Disney, Pixar partnership
p2p news / p2pnet: Back in 2004 when Disney’s Michael Eisner resigned, Steve Jobs was being bandied about as a possible replacement.
Wild. But other deals involving Disney and Pixar were being mooted with abandon and more recently, “Steven P. Jobs, Pixar’s chairman, and Robert A. Iger, Disney’s newly named chief executive, have been in talks since early summer to extend an agreement for Disney to continue distributing Pixar films,” said the New York Times.
According to, “two people with knowledge of the talks,” both were waiting, “to see how ‘Chicken Little’ performs in movie theaters.”
Chicken Little was a somewhat unfortunate Disney Pixar joint venture but, seemingly, it was up to expectations and the Wall Street Journal says discussions are now in hand that, “involve Disney paying a nominal premium to Pixar’s current market value of $6.7 billion in a stock transaction,” according to The Street.
“The report comes on the heels of months of speculation about the fate of the Disney-Pixar talks.
“The two companies have been partners for over a decade in a relationship that saw Disney distribute Pixar’s slate of ultra-successful animated films such as Toy Story and The Incredibles. The current agreement comes to term after the release of Pixar’s next film Cars, due this spring.”
If Pixar and Disney agree to agree, “Jobs, Silicon Valley’s visionary techie, could do for Old Media Tinseltown what he has done for rock ‘n’ roll: digitalize it,” says the San Jose Mercury News.
It quotes Phil Leigh, a senior analyst at Inside Digital Media, as saying he believes Jobs would, “shake up Hollywood and even create a pipeline between iTunes and the movie studios, enabling Apple to offer the world movies over the Internet.”
Becoming Disney’s largest shareholder, “could be a major coup for Jobs,” says the San Francisco Chronicle, “but it could also turn into a prickly problem for the man who runs both Pixar and Apple.”
It was quoting Creative Strategies analyst Tim Bajarin who went on, “The major pitfall to me on this particular deal is how much he becomes a Disney insider. Let’s say he joins the board. Now, he’s a Disney insider … and if he’s part of Disney, other studios may be less inclined to make (media content) deals with Apple.”
And, says the story, “that will be problematic for Apple, which needs to broker deals with as many Hollywood studios and TV networks as possible …”
Back to 2004, if Jobs indeed becomes a part owner of Disney, maybe the idea of him running the company isn’t so far-fetched after all.
Also See:
the first – For Disney and Pixar, a Deal Is a Game of ‘Chicken’, October 31, 2005
The Street – Pixar, Disney Talks Reported, January 19, 2006
San Jose Mercury News – Will Jobs join the club?, January 20, 2006
San Francisco Chronicle – Pixar, Disney deal rumored, January 20, 2006
January 24th, 2006 at 9:37 pm
You should cehck your facts….Pixar did not work with Disney on Chicken Little, as a matter of fact, I believe it was the first cgi movie Disney put out without Pixar since 1998.