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

[Ours]

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.

Apple computer on the phone for you Mr. Jobs.

[mrshowtime]

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?

Re:Nice deal

[thesandtiger]

So, what's so evil about Disney again?

That they're one of the key corporations behind the ever increasing extensions of copyright duration would be the biggie for me.

Granted, if it weren't them, someone else would do it, but they did do it. So meh.

The Emperor's New Groove

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Plan for Profit!

[iamdrscience]

Personal profit of $3.5 million!

I think you may have misread something important. He bought Pixar for 10 million and it is now worth 7.4 billion of which he owns >50% of the shares. His personal profit is far far greater than 3.5 million.

Re:Nice deal

[soft_guy]

The fact that they are hypocrtical. First, they used stories from the public domain to build their empire. Then they use their money and power to bribe congress to extend copyright from the original 14 years to be basically infinite. Thus, no material can ever enter the public domain again.

Re:Nice deal

[vortigern00]

The big one for me is what Disney did to my parents' town.

The swooped in and announced that they were going to build a theme park called "Disney's America." They got the town to spend huge amounts of money on road improvements and business development. Lots of people moved into new housing. Lots of new businesses opened. The entire town bet their fortunes on Disney.

Then Eisner said "PSYCHE! HAHA!" and pulled it all out, making comments that implied he was just testing to see how far he could push the town.

Of course, I was a kid then, and this was all seen through my parents' eyes, so my view could be a little skewed. Anyone from the area care to back me up?

Pixar brand will remain

[Udo Schmitz]

" you can have my living room if you'll take the 'Pixar' sign down and replace it with this 'Disney' sign"."

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 [appleinsider.com] quoting a CNBC interview.

Re:Nice deal

[generic-man]

I remember Disney's America being announced. A lot of people were upset that Disney was going to be building a theme park based around its corporate vision of American history, and from what I recall Disney backed out due to all the bad PR.

Besides, wasn't Disney's America going to be in Virginia? I know your town didn't have all these things, but there are already a few big theme parks in and around VA and there are a ton of Civil War-related attractions without a corporate facade.

Re:Nice deal

[good soldier svejk]

Besides, wasn't Disney's America going to be in Virginia? I know your town didn't have all these things, but there are already a few big theme parks in and around VA and there are a ton of Civil War-related attractions without a corporate facade.

Yes it was in the Manassas (Battle of Bull Run) area. [planning.org]

From my own experience, I live down the street from a small, well intentioned not-for-profit zoo. In past winters a local artist would decorate it for the kids by painting various characters on the walls. Two of these were a certain mouse with no shirt and an associated duck with no pants. Disney's armey of lawyers put a stop to this several years ago. Apparently they couldn't see their way clear to donating a gratis right to use license. Up the highway in Vermont I remember a dairy farmer with a cow whose markings closely resembled the silhouette of the aforementioned mouse. Disney did not sue the cow, but they did buy her off the poor rube for $10,000 (IIRC) then move her to Florida and display her. Fair enough; he's a moron. But they then issued a press release bragging about how little they had paid for her and how they were reaping millions in revenue by exhibiting her. This was many years ago, so my details may be suspect.

Most of all, of course, they gave us the Bono act.

Re:How does it work?

[dubl-u]

According to your link, Pixar has only grossed $3.2bn since 1995. $7.4bn, or even $6.4bn considering the cash Pixar had on hand, still seems like a lot of money. Might take them 10 years to recoup their investment.

You're thinking about it like a stockholder, not an acquirer.

The theory behind most acquisitions is that you are getting something beyond the existing income stream. The business buzzword for this is "synergy". I haven't followed the deal, but my guess it that they are expecting to be able extract a lot of money from Pixar properties through their parks, stores, media channels, distribution networks, and the brain implants they apparently have in every six year old.

Also, from the performance of recent Disney films, it's clear Disney needs a creative kick in the ass. Hopefully by swapping key people around they can make the Pixar mojo contagious. That would allow Disney to get a lot more money out of current assets, hopefully without harming the Pixar revenue stream. And of course, they keep Pixar out of the hands of a competitor, which is always appealing to budding monopolists.

Yay Lasseter!!!

[Medievalist]

Remember, this is the guy who brought Hayao Miyazaki [nausicaa.net] back to the US market.

Re:Nice deal

[Cutting_Crew]

don't worry too much. Pixar tends to make movies that, umm... sell really damn well BECAUSE they are created by people with talent. That is why Disney bought them. And don't forget, for almost the entire existance of Pixar, they have been in a strategic relationship with Disney, and Pixar was making great movies then.

I am encouraged that this is a "stock buyout" and not a merger. The difference being that in a merger, A buys B and B dissapears. In a stock buyout, A buys B and both remain as different operating entities but they are a singular financial entity. This means that the CEO of Disney probably has very limited power if no power at all over Pixar. Only the board of directors have power over Pixar.

Re:Hi! I am an animator. I am a millionaire.

[kmo]

Disney just made anyone holding stock in Pixar a millionaire.

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.

Re:Don't kid yourselves

[sjf]

In itself it isn't. However, many companies have no single shareholder holding much more than that percentage. What 7% gives you is the loudest independent voice on the board and the right to make the phone calls to the other investors.

Indeed, typical large companies with long histories will not have any single investor with anthing approaching 50%.

I've no idea if job wants the CEO position, in fact I expect he doesn't, but if he did he's in a great position to persuade other shareholders. 7% of a huge company like Disney is a bucketload of influence.

Read the Hollywood Reporter article

[Animats]

The Hollywood Reporter [hollywoodreporter.com] has a more detailed article.

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.