streaming-strategy reversals. (Publishers Marketplace)
For readers, the appeal is obvious: a first-person account from the executive who sat in the Disney chair during a pandemic, a streaming war and a very public boardroom undoing. Whether the memoir engages with those episodes in detail, or keeps its focus on the longer career story, remains to be seen on the page. No further details about the book's contents, advance or print run have been disclosed.
