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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"
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
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
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.
"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."
This happens almost before every Pixar feature. Examples.
Finding Nemo? A story about fish? WTF can't they animate stuff with legs anymore, this is going to be so lame, omg Pixar is ruined. Results: critical acclaim and great box office, awards, great public perception.
Incredibles? Omg those are so stylised, nothing creative about it, some story with CG humans. It looks so lame, omg Pixar is ruined. Results: critical acclaim and great box office, awards, great public perception.
Now it's happening to cars. But all those who are trolling on the teaser trailer will be in for a surprise. Pixar isn't randomly greenlighting movie screenplays based on explosion/boob ratio.
I'm sure it's gonna be a great movie and I'm looking forward to it.
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...
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?
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!
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!