posted
...ok confused. Who owns Dreamworks and why do we care so much if Disney gets Pixar... I thought Pixar was already just Disney's comp animation studio...
Posts: 3295 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
Steve Jobs will now be Disney's largest stock holder, and be on their board of directors. It could be good.
Maybe.
I hope.
Alcon: Dreamworks is a Spielberg item, I think. But Pixar was owned by Apple, and was Steve Jobs' baby (after he bought it from ILM).
Posts: 753 | Registered: Mar 2001
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posted
I'm hoping this means an improvement for Disney, but I'm preparing myself for the death of an entertainment wonder.
On the other hand, maybe they think Cars is gonna bomb and they want to sell to Disney before their streak officially breaks. [/cynicism]
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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Corrupt Steve Jobs? I can only imagine the only future is that Steve Jobs becomes CEO of Disney. I thought he either gets his way, or he throws a temper tantrum and leaves...
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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Yeah, I think Cars is gonna bomb, too, unfortunately (not that it won't be a deserved bomb--it looks terrible).
Posts: 4077 | Registered: Jun 2003
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quote:Originally posted by Lime: Steve Jobs will now be Disney's largest stock holder, and be on their board of directors.
This is good. That kind of controlling interest in that hands of someone like Jobs is reassuring. The guy can be a total nut, but he's also a freaking genius.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
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quote:Originally posted by Lime: Alcon: Dreamworks is a Spielberg item, I think. But Pixar was owned by Apple, and was Steve Jobs' baby (after he bought it from ILM).
SKG Dreamworks was started by three guys (Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and the music mogul, David Geffen - hence the SKG) and Paramount has agreed to buy them recently. All three will stay with Dreamworks when it is transferred to Paramount.
The deal does not include Dreamworks' animation studios (which made the hit Shrek). urlPosts: 1423 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I'm impressed that someone already updated Jobs' wikipedia entry.
"On January 24, 2006, the Walt Disney Company announced that it had agreed to buy Pixar for around $7.4bn in an all-stock deal. The deal will make Jobs Disney's largest shareholder and will also net him a seat on the company's board of directors."
Posts: 866 | Registered: Aug 2005
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Well, the next Pixar film after "Cars" is supposed to be about a rat living in a gourmet restaurant.
Posts: 6689 | Registered: Jan 2005
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Disney's in-house animation, of late, produces such wonders as "Home on the Range" and "Brother Bear". Lackluster, formula treads that smell of repeated passes through the marketing department. Oh, and let's not forget the sequels that demean their own characters for the sake of turning a quick buck. So great is their respect for artists that they were prepared to make "Toy Story 3" without Pixar, saying, in essence, "Well, we own the characters, and we have the technology to do it."
Pixar, in its quasi-independence from Disney, makes things like "The Incredibles", "Finding Nemo", and "Monsters Inc."
Disney clawing back into control of Pixar is hard to imagine being a good thing. If I were an artist working for Pixar, I think I'd be printing my resume right about now.
Posts: 3826 | Registered: May 2005
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quote:Steve Jobs will now be Disney's largest stock holder, and be on their board of directors. It could be good.
You know, I'm not so sure about this one. Jobs as a pretty good history getting new, fresh ideas from starting gate to serious player. Once he actually has any clout (i.e. Apple, late 1980s), he implodes. Or rather, explodes, and rather messily.
I'm a Jobs-a-holic, I'm the first to admit it. But part of me wants Apple -- and Pixar -- to stay the underdog. It's part of what makes Jobs great.
Posts: 1784 | Registered: Jun 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Sterling: Disney's in-house animation, of late, produces such wonders as "Home on the Range" and "Brother Bear". Lackluster, formula treads that smell of repeated passes through the marketing department. Oh, and let's not forget the sequels that demean their own characters for the sake of turning a quick buck. So great is their respect for artists that they were prepared to make "Toy Story 3" without Pixar, saying, in essence, "Well, we own the characters, and we have the technology to do it."
Pixar, in its quasi-independence from Disney, makes things like "The Incredibles", "Finding Nemo", and "Monsters Inc."
Disney clawing back into control of Pixar is hard to imagine being a good thing. If I were an artist working for Pixar, I think I'd be printing my resume right about now.
Let's not forget about Disney's only attempts at 3D animation without Pixar. AKA, Chicken Little and Valiant. I don't actually know anyone who's seen either. And I live in a town where anything 3D animated is quoted religiously within a month of them coming out, so I'm guessing they sucked as well.
Posts: 3003 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote:Originally posted by Icarus: Yeah, because Disney caused them to make such lousy movies before . . .
I'm not sure I understand what your point is, Icky. Pixar wasn't part of Disney before -- Disney was merely the distributor.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:But part of me wants Apple -- and Pixar -- to stay the underdog. It's part of what makes Jobs great.
Hear, hear. I cheered when Pixar denied the last deal and struck out on their own. Disney is such a powerhouse, I worry that they will crush the unique, fresh, ingenious creativity of Pixar.
Think of what has happened to George Lucas. He had become so popular and powerful that he only surrounded himself with "yes-men" who will tell him what he wants to hear and let him do whatever the heck he wants with his movies. After all--He's George Lucas! This is Star Wars! I feel the same thing has happened to Disney. They depend on their name and past glory to carry them through their gagging mediocrity.
I don't know if Cars will be any good--I withhold judgement since it hasn't even come out yet. To be honest, most Pixar movies looked really dumb to me in preview form. I remember how stupid "Finding Nemo" looked to me. Boy was I wrong! But time and time again Pixar has surprised and delighted me. I hold out hope for Cars because I have come to expect excellence from Pixar.
Hopefully they won't go the way of Disney and Lucas, decide they can "do no wrong", and start churning out crap because their name is big enough to draw the crowds.
Posts: 7050 | Registered: Feb 2004
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Disney has has had creative input on all of the Pixar films so far. They have been more than merely a distributor (as in Fox's relationship to Lucasfilm).
quote:Executives at Disney Feature Animation love to shape and mold Pixar projects as they move through the story phase. (Remember that these were the guys who -- back in November of 1993 -- actually forced Pixar to shut down production of Toy Story because they didn't think Woody was sympathetic enough. It took Lasetter & his team 'til April 1994 to come up with a workable way to make the cowboy character someone you could really care about. Then -- and only then -- did Disney executives deem the project worthy of resuming production.) So I can't imagine Mouse House execs being all that enthusiastic about their company distributing & marketing a movie that they've had zero creative input on.
(When you consider that Disney funded Toy Story entirely, it stands to reason that they would exert some influence. It was their bucks they were risking.)
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Gawd, I saw it coming but I didn't want to believe it.
Oh well...
We shall see what we shall see.
And about "Cars". Seriously, the trailers don't mean anything. The "Incredibles" trailer with the guy trying to get his suit on, was mildly amusing at best, but I'll be darned if the Incredibles isn't one of Pixar's finest films to date.
Posts: 1236 | Registered: Mar 2002
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I'm worried that "Cars" will be another Toy Story type save the old car from the junk yard tale, or they another Sea Biscuit, with the underddog classic sports car beating the flashy imports in "the big race". I mean, what else can you do with cars as the main characters?
However, it is Pixar, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt on this one, hopefuly they won't let me down.
Posts: 148 | Registered: Jan 2006
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Well, it'll sure be interesting to see what happens from here. My classmates and I all just want to know what effect this is going to have on jobs. And not the Steve kind of jobs.
I'm also skeptical about Cars from what I've seen from the trailers, but I clearly remember being very anti-Finding Nemo based on those trailers, too. "Gee whiz, it's called FINDING Nemo, I wonder how it's going to end?" Seemed very dull. And you know, the story was pretty much what I expected... but the way the story progressed was AWESOME, and made me want to see it again and again. So... I'll just wait and see. Posts: 1681 | Registered: Jun 2004
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I wasn't much of a fan of Pixar before Finding Nemo. After seeing Finding Nemo I consider Pixar to be the most overrated thing in the movie business after Keanu Reeves.
I don't understand why people loved that movie so much. I never saw a single thing in it that made it worth the hype.
posted
Jobs might make it onto the Board of Directors, but he will by no means be in charge of Disney.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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quote:Pixar Executive Vice President John Lasseter will be Chief Creative Officer of the animation studios, as well as Principal Creative Advisor at Walt Disney Imagineering, where he will provide his expertise in the design of new attractions for Disney theme parks around the world, reporting directly to Iger.
Lasseter, in many people's opinion, was the real source of Pixar's creative success. Additionally, it sounds like the Pixar personnel will remain intact and somewhat independent of Disney. If so, this means that Pixar itself probably won't change much.
Posts: 1256 | Registered: May 2005
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Hopefully they're smart enough to not kill the goose whose gold eggs have saved their butts for the last few years.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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Finding Nemo was cathartic for my family; we saw it four days after my wife had an emergency birth and our daughter was left with cerebral palsy. We cried our eyes out through that whole film. If I had seen it "normally" it might have been less meaningful, but it had resonance for us.
That being said, this deal with Disney will fly or fall based on Pixar's ability to keep their voice intact. They're bound to have a stinker, and "Cars" may be it. My fear is that they will fall under pressure and produce quickly-made, one-joke "fluffy" movies like Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Chicken Little and...basically every CG film not produced by Pixar.
Posts: 325 | Registered: Dec 2004
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quote: The two companies will remain separate, with Pixar retaining its brand name. Maintaining Pixar's unique creative character was a priority in the talks, executives said.
"Most of the time that Bob and I have spent talking about this hasn't been about economics, it's been about preserving the Pixar culture because we all know that that's the thing that is going to determine the success here in the long run," Jobs said on a conference call with analysts.
Whew! That page also has a graphic showing how Pixar's animations have repeatedly earned much more than Disneys. I wasn't really even aware Disney was still making feature film animations!
Posts: 1209 | Registered: Dec 2003
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quote:My fear is that they will fall under pressure and produce quickly-made, one-joke "fluffy" movies like Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Chicken Little and...basically every CG film not produced by Pixar.
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