... Q: The Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm acquisitions have been big. You’ve received a lot of praise from the heads of those companies, now subsidiaries, for allowing them to preserve their creative cultures. Was there any key to those acquisitions that has been overlooked?
A: If anything, it’s, “Why did we buy those things and no one else did?” I don’t get described as necessarily being aggressive. I don’t know if “laid-back” is the word. I think, if anything, what I would want people to say about me is, “I think he had guts.” You know? ...
Q: The Pixar, Marvel, and Lucasfilm acquisitions have been big. You’ve received a lot of praise from the heads of those companies, now subsidiaries, for allowing them to preserve their creative cultures. Was there any key to those acquisitions that has been overlooked?
A: If anything, it’s, “Why did we buy those things and no one else did?” I don’t get described as necessarily being aggressive. I don’t know if “laid-back” is the word. I think, if anything, what I would want people to say about me is, “I think he had guts.” You know? ...
Q: You spent most of the past two decades helping build Shanghai Disney, which opened in June. You even tasted more than 200-plus items on restaurant menus there. Can you give a specific instance of how you applied your critical eye?
A: There was stonework on the side of the castle. It was just pure stone. I said, “It’s supposed to look old. It’s an old castle. There’s no moss growing on it. It would look at lot better if there was some green moss on it. It would look more real.”
Q: I am guessing there is moss on that stone.
A: There is moss on there now…. That’s not a criticism. They’re looking at a thousand things. I’m looking at as much as I can. Now, that sounds like micromanagement. I don’t mean it to sound that way. What it is — it’s just perspective. ...
Robert Iger had some heavy lifting to do after he took over from Michael Eisner.
Profits and growth had stalled out. Disney Feature Animation was floundering. Roy Disney, shoved out of the corporate boardroom by Eisner, was ticked off. Steve Jobs, head of Apple and Pixar, was even more ticked off when Disney exercised its right to make sequels to Pixar features and hired staff to create them.
Mr. Iger soothed Roy's damaged feelings by welcoming him back to the company, and made Steve Jobs a happy man by 1) canceling the sequels and 2) buying Pixar for a princely $7.2 billion.
At the time, some analysts criticized Robert Iger for "paying too much" for the Emeryville studio, but the purchase has panned out nicely. Ditto for the subsequent Marvel and Lucasfilms purchases. But Disney's absorption of Pixar, the one that kicked the cycle off, was kind of a forced circumstance. Pixar was on the cusp of finding a new distributor and partner, and the Diz Co. badly needed to keep the smaller company in the fold.
It's a testament to Robert Iger's skills as a CEO that he pulled it off.
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3 comments:
I hate Bob Iger. Really, I do. I think he's worse than a thousand Michael Eisners. He may have helped turn some things around by buying out Pixar and all that other stuff and making a ton of money in the process... but what he did, using Disney to create an even bigger corporate monopoly, has ultimately been far more damaging and disrespectful to the Disney legacy than ANYTHING Eisner could have done.
So agree with you! Disney is as soulless now as it's ever been. I always thought it was HILARIOUS how SaveDisney constantly stressed in its daily articles that Disney had lost its heritage and was too focused on making money, yet there was a whole section for investors on the bottom of the page! Bob Iger went on to please those investors a hundredfold, but the company, by and large, is way more of a by-the-numbers multinational corporation than it was under Eisner. Can you imagine if Eisner had bought Marvel and Lucasfilm, how angry people would have been? In many ways both those brands, especially Marvel, have a (somewhat) gritty quality which does not mesh with the Disney company at all.
By the way, I'm not an Eisner apologist, but only James Stewart's DisneyWar stressed that Eisner wanted to fill Walt's shoes...Eisner never said those words. So many articles in the mid and late 80s branded him as such however, saying (and you can look this up) that Michael Eisner "out-Walts Walt." I'm totally serious. And what was Eisner's response? "I'm not Walt by half."
I do feel that WDAS then-WDFA has improved a lot, but Pixar always makes it seem like WDFA was a complete disaster in every way until they came along and fixed everything. They constantly stress how "morale was low." I know a lot of this was because of lack of job security and I really do wish that Pixar had addressed THIS issue along with the others. I may be wrong, but I don't think they ever did.
If Disney artists didn't have to contend with "project-to-project" hiring, morale might be even better. Like in the 1980s and 90s, Disney needs a crew of full time guys.
Eisner was NOT a perfect CEO by any means, but I still believe he had a better sense of what Disney really stands for than Bob Iger does and ever will.
Robert Iger transformed Disney into the Berkshire-Hathaway of entertainment conglomerates.
I happen to be okay with that, because "Disney" stopped being Disney when Walt died in December 1966. Multiple Disney vets pounded that into my head.
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