The House of Mouse

Over fifteen years, Disney CEO Bob Iger transformed the company into the world’s most powerful entertainment empire through a series of high-stakes strategic decisions and bold acquisitions: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and 21 st Century Fox. But the long-reigning monarch struggled to relinquish control of the palace. And when the Disney CEO crown was finally handed to his chosen successor, Bob Chapek, a dramatic coup ousted him and returned Iger to the throne. The struggle for power at the very top exposed Disney’s strengths, vulnerabilities and dysfunction – revealing what happens when one man becomes so inseparable from a company that he comes to believe only he can run it. Drawing on hundreds of exclusive interviews and thousands of pages of documentary evidence, Wall Street Journal veteran business reporter Robbie Whelan takes us inside the decades-long Machiavellian power struggle that bought Disney to the brink.