Disney eats crow.

January 19, 2006 9:24 PM

Disney eats crow.Disney, whose former CEO Michael Eisner rejected the idea of Disney being hired to market Pixar's movies, who insisted on owning their sequel rights, and who apparently hoped Finding Nemo would flop so that he could get better negotiating terms with Pixar, is now in talks for buying Pixar outright for approximately $6.7 billion in stock. Steve Jobs gets his revenge... again. How much revenge? 50.1% of $6.7 billion dollars, apparently.
posted by insomnia_lj (51 comments total)

"It's a bargain,' said Chuck Jones...

No, not that Chuck Jones.
posted by Robot Johnny at 9:31 PM on January 19, 2006

This, incidentally, will make Jobs the biggest shareholder in Disney. There is some talk about how involved he will be in the organization. Will Steve Jobs Be Disney's Big Cheese?

It should be pointed out that Steve had Roy Disney over for dinner in the past. Roy wanted the Pixar deal to continue, but also, like Jobs, wanted Michael Eisner to go, and his cronies kicked off the board of directors.

Roy Disney and Stanley Gold led the "Save Disney" campaign that arguably led to Eisner's departure from Disney.
posted by insomnia_lj at 9:45 PM on January 19, 2006

Hrm. This isn't the first time I've seen a "Disney buys Pixar" story.

Here's one from 1999.

Here's one from 2004.

So, I'll take these recent stories with a grain of salt until I see some big ol' announcement in the paper.
posted by drstein at 9:48 PM on January 19, 2006

i wish i was steve jobs....but younger.
posted by obeygiant at 9:56 PM on January 19, 2006

I've had several friends who have worked inside Disney's film world report about how bizarre and fascist their corporate culture is. I live up the street from Pixar and am really not looking forward to changes like that. Not like Pixar is the bleeding edge of outsider art, of course, but Disney is evil personified.
posted by squirrel at 9:59 PM on January 19, 2006

drstein - So, I'll take these recent stories with a grain of salt until I see some big ol' announcement in the paper.

You can bet you won't be seeing that announcement before March 1, if you're so inclined.
posted by pruner at 10:07 PM on January 19, 2006

Yea, Apple is one of my favorite companies, Disney is one of the most evil companies I know. I dont know how well Steve and Pixar would fit into the Disney corporate culture. But Steve's RDF is very powerful.
posted by SirOmega at 10:22 PM on January 19, 2006

Yea, Apple is one of my favorite companies, Disney is one of the most evil companies I know. I dont know how well Steve and Pixar would fit into the Disney corporate culture.

It can continue to operate as an independant company, like miramax.

Otherwise Steve would just quit. It's called an 'exit strategy' A lot of entrepreneurs plan to build the company up, sell it, and start another one as the company is lead by seasoned managers.
posted by delmoi at 10:32 PM on January 19, 2006

remember: when you use a currency symbol ("$"), you shouldn't spell out the currency ("dollars") after the amount ("6.7").
posted by clyde at 10:36 PM on January 19, 2006

remember: when you use a currency symbol ("$"), you shouldn't spell out the currency ("dollars") after the amount ("6.7").

Remember: nitpicking other's posts makes you look like an anal blockhead.

And, for fuck's sake, capitalize at the start of each and every sentence.
posted by Item at 11:45 PM on January 19, 2006

Remember: Apostrophe's have no place on the word "other's". Not that I want to be pendantic.
posted by seanyboy at 12:13 AM on January 20, 2006

Good mindfuck with the apostrophe in apostrophes, seanyboy! More than just pendantic – that was pendastic!
posted by forblaga at 12:40 AM on January 20, 2006

For many years my fadda-in-law Mr. Mainframe would ask "You still working on that Mickey Mouse computer?" I guess this sorta settles it.

So... now do I get my flyin' car?
posted by hal9k at 12:40 AM on January 20, 2006

Remember: nitpicking other's posts makes you look like an anal blockhead.

clyde is a crimefighter. He fights crime. Who's the blockhead now, asshole?
posted by kjh at 12:59 AM on January 20, 2006

i wish i was steve jobs....but younger.

So does he.

Yea, Apple is one of my favorite companies, Disney is one of the most evil companies I know.

Well, neither one of them are in the top 100 best places to work. (Unlike, say, Microsoft or Intel.) What makes Apple a good company and Disney an evil company?
posted by pracowity at 1:12 AM on January 20, 2006

Is an anal blockhead a kind of acne?
posted by grouse at 1:25 AM on January 20, 2006

pracowity: Pixar can't on that list because they have less than 1,000 employees.
posted by junesix at 2:02 AM on January 20, 2006

Whoops, you were talking about Apple and Disney. I bow out.
posted by junesix at 2:03 AM on January 20, 2006

What makes Apple a good company and Disney an evil company?
The apples aren't poisonous and the mice don't sing.

BTW: I'm using the new Mighty Mouse in an unholy union with with my Mac Minnie. Am I violating some kind of cartoon trademark law?
posted by hal9k at 2:08 AM on January 20, 2006

iRumor.
posted by srboisvert at 2:17 AM on January 20, 2006

I thought this was going to be about Dumbo.
posted by Kirth Gerson at 3:53 AM on January 20, 2006

Remember: Apostrophe's have no place on the word "other's". Not that I want to be pendantic.

Eh? Not even possessive apostrophes? Like as in, belonging to an other?
posted by andrewbarnett at 4:13 AM on January 20, 2006

What makes Apple a good company and Disney an evil company?

working conditions, whether Money or Art calls the shots and collects the big paychecks relative to their value add.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 4:15 AM on January 20, 2006

Apple is one of my favorite companies, Disney is one of the most evil companies I know.


Perhaps you need to research the History of Jobs - Things like his willingness to lie to business partners over payment (so Jobs could pocket extra cash), walking into suppliers and telling them 'It will be so wonderful when we don't need you in 2 years', poor design ideas WRT actual physics et la.

If Jobs were to become 'in charge' of Disney, the shock should kill the mouse. I personally won't be crying.
posted by rough ashlar at 6:05 AM on January 20, 2006

Ugh. Disney buying Pixar outright would ruin Pixar. Pixar's leverage relies on the fact that they make quality films that Disney wants to profit from as the distubuitor... if they owned Pixar they'd be content just owning the characters and spin-off TV shows and DTV-"sequels" and making billions off of merchandising.

Steve Jobs is a genius, but the real genius of Pixar is the people who make the films. And if they all become Disney employees, they're gone. I had a profressor or two at NYU who worked for Pixar and I know without a doubt they'd walk right out the door if Disney R&D and marketing was suddenly dictating movie scripts.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 6:13 AM on January 20, 2006

I think Pixar should buy Disney.
posted by Faint of Butt at 6:23 AM on January 20, 2006

Remember: Apostrophe's have no place on the word "other's". Not that I want to be pendantic.

Eh? Not even possessive apostrophes? Like as in, belonging to an other?

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be " others' ", but I don't know how to search for phrases that contain an apostrophe using Google.
posted by ducksauce at 6:40 AM on January 20, 2006

It can continue to operate as an independant company, like miramax.

Oh yeah, sure. That'll work out well.

Hrm. This isn't the first time I've seen a "Disney buys Pixar" story.

Same here. Even with Eisner gone, I can't see such a thing actually happening.
posted by May Kasahara at 6:46 AM on January 20, 2006

Things like his willingness to lie to business partners over payment (so Jobs could pocket extra cash),

He did that to Woz. If Woz doesn't hold the grudge I'm sure as hell not. Plus what Steve did in the early 1970s has little bearing on Apple Computer Inc, now what Steve has done for personal computing in the late 70s, 80s, 90s, or now.

walking into suppliers and telling them 'It will be so wonderful when we don't need you in 2 years'

I like that about Steve, the ability to run a business.

Woz was a pretty good engineer but without Steve's ... acumen in dealing with suppliers... there wouldn't have been an Apple ][, or a Mac.

poor design ideas WRT actual physics

? hmmm. Steve serves more as a shit-filter rather than active design agent. He hires people to do the designs. Perhaps you could take a visit to store.apple.com and come back with a jpeg reference that you consider abuses "actual physics"?

et al

that's it? The old Apple that made and sold the Apple ][, Steve's team that made the Mac, the Gassee Apple that made the Mac II, and Steve's second team that made the NeXT basically pioneered where PCs are today, enabling & productizing a host of nascent technologies like the mouse-controlled "desktop" GUI, personal graphic design & publishing, object-oriented programming, and not to forget the WWW itself.

These things would have appeared eventually, but Apple & NeXT brought them to, er, fruition first. No other computing company can claim this legacy. Micorsoft has been chasing Apple's taillights for 20+ years, Commodore bought an amazing chipset but didn't know what to do with it.

(the one area where Apple dropped the ball was 3D graphics, which were pushed by SGI and now NVIDIA (and ATI to a lesser extent).)

If Jobs were to become 'in charge' of Disney, the shock should kill the mouse. I personally won't be crying.

If Steve took over Disney he would put the artists back in control. Some shock.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 6:49 AM on January 20, 2006

Heywood +1
posted by Rothko at 7:01 AM on January 20, 2006

I don't have a problem with either Disney or Pixar. Companies like Enron, Haliburton dwarf them in questionable ethics. Personally, I don't really care about either company as filmmakers (such things as this are, of course, subjective.)

Again and again and again big Hollywood companies have bought talent only to destroy that which made it a revenue generator (i.e. let's buy out Buster Keaton's contract because his films are very popular but when we buy him out, we won't let him direct them or control them, we will!)

It is reasonable to fear this sort of thing happening to Pixar by all those who love it. But it could possibly not occur this time as recent aquistions (or relatively recent) acquistions of other companies by larger companies have been relatively tamper free, particularly since Mr. Jobs would still be involved.

Sony acquired most of the assets of Sonic Foundry but Vegas Video, Acid, and SoundForge have pretty well followed the path they were under with Sonic Foundry (a small but innovative digital audio/video company.) When Microsoft acquired SoftImage they left it well enough alone as well, other than insisting on a Windows version.

Neither of these are entertainment companies of course, but in many instances large companies have similar mindsets and sometimes, they actually handle acquisitions well. Jobs, I imagine, in this instance, would insist on it.

I only wish the reverse was true. When his company acquired Logic and Shake they killed the Windows versions, which pissed off many of my friends in audio and compositing production. They're not to pleased about the double price for Shake compared to the Mac version either, but c'est la vie. Acquistions are not always roses and alternatives to both are now being used in lieu of purchasing Macs.

We'll see how this one goes if it does.
posted by juiceCake at 7:16 AM on January 20, 2006

Steve's team that made the Mac,

I see you 'forgot' the Apple ///.

The not putting the fan in 'so the machine would be quiet' was ALL Steve.


Steve's second team that made the NeXT basically pioneered where PCs are today

Huh. Because Mircosoft admisions were the eartly Mac UI was the insperation. But...whatever you wanna believe, if it helps ya sleep at night.

If Steve took over Disney he would put the artists back in control.

If it works out as well as the Perot investment in NeXT, or Steve's understanding of the Mac market after leaving Apple (The future of Apple is not publishing, but education), or Steve's ability to project demand for Mac's (20,000 to 30,000 Macs a month when sales turned out to be in the thousands), then the mouse will be dead.
posted by rough ashlar at 7:44 AM on January 20, 2006

"Well, neither one of them are in the top 100 best places to work."

Apple is one of the 1000+ companies that did not respond to the survey.
posted by drstein at 8:33 AM on January 20, 2006

I see you 'forgot' the Apple ///.

The not putting the fan in 'so the machine would be quiet' was ALL Steve.

Don't know about you, but I highly value quietness from a machine... the PC I'm typing this on now is making NO noise whatsoever. Anyhoo, Steve learned his lesson with that miscue, which happened 25+ years ago.

That's part of Apple's -- and Steve's -- cachet, they are willing to push designs. The results occasionally fail -- eg. my PBG4's silver paint is rather completely flaked off after 3+ years of use -- but on balance great stuff results.

Because Mircosoft admisions were the eartly Mac UI was the insperation. But...whatever you wanna believe, if it helps ya sleep at night.

I don't understand your passive-aggressiveness here.

Micorsoft spent about 10 years evolving Windows into a simulacrum of MacOS. "That's not Mac. I want Mac on PC" -- Bill Gates. When Apple sued, Micorsoft won the case when they demonstrated to the court that Apple had licensed the Mac "look & feel" to them.

This is not to say that Micorsoft didn't do good work with NT in the 90s. I like NT and think it is a stronger foundation than Unix, and I also think with Visual Studio, NT, C#, and the WPF Micorsoft has basically evened-up with Apple and OS X, if not surpassed them (Visual Studio has always been 5+ years ahead of Apple's offerings, and I think C# is much nicer than ObjC++).

But IME, for the past 20 years when I've looked for a PC, I've found the Mac to be a better -- more reliable, more useful, more aesthetic, more enjoyable --- PC platform. YMMV, but I for one can't understand why anyone chose Windows 3.x over System 7.0. What a pile of crap that was. Same with XP over 10.x, x >= 2.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 8:35 AM on January 20, 2006

YMMV, but I for one can't understand why anyone chose Windows 3.x over System 7.0. What a pile of crap that was. Same with XP over 10.x, x >= 2.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 11:35 AM EST on January 20 [!]

Different people, different dislikes, likes, preferences, factors, etc. My sisters have OS X, I have XP, for some reason neither of us care or mind. I guess different people have different priorities as well.
posted by juiceCake at 8:39 AM on January 20, 2006

In a rush from lunch, but a few quick bits:

By and large the 'Save Disney' campaign insomnia links to was successful in a ground swell of support kind of way. It was not successful in the ouster of Eisner by any large merit. Eisner punted the two from the board and for the most part left on his own terms. long after I'm in the Save Disney camp, and I wish they/we could take credit for it, but Eisner for a long time had internally stated that he would retire at his X' anniversary (don't remember the #, again, rushing), and I think he only ended up moving up that time frame by a few months.

I hope someone links the image gallery of the Pixar studios offices. They are so freakin' wonderfully artistic.

I think it's partially short sighted to say 'Disney buying Pixar would KILL Pixar!' -- I have two points here, 1) John Lasseter -- head Pixar storytelling type person -- WAS at Disney before he left. So are a number of other Pixar people -- old school Disney.

Two -- I can't imagine Steve signing a deal (say what you will about his greed?) that would kill the actual magic of what made his -- ok, Lasseter's studio -- work. I would see it only the other way around. Disney's animation studio is dead. They haven't produced a good film in nearly 12 years. They are so out of ideas that Eisner killed the remaining 2D shops and told them to either convert to 3D or leave the studio. I mean, he thought the technology was what was making the pictures?! That, alone, signalled the death of Eisner to me. From the man who brought Paramount up from the ashes to this.. ? Thank the lord he retired. Woops, anyway, back on topic -- Katzenberg, for all his short comings (ha ha sigh sorry) was good at corraling talent and making big picture events. They have no more story, no more aenima, to share. Disney needs Pixar for the storytelling alone.

On the other side, I'm sure somebody will also chime in about the poor unexpected death of one of Pixar's lead storytellers. I'm embarrased to say I can't think of his name, but he was a big gun. There were rumors that Pixar was stalling on its creative announcements not only to stick it to Disney, but because they might have actually hit a speed bump in their idea factory. I don't believe it, but I'll acknowledge the possibility..

times up! got to run
posted by cavalier at 9:24 AM on January 20, 2006

thank you kjh!
posted by clyde at 9:27 AM on January 20, 2006

I think Pixar should buy Disney.

Michael: My credit good enough to buy you out?
Moe Greene: Buy me out?
[Fredo laughs nervously]
Michael: The casino, the hotel. The Corleone Family wants to buy you out.
Moe Greene: The Corleone Family wants to buy me out? No, I buy you out, you don't buy me out.

posted by kirkaracha at 9:33 AM on January 20, 2006

I'm pretty sure it's supposed to be " others' ", but I don't know how to search for phrases that contain an apostrophe using Google.

Possessive's one scenario (and if the 'other' in question is singular, the apostrophe does go before the s). The other's the contraction of "other is".

Grammarfilter.
posted by forblaga at 10:43 AM on January 20, 2006

Heywood: Does "productize" mean "steal from Xerox labs"?
posted by absalom at 1:37 PM on January 20, 2006

absolom: more or less, yes.

Xerox was happy to sell their stuff for $16,000 ($30k in today's money). Apple (Steve's team at least) figured out how to make it at $500, and sell it initially for $2500.

That was the heavy lifting; bringing the GUI down from "personal workstation" (unaffordable but to the very few) prices to "personal computer" (affordable to many).

Apple engineers solved some Hard Problems along the way -- memory handles, bitmap regions, graphics primitives, resource forks, square pixels, tight UI coding, nonproportional text editing, low-cost serial LAN -- that laid the foundation for the Macs success in the mid-80s.

Wintel tackled the problem in another way, slowing transmogrifying a crap architecture and crap two-bit OS into something usable, over 20 years.
posted by Heywood Mogroot at 2:15 PM on January 20, 2006

Remember: Apostrophe's have no place on the word "other's". Not that I want to be pendantic.

Correcting the spelling of 'pedantic' is pretty much the awesomest opportunity to be a pedant. Yay!
posted by birdie birdington at 8:36 PM on January 20, 2006

Crap architecture? Funny, when was it that we got to stop telling Macs how much memory to allocate each process?
posted by effugas at 3:33 PM on January 21, 2006

First of all, Xerox "Stole" from Douglas englebart in the first place, who wanted everyone to implement his ideas anyway. Englebart was actually pissed off when he saw the first Mac -- not because he wasn't getting paid, but because it didn't have a modem or Ethernet port.

Anyway, before OSX Apple's operating system was a joke. It was a lot more like DOS then windows after win3.1 in terms of architecture. They just replaced everything with Unix.

Microsoft basically took windows and turned it into a Unix, to the extent that you can pretty much recompile any Unix program and run it on windows. Anyway.
posted by delmoi at 11:16 AM on January 22, 2006

but I for one can't understand why anyone chose Windows 3.x over System 7.0. What a pile of crap that was.

Well, there was that whole memory protection thing, you know the one that kept 3.x programs from bringing down the whole OS. I mean in theory, but every GPF you saw was a time that the OS had saved you from having the whole OS crash.

I remember John Carmac talking about how his first mac (pre-OSX) crashed more in the first day then all the windows machines he'd ever owned. Seriously, those things whent down like $2 hookers. My Win98 machine on a good motherboard could stay up for a week. Windows 2000 for months at a time.
posted by delmoi at 11:22 AM on January 22, 2006

delmoi--

Windows is most certainly not a Unix internally. There's a POSIX translation layer, yes, but translation is the operative word and you certainly can't just recompile any Unix app for Windows. And the POSIX layer isn't even normally used, generally we use either MinGW, which compiles straight to the Visual C++ runtime and has all sorts of missing parts, or Cygwin, which is indeed very very Unix-y but requires this fairly extensive runtime to operate.

Windows didn't get where it is now by being like Unix...you're thinking of the wrong ancient OS :) The best explanation for Windows internally is "Spawn of VMS". That's what happens when you hire Dave Cutler to make your next generation OS.
posted by effugas at 6:24 PM on January 22, 2006

I'm not terribly fond of Disney -- I especially dislike te way that they drive intellectual property law to their own benefit -- but I wll say they generally know what they're doing. This time, if this is a "founded" rumor, they might not.

Putting Pixar in any kind of subordinate relationship to any other entity would be terrible for them. They have great management now, are extremely cost-effective, and are continuing to produce really good stuff even as they get more successful. Disney's aesthtics are very un-Pixaresqe, and I think (I hope) that decision makers on both sides are bright enough to see that.

Further, I don't see Pixar being left in a position to call shots w.r.t. Disney, because they have no experience in the things that constitute most of Disney's business (i.e., marketing and merchandising in a wild variety of forms). Disney wouldn't let it happen, Pixar wouldn't want to do it. However, I can imagine some high-concept Suit thinking it was a good idea to have Pixar drive change in Disney culture. That would destroy both of them: Diluting Pixar's focus and forcing them to change by having to run things that are way outside of their zone, and interfering with Disney doing the thing that they do better than just about any other company in the world.

What would be really really bad for Disney would be letting Steve Jobs have any significant say in how they run their company. They guy has some decent instincts w.r.t. niche marketing of medium- to high-end lifestyle gadgets; but he knows precisely jack shit about selling Minnie Mouse bedsheets or Disney Family Cruises to middle-class parents. He'd be so far out of his depth it's not even funny. And if Steve Jobs histor shows anything, it's that really bad things happen when he gets out of his depth.

(As for Steve and Pixar, they've mostly been successful because his role with them has primarily been in strong-arming their business partners -- partners like Disney....)
posted by lodurr at 7:46 AM on January 23, 2006

w.r.t. Unix & Windows, delmoi might be thinking of a marginally publicized case a couple of years back where MS seemed to tacitly admit they'd stolen some BSD code for some of their networking layer. (Not making a judgement, just looking for origins fo the idea.)

Taht said, he's spot on about MacOS pre-OS X. It had a "trusted app" model of non-preemptive multitasking that was really easy to crash, and swallowed memory in great and largely immutable chunks. OS X needs more memory to cruise, so to speak, but it needs less to run hard because the Unix memory management is so superior. Same was true fo Windows: You could use a Windows machine at the same level fo RAM to do more things concurrently than you could a pre-OS X Mac. (I know tis from experience.)

OS X is not as stable as it should be, for that matter. I've been using it for a bit over a year now, and I've had probably ten cases in that year where I had to hard-reset either my Mini or my PowerBook in order to be able to use the system. The OS, techncially, was probably "fine" in each of those cases; but since Finder was hung (hard), that fact did me no good.

It also bothers me, aesthetically, that OS X so often has to be restarted after updates. Shouldn't that not be necessary for a *nix OS?
posted by lodurr at 7:53 AM on January 23, 2006

Heywood_Mogroot says a few things I don't understand. Like the silver paint peeling off his PowerBook G4 -- I don't know, did he buy the thing off a blanket on Canal Street, maybe, packed in a box marked "Appel"? Cuz I've taken my PB G4 apart and scratched the case in the process, and I can tell you with certainty that it's not painted. (Maybe he doesn't mean "PowerBook.")

But seriously, folks, here's what really puzzles me: "I like NT and think it is a stronger foundation than Unix, and I also think with Visual Studio, NT, C#, and the WPF Micorsoft has basically evened-up with Apple and OS X, if not surpassed them (Visual Studio has always been 5+ years ahead of Apple's offerings, and I think C# is much nicer than ObjC++)."

I can't speak to C# v. ObjC++ (most of the Java geeks I know think C# is great, FWIW), but VisualStudio? And NT over Unix? Those need some explanation, man. I mean, I know which one I want if I want to run a webserver that doesn't need a scheduled restart at least once a week, and it's not Win2K (and sure as hell not NT4). Maybe XP has improved to the point that it can serve up web pages as well as *nix+Apache, but if so, I haven't heard about it.

(Alright, so maybe Apple had crappy tools. I don't know. But using that as an excuse to praise VisualStudio is a bit like saying that because Stalin sucked so hard, Hitler wasn't that bad [GDWN /])
posted by lodurr at 8:50 AM on January 23, 2006

Done deal.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 10:13 PM on January 24, 2006

MS seemed to tacitly admit they'd stolen some BSD code for some of their networking layer.

They don't need to even admit it—it's right there in the binaries:

C:\>strings %SYSTEMROOT%\system32\ftp.exe | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
posted by grouse at 3:25 PM on January 26, 2006