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Pixar Eaten by Mickey Mouse
The rumors went flying this weekend, but
Dekortage writes "It is official: Pixar has been sold to Disney. Steve Jobs will join the Disney board, and John Lasseter is now Disney's Chief Creative Officer. So, dear Slashdot, does this mean that Disney's movies will improve, or that Pixar's will become worse?" Also the price of Pixar was $7.4 billion with a b dollars.
price of Pixar was $7.4 billion with a b dollars
Thats a lot but it may have been interesting to say it was in Disney stock.
"You superiour intellect is no match for our puny weapons" - The Simpsons
I think the devil made a nice deal; only $7.4 billion for a prime quality soul.
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"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
does this mean that Disney's movies will improve, or that Pixar's will become worse?
My Guess: both.
We shall see.
Ho! Haha! Guard! Turn! Parry! Dodge! Spin! Ha! Thrust!
Lassiter is now Chief Creative Officer of the animation studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering. Pixar president Ed Catmull is now president of the new combined Pixar/Disney animation studios. And as much as I dislike Technomessiah Steve, I would love to see him take over the creative vision aspect of the theme parks.
I'm wondering what the Disney/Pixar - Apple relation is going to work out. iTunes is selling Disney material now so apparently there is some cooperation.
I think it is too early to draw any conclusions from this deal. It could still go any which way - better films, worse films, more web X.0 content, more DRM, and so on and on. I'd say we need about half a year before any 'conclusion' on this deal is more then mere speculation.
With that in mind, allow me to say: WOHOO! all the backlog of (quality) disney movies on my ipod!
This will be similar to Apple buying Next. In the end, all the senior people of Next wound up running Apple -- Apple adopted NextStep as their OS, and called it OSX.
With any luck, Jobs, Lasseter, and other senior Pixar people will wind up running Disney. It would be a substantial improvement.
Ian Ameline
Pixar
Disney
Can you guys spot the trend too?
(Data from Wikipedia/www.boxofficemojo.com)
Windows in 6 Bytes (IA-32) : 90 90 90 90 CD 19
It's hard to judge a movie by it's trailers, but if Cars turns out to be as awful as it looks, Pixar is going to crash and burn when it's released. Best to sell now while Pixar's reputation is still riding high.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
1. Buy Pixar for $10 million
2. Build it into a great animation studio
3. Sell yourself to the devil (Mickey Mouse)
4. Personal profit of $3.5 million!
Great work, Steve Jobs! See, this time I didn't even need to include the mysterious "..." step. Amazing!
-William Brendel
Disney owned all the sequel rights to Pixar movies, so a few months back Disney was saying they were going to do Toy Story 3 without Pixar. If that'd happened it would've produced a better Disney movie, but a worse Pixar movie -- if you follow me.
Despite popular fanboy and media opinion, John Lasseter is the mind behind the success of Pixar's movies. Steve Jobs is the owner, distribution negotiator, but Lasseter is the talent.
BTW, there's a great chapter in THE SECOND COMING OF STEVE JOBS about the history of Pixar. Check it out.
boxlight
I wonder if this means we'll see that remake of (Disney's) TRON that John Lasseter wanted to make?
Cool!
boxlight
p.s. the Incredibles? Incredible.
The deal wasn't exactly "here's some money now eff off we own you." It was more like "here, you can have my living room if you'll take the 'Pixar' sign down and replace it with this 'Disney' sign". Disney has been bankrolling all their films for years anyway, and Steve Jobs is now the largest single Disney stockholder.
Pixar has been sold to Disney.
I keep hearing this, but the details strike me as an entirely different story...
Disney "bought" Pixar for stock. Steve Jobs owned Pixar. Steve Jobs now owns more Disney stock than anyone else. This would seem to mean that Steve Jobs now "owns" Disney, no?
I mean, the rest of the stockholders could outvote him collectively, but in general Jobs now more-or-less controls the future of Disney.
So, considering that, would it sound more accurate to say "Apple has Borgified both Disney and Pixar"?
First Samba eats the cat, then Mickey eats Pixar...
Is this an indication that companies are getting so desperate that they are starting to copy the collected works of Itchy & Scratchy?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Jobs should have waited a few more years and maybe could have acquired Disney :) However, I seriously doubt Jobs will let any of the idiots running Disney or any "middle management" types even on Pixar's Holy Ground, let alone put -any- suggestions on anything creatively. Why attempt to break what is "money in the bank" for Disney by letter Pixar do what Pixar does best. Remember, Jobs is now "Mr. Disney" he owns the most stock out of any shareholders and is on the board of directors. Do not be surprised if you do not see Jobs as CEO in a few years of Disney. Apple who?
"Jeremy, you need to get to an internet cafe and cut and paste some appropriate sentiments about me from the world wide
Guys, what happened is GOOD. Disney just made anyone holding stock in Pixar a millionaire. I once consulted at a company where this has happened. You pull up into the parking lot and no one has a car worth under $40,000. Everyone shows up to work because they want to and like working there, not for the salary. If the company goes down the shitter, they just leave.
IP and equipment didn't make Pixar great. The people made Pixar great. If Disney fucks it up, everyone just ups, leaves, and forms a new company leaving Disney with nothing but a name. Disney shelled out a few billion for the SHOT at using Pixar to do something good. If they blow it, the real 'assets' of Pixar can simply leave and go make another few million each.
I saw good for Pixar. Way to make yourself horrifically rich and still leave a dozen escape hatches to bail from Disney. Those people deserved a big steaming pile of money. I hope they go out and enjoy it.
Disney bought a law extending copyrights for 25 more years so they can hold on to Mickey Mouse until 2020. I don't care about a stupid mouse .. but it's unacceptible to have perpetually lasting copyrights. Disney made money from stories like Snow White and Beauty and the Beast without having to py the original authors .. and now they are trying to make perpetual copyrights for themselves.
s ion_Act
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copyright_Term_Exten
Hope this clears things up?
Well.... Steve Jobs is not just on the board of Disney... he's now the largest stock holder. I saw a TV interview with disney's CEO Robert Iger and Steve Jobs, if that interview is anything to go by Jobs is going to have a major input on how Disney is going to be run from this day forward, Mr Iger actually looked quite uncomfortable in the interview when jobs began to speak... and speak.... and then speak some more.
... Steve Jobs finally 'made it'. After all that hard work and risk taking... I sincerely hope he kicks ass and offends people in the Disney board room, and has not mellowed out overmuch the past few years...
The odd thing about The Emperor's New Groove is that Disney actually made it twice. Once in was a serious film titled something like "The Land of the Sun." They almost finished the movie, shelved it for a few years, and then remade it as a screwball comedy.
It's a pretty funny movie, if you can accept that it doesn't make any sense in a traditional Disney semi-epic way. The conflict doesn't matter, the characters are powerless, it's a farce.
Lilo and Stitch is indeed the best traditional animation made in North America in fifteen years, and maybe the only time Disney has really hit it out of the park on an original story. Pixar, on the other hand, does nothing but original stories. This is the real secret of Pixar's success. Everyone's tired of repackaged folk tales.
Prepare to eat your words! :-)
Look at the whole picture, not just the hole in the picture.
7-odd billion dollars. Let's suppose that Pixar employees work for peanuts and every movie is a hit and they net $200mil with each one (I'm generous today). That would take 35+ titles to bring those 7-odd billions back. Seems unlikely. OTOH - maybe Disney _needs_ something to prevent their image going _completely_ through the floor... They need someone to go to Disneylands, for example, etc... Still... Looks like a bubble.
Exactly my thoughts. Basically, Disney Animation is gone. It has been replaced in whole by Pixar, which isn't altogether a terrible thing. I mean, Disney couldn't milk the Lion King forever, and they had no new ideas.
I don't think Jobs would have agreed to this if he wasn't sure the talent were also coming along. He did the same with Apple - he brought Avie and gave Ive the carte blanche he required. If Jobs cares about Pixar, and my understanding is, he does, then there's little to worry about. Lasseter is the creative force behind Pixar, and not only will he be in charge of Disney's animation vision, but they're putting him in charge of theme parks, consumer goods and even their broadway stuff. That's a massive shift in power, and it's long overdue.
There exists no way of exchanging information without making judgments. --Bene Gesserit Axiom
John Lasseter is now Disney's Chief Creative Officer, working with the animators at Disney and Pixar as well as leading the Imagineers in designing and revamping attractions for the theme parks. Also, the current President of Pixar, Ed Catmull, is now the head of all Disney Animation.
All the news reports I've seen have said that Iger and Jobs main concern was keeping Pixar as intact and independent as possible. Lasseter is under contract until 2011, and is well respected in the animation field for his passion for storytelling and perfection. When asked about whether traditional 2D animation would be restored, John didn't rule it out.
Read the LA Times article about John for more insight.
With Ed and John running all animation at Disney, and Jobs sitting on the board to help them from the top, where's the possible downside?
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It seams as if they won't even do that:
"Even with the buyout, Disney films produced by Pixar's animation studios and staff will continued to be marketed under the dual "Disney Pixar" brand. "It would be foolish to throw any of [the successful brand] away," the company said."
Says AppleInsider quoting a CNBC interview.
More like "Pixar buys Disney with Disney's money". This is very similar to how Steve Jobs got Apple to buy Next, and the Next people took over.
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Two repsonses:
1. There's only so much of Lasseter's time to go around. I think one of the big benefits of him being restricted to Pixar was precisely that he didn't have to worry about all manner of marketing, distribution and theme park crap. If he has to pay attention to all those extra facets, something has to suffer (at least until we figure out how to switch to a 36 hour standard day...).
2. As long as he manages to help Disney avoid atrocities such as Bambi freakin' II ("The Love of a Father, the Courage of a Son". Shoot me now.), it'll be a net positive, IMNSHO.
I wish I had a kryptonite cross, because then you could keep Dracula and Superman away.
The Mouse has lost a lot of creativity in recent years. Re-telling another childs story has been their staple. Now Pixar has a more imaginative group that is telling new stories. I believe that creativity will win out over re-treading another old story, and the folks from Pixar will take over the creative positions in Disney. Disneys music biz on the other hand will likely stay as is...
I predict that Cars will totally flop in Europe.
"The more prohibitions there are, The poorer the people will be" -- Lao Tse
Disney makes most of that money in marketing and licensing. NOT from box office.
in this case Disney has final say like a hen-pecked husband has final say in his house... "Yes dear, whatever you say." The fact that Jobs has no creative input is moot, what he does have is a seat on the board and controlling interest. As such if Lasseter and Catmull call him up and say they need his backing on an issue, he will do it. He is very aware of what makes Pixar great.
You seem to think that Disney just snapped their fingers and created a CG division. Actually what they did was consolidate their assets from several location (Orlando, LA, New York). Remember there were at the very least 400 animators/modelers/TDs working on "Dinosaur" and many of them remained or were hired back over the years. 2 years is about right for a studio to produce a CG feature. Pixar has that number cut down and Animal Logic are trying to do it in 9 months for "Happy Feet", but the idea is the same. The pipelines have been in place for a while so this is no great feat.
Will we see more marketing of Pixar movies (toys, games, etc.)... sure. That is one of Disney's strengths right now. That doesn't make them bad. THey are just leveraging their content in the only way they know. That will even out over time as the Pixar mentality spreads to the right people at Disney.
Lasseter is in charge of story, so don't expect a slew of sequels. DO watch for a live action feature written and directed by Brad Bird. And ya know what... it will kick ass!
I say, don't worry too much. Yes, Pixar was, by far, my favorite movie studio.
But what made them great? The folks that worked at Pixar, the directors, the animators, and the producers.
So what will happen if Disney starts forcing their particular outlook on things? Well, aside from the fact that they've already been doing that for every Pixar flick ever made, there will essentially be a choice for the Pixar folks. Do it Disney's way, or walk.
If they can't do quality stuff for Disney, I think the folks at Pixar will walk and form their own, new Pixar-ish company. Sure, the Pixar brand name will be gone, but the name isn't what's important, it's the folks making the movies.
So give it a movie or two. There may be kinks, but I think things will smooth out over time. With or without Disney, we'll still eventually get the movies we love again.
"Times have not become more violent. They have just become more televised."
-Marilyn Manson
Pixar stock did go up a double digit percentage over the past few months on speculation that this would happen, but that's still not going to make anyone rich unless they were already.
Free Hans!
I wonder how long it'll be before we start seeing Disney character themed iPods for kids.
"It is our blasphemy which has made us great, and will sustain us, and which the gods secretly admire in us." - Zelazny
Later this year we'll see the release of the "MickeyMac".
It's case will be red and black with Mickey Mouse ears, similar to the TV/DVD combo you can find at Target.
Released at the same time will be the entire Disney animated feature catalog on iTunes Movie Store. I call first dibs on "Aristocats"!
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
Apple-Disney becomes Dapple.
Then it buys Sun, and becomes Snapple-Dapple.
It's a turning into a long afternoon.
I think Disney will become more Pixar like. If Jobs and Lasseter have any influence at all, the Disney shite that's been pumping out of their crap factory will start to improve.
This is actually a sneaky move by Steve to put the iTMS in a solid position to distribute content.
Let's not also forget that Disney distributes and produces under other brand names as well:
-Buena Vista
-Touchstone
-Dimension
-Miramax
So what kind of hook-up do you think "The Steve" is going to have for adding content to the iTMS?
Oh, also (if you, too, have read the wiki entry for Disney) Disney owns the rights to lots of music, too. Buena Vista Music Group--Disney Records, Mammoth, Lyric Street, and Hollywood.
Oh, and what else? Oh, let's see:
Disney's Media Networks:
-ABC
-Disney Channel
-ABC Family
-Toon Disney
-ESPN
-SOAPNet
-Holdings in A&E, Lifetime and E!
I think Steve was doing a sacrifice fly on this one....
I might know what I'm talkin' about, but then again, this is Slashdot...
Pixar isn't randomly greenlighting movie screenplays based on explosion/boob ratio.
And they're doing lots of other things wrong, too!
From what I see, you're not really getting much of a deal on your shares though. At the start of the year your shares of Pixar were worth $53.11 (assuming here that the run-up over this month is due to the buyout rumors), now you're going to get 2.3 Disney shares for each, which today are worth 26, so you're getting a total value of $59.8 for you Pixar shares but not in cash, in Disney stock. Now in the last 2 years Disney stock has gone absolutely no where whereas Pixar has increased 100%. Sounds like a raw deal for the shareholders to me.
Remember, this is the guy who brought Hayao Miyazaki back to the US market.
Hardly. Disney is offering 2.3 shares of Disney stock per share of Pixar stock. Depending on when you want to pick valuations, that's a 3% to 5% higher than the current value of a Pixar share. If Disney stock drops before the takeover, it could be even less.
I see what Disney gets out of it. I don't see what Pixar shareholders get out of it. They trade stock in a premier and focused media company with excellent growth prospects for stock in a huge, diverse company whose growth prospects are improved by Pixar, but are certainly less than those of Pixar alone.
Treasure Planet 2. I think it's all downhill from here, as now everything must comply with the 'disney formula'.
Ed Catmull will head up the combined animation studio. Lassiter is higher up, responsible for not just the studio side but Imagineering (theme park rides), among other things.
"It wasn't clear Tuesday what role Walt Disney Feature Animation president David Stainton will play." Or, he's out, but may have a contract that gives him exit money anyway. Stainton was previously in charge of Disney's TV animation unit, DisneyToons, the unit that produced bad sequels (The Lion King 1 1/2, Lilo and Stitch 2), The Heffalump Movie, Mickey's Twice Upon A Christmas).
Several films in the Disney pipeline ("American Dog," "Meet the Robinsons" and "Rapunzel Unbraided.") will probably be killed. Disney Animation, in beautiful downtown Burbank (once called "Mauschwitz" in the industry) will live on. Probably as a CGI shop, though; they'd already moved away from 2D animation.
Technically, one big question is whether Disney Animation will go with the Pixar "all Renderman, all the time" procedural texture approach. Pixar's house style, 100% procedural textures, is what gives that "Pixar look". Everybody else uses pictures of real objects as textures, at least some of the time.
Maybe I'm reading a little too far into this here.. but wasn't there speculation a while back that Steve Jobs wanted to get in on the cell phone industry? ESPN (owned by Disney) just started its own cell phone company with mobile video (sports highlights) and whatnot.. I don't know, but it seems to me like this is as much a play for Steve Jobs to get his hands into areas he's wanted to get into but hasn't had the appropriate gateway. If you look here at the list of companies Disney actually owns, Steve has access to more than you'd initially think: http://www.cjr.org/tools/owners/disney.asp
What's a sig?
I'm interested to hear what role Brad Bird will be playing in terms of revitalizing / refreshing the creative side. Alongside Lasseter, I think Bird would serve the animation side well, having worked in Disney's animation dept. before (if I recall correctly). Having worked w/ Disney's "old men", I can imagine he has a good feel for the roots of what made Disney animation great in its time.
That is, if he isn't as big of a dick as he comes off as in some of the "behind the scenes" clips.
cheers.
"The Incredibles" was, well, incredible. The colors, action and story keep my girls interested. The inuendo and high-level humor keep my wife and I interested. There are very few Disney films that can hold my attention after the first viewing.
My major problem with Disney is their hypocrisy.
I remember the stink they raised in the 90's about their gay employees. I think it had something to do with the Southern Baptist convention choosing Disneyworld as their meeting site numerous times. So Disney goes through a "purification" phase where everything they touch will be pure and family oriented. Shortly afterwards they purchased ABC. For perhaps nine months, it could have been the Family channel. Then the numbers dropped and they resort to typical shock TV. "The Shield." Now ABC and Disney is anything but pure. Maybe that's why their animators slip almost invisible sexual graphics into their cartoons and movies.
What someone just posted here makes me think even less of Disney. It never occured to me that all those fairy tales they turned into movies were public domain. I always wondered who they paid to get the legal rights to all that material. Obviously, no one. Mouse ear wearing bastards.
Get that? The big sticking point in negotiations wasn't how much money would change hands, but how much control Pixar would have over it's future operations within Disney. It's going to be NeXT and Apple all over again, with any luck. Jobs, Iger, and probably at least Roy Disney all see eye-to-eye here, so they'll run the board while Lasseter and the other Pixar folks whip creative operations into shape.
I'm going to guess it's a scary time for Pixar and an exciting time for Disney. Or is it the other way around ?
The fact that pixar was seperate from disney was the only thing keeping it alive. Selling it to disney would force pixar to produce worthless movies like "Chicken Little."
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