Slashdot Mirror
Disney Buys Pixar
BlueDjinn writes to tell us that it appears a great deal of speculation over Disney's buyout of Pixar Animation Studios is in fact true. From the article: "[Pixar] is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company's $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for the computer animations division of Lucasfilm, owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas."
Nobody deserves a few billion bucks more than he does, the way I figure it. If he manages to pull Disney out of their spiral of mediocrity, he'll have earned every penny...
It will be interesting to see to what extent Jobs tries to "bundle" products, with the new market-power. For instance, will Disney-related animation software for children be available only for the Mac platform? Will a Disney DVD be included with the future iMac mini PVR/media box/whatever? etc.
Hopefully they won't do away with that Pixar lamp, I kind liked the little guy.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
As slashdot sees Disney as mostly evil, it should be noted that most of the sceptical activities of Disney can be attributed to one man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eisner.
I have a good feeling about the new CEO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Iger
Read up on these completely different management styles and then take a look at Disney again. Iger was responsible for talks to continue with Pixar, so its no suprise that it might lead to this.
Ah, beat me to it! But let me echo it - I just have to:
Nooooooooooooooooooooo!
My son is two and a half and he's very much into animated movies. Nemo, Shrek (1+2), Toy Story (1+2), Winnie the Pooh (tons), Ice Age, Robots, etc, etc. Some of it a bit scary, so we are always by his side, so I've seen these movies a bazillion times.
The ones that last (both for us as adults and for him) are the Pixar ones. You can watch these movies again and again and they stay funny, and you can find new deepts in them. The disney ones are usually okay, but they always play the emotion card a bit heavily, which gets old really fast (dreamworks and fox is rather uneven, but usually okay, too).
TC - My Photos..
This deal doesn't make Jobs $3.5bn, as the article claims. It barely makes him any money at all.
Pixar's market cap is just a hair under $7bn, about half of which Jobs owns. Disney is buying all $7bn worth of Pixar stock with $7bn worth of Disney stock. So Jobs isn't making any money, he's just changing the name on part of his stock portfolio (Disney's buy is a bit above market value for Pixar, so he does make SOME money, on the order of 1% of the $3.5bn the article mentions). He's also going from being a 50% owner of a $7bn company to a 14% owner of a $50bn company.
So maybe Jobs thinks he can get in and infect Disney with Pixarness and save it. Maybe he just wants to cash out and do something else, and figures he can sell 14% of Disney a lot easier than he can sell half of Pixer. Could be he thinks Pixar will do better with Disney behind it than with Disney as an enemy. Possibly there's another explanation. Let the speculation continue - we'll know in a few years what the plan was and whether it worked or not.
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Is Disney going to keep selling PRman and PRman for Maya plug-ins? Will Catmull continue on with them? What's this all mean for Renderman? Will the software side split off into their own business?
I should say that the golden age of CG movies are now over. Now come the crap movies...the "me too" movies.
Honestly, has anyone really seen anything coming out that even remotely looks interesting? Chicken Little(already out last year)? Ice Age 2? Cars? Open Season? Over the Hedge? Any of these really grabbing you? How about Valiant(also out I believe...or did it go straight to video)? Or The Ant Bully? These are all coming out in the next few months. Have I missed any? Oh, forgot Hoodwinked, and Monster House.
Ah, the old Hollywood adage. If you can't make a buck with quality, then make it with quantity. "Teh peoples want teh CG! We gives them teh CG!"
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
As Jobs is still the largest stockholder of the company, how many changes will really take place?
Unless I've totally misread the story, Disney will now be the sole owner of Pixar. Jobs will now (not still) be the single largest shareholder in Disney. That doesn't mean that he necessarily has the power to change its entrenched culture. I doubt he has anything like enough of a shreholding to replace the existing management, or to plausibly theaten to.
To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
Reguardless, he'll still have clout, and there's been talk of him being put on the board of Directors. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan200 6/nf20060120_2325_db016.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily
Someone save me from this sanity.
More like Pixar employees running amok around Disney, with Jobs as the largest shareholder as their spirit guide. They are going to take over, just like the Next-tians took over Apples software division when Jobs returned. I For One, Welcome Jobs As Our Media Overlord.
Horns are really just a broken halo.
What I am concerned about is how the deal will affect the Studio Ghibli/Disney distribution deal. For many years, Disney has had wide distribution rights over Ghibli works. Sometimes this has worked out for the better (the heavily promoted Spirited Away), and sometimes not so well (Miramax requested, but was denied, many edits in Princess Mononoke).
A closer connection between Pixar and Disney will probably not harm Ghibli. It was noted that John Lasseter (founder of Pixar) had given very strong support to Spirited Away, and was a key driver of what success that movie had in North America. A closer connection between Pixar and Ghibli will probably result in an even stronger benefit.
Now, on notes of pure speculation, how might the Pixar/Disney merger benefit Ghibli going forward? Could we expect Miyazaki-animated short films (currently limited in distribution to the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka City, Tokyo) put on sale on the iTunes Video Store? Or maybe distribution of older classic Ghibli films? Imaging having a copy of Gauche the Cellist on your iPod to perk you up on those cloudy days of life. Or how about strong promotion and wide distribution of the forthcoming Tales from Earthsea? With the combination of a a imaginative and sensitive director like Goro Miyazaki and effective marketing, I can't imagine how Earthsea wouldn't become a major blockbluster.
What else would you like to see come out of the Studio Ghibli/Disney/Pixar deal?
---
patiwat
What this *does* mean is that Pixar will make any sequels to Toy Story et al, rather than Disney trying to do it with some crappy in-house team. The terms of the contract for Pixar's first five movies was that Disney had the rights to the characters and any spinoffs, exclusively. That's still true, but now they can guarantee on Pixar being on board to make said spinoffs. Oh, and Cars might finally get released ;-)
In other thoughts; does this sound like something we've seen before? Small Steve-owned company gets bought for vastly more than its market value by big failing company, Steve gets put in charge of big failing company, big failing company becomes big meteoric success company? Does the word NeXT spring to mind for anyone else?
They don't want him to leave.
I'd be surprised if there is significant change at Pixar.
If there is, you can count in seconds how long it would take for someone to offer John Lassater an animation studio of his own. Heck, with the profits from this, Lassater can probably finance his own movie if he really wants, and he'd drag half Pixar's crew along with him.
That's why things won't change. Well, maybe they will. I'm betting everyone gets raises.
Steve Jobs is a great man, but in Pixar his primary responsibilty was negotiating great contracts. Let's hope this is another one of them.
As for Steve taking over Disney, I don't think it's impossible, but I'm hoping he keeps focus on Apple, where - as we all know - he's been doing great.
I do think Steve's likely to become an influential advisor and board member, but probably not CEO. Remember, John Lassater and friends basically ran Pixar, which is why Jobs could be CEO of two companies and preserve excellence. I don't think he could do that with Disney.
D
Now remember kids, corporations are artists too. As long as a corporation is legally treated as a human being and considered able to create 'art', its copyrights will be as eternal as its own legalese life. How can your copyrights expire if you can never die?
Just mentioning the obvious - with the right argument, anything that has copyrights or trademarks with a corporate name on them will be safe for the rest of eternity.
My little site.
I think what will happen is that we will see John Lasseter take overall control of all Disney animation divisions.
This is actually a GREAT idea, because the hallmark of Pixar is the great storytelling of their movies. Lasseter could even help Disney revive traditional animation at Disney, too.
I think people forget that unlike Michael Eisner, Robert Iger tries to be as much hands off as possible, letting each Disney division run by their own managers. This means Mr. Lasseter will have free reign to rebuild Disney's animation tradition. (big thumbs up)
Walt's anti-union activities in the 30s is the stuff of evil, IMHO. His collaboration with the House Un-American Activities Committee was pretty despicable too.
One thing I'm not seeing being discussed in the press is the fact that Bill Gates and Ballmer over at Microsoft must be pissed over this. They want to take over the living room, but now Jobs is part of Disney, who owns ABC, ESPN, Miramax, etc--he IS the living room. So he's got the content, and Apple will provide the means. Microsoft's road to the living room just got even tougher.
I wonder if Ballmer will Fucking Kill (tm) Disney over this.
"Sufferin' succotash."