Disney Buys Pixar

BlueDjinn writes to tell us that it appears a great deal of speculation over Disney's buyout of Pixar Animation Studios is in fact true. From the article: "[Pixar] is set to meet tomorrow to approve the company's $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney. The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for the computer animations division of Lucasfilm, owned by Star Wars creator George Lucas."

Good luck to Steve J...

[by Anonymous Coward]

Nobody deserves a few billion bucks more than he does, the way I figure it. If he manages to pull Disney out of their spiral of mediocrity, he'll have earned every penny...

Re:Good luck to Steve J...

[ettlz (639203)]

If he manages to pull Disney out of their spiral of mediocrity, he'll have earned every penny...

Yes, because being the owner of the world's largest collection of turtle necks is an expensive hobby.

Re:Good luck to Steve J...

[jcr (53032)]

If it looks like Disney's paying attention to what the Pixar people tell them, then I'll be buying Disney shares this summer. The real key for Disney Animation is John Lasseter. If they put him in charge, expect great movies.

As for the business side of things, I hope this means we'll see ALL of the Disney archives available on line. I'll pay two bucks for Steamboat Willie on my iPod, and there's a whole lot of other classics I'd love to see again.

-jcr

Re:Good luck to Steve J...

[bersl2 (689221)]

I'll pay two bucks for Steamboat Willie on my iPod

NO! NO, NO, NO, NO, NO!

Thoughts like this will lead to Disney convincing Congress to retroactively extend copyright for another 20 years.

MOD PARENT +INF INSIGHTFUL!

[mrchaotica (681592)]

If it weren't for the assholes at Disney (and the *AA), you'd already be able to have Steamboat Willie on your iPod, for free!

this sucks

[Hank Chinaski (257573)]

Now we will see Nemo 2, Nemo 3 (dvd only release) and a Nemo tv series, with each one getting a little crappier. Same for all other Pixar films.

Disney will milk the IP till the cow dies and will probably not fund development of new IP.

1) Buy Pixar
2) Milk IP
3) Short-time profit

Ok, what happens to Renderman now?

[sgant (178166)]

Is Disney going to keep selling PRman and PRman for Maya plug-ins? Will Catmull continue on with them? What's this all mean for Renderman? Will the software side split off into their own business?

I should say that the golden age of CG movies are now over. Now come the crap movies...the "me too" movies.

Honestly, has anyone really seen anything coming out that even remotely looks interesting? Chicken Little(already out last year)? Ice Age 2? Cars? Open Season? Over the Hedge? Any of these really grabbing you? How about Valiant(also out I believe...or did it go straight to video)? Or The Ant Bully? These are all coming out in the next few months. Have I missed any? Oh, forgot Hoodwinked, and Monster House.

Ah, the old Hollywood adage. If you can't make a buck with quality, then make it with quantity. "Teh peoples want teh CG! We gives them teh CG!"

Re:Ok, what happens to Renderman now?

[jcr (53032)]

I should say that the golden age of CG movies are now over.

That's a bit melodramatic, don't you think?

Now come the crap movies...the "me too" movies.

They're already here.. Didn't you hear about "Antz", the knock-off of "A Bug's Life"?

CGI is new tool. Some great movies will be made with it, and a probably a lot of crap, too. Take a look at some of the lesser movies that were being made at the same time as Citizen Kane. Did they keep Orson Wells from making his masterpiece?

-jcr

Re:this sucks

[Hope Thelps (322083)]

As Jobs is still the largest stockholder of the company, how many changes will really take place?

Unless I've totally misread the story, Disney will now be the sole owner of Pixar. Jobs will now (not still) be the single largest shareholder in Disney. That doesn't mean that he necessarily has the power to change its entrenched culture. I doubt he has anything like enough of a shreholding to replace the existing management, or to plausibly theaten to.

Re:this sucks

[Voltageaav (798022)]

Reguardless, he'll still have clout, and there's been talk of him being put on the board of Directors. http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jan200 6/nf20060120_2325_db016.htm?campaign_id=rss_daily [businessweek.com]

Lamp

[QBasicer (781745)]

Hopefully they won't do away with that Pixar lamp, I kind liked the little guy.

Re:Lamp

[Shag (3737)]

Luxo Jr? He'll survive. But they'll have to alter his image a little bit, so they can make a costume for someone to wear around Disneyworld.

my crystall ball...

[by Anonymous Coward]

...tells me that pixar is for sale in 10 years for 10m.

on a sidenote, what happens to renderman?

Might be OK

[nighty5 (615965)]

As slashdot sees Disney as mostly evil, it should be noted that most of the sceptical activities of Disney can be attributed to one man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eisner [wikipedia.org].

I have a good feeling about the new CEO http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Iger [wikipedia.org]

Read up on these completely different management styles and then take a look at Disney again. Iger was responsible for talks to continue with Pixar, so its no suprise that it might lead to this.

Re:Might be OK

[mrchaotica (681592)]

Disney has been evil from the beginning, even when it was being run by Walt himself.

Re:Might be OK

[jeffehobbs (419930)]

...yeah, but how does Walt Disney's cyrogenically frozen head [snopes.com] feel about the merger?

~jeff

the parallels are interesting

[eobanb (823187)]

The parallels here are almost amusingly similar to when Apple bought NeXT, ten years ago. Because so much of NeXT's advanced technology essentially displaced Apple's own struggling and dated codebase for the Mac OS to become Mac OS X, and Steve Jobs' own idea of a trimmed and stylish product line replaced the beige box Power Mac (insert four-digit number here), many industry analysts joked that 'NeXT had bought Apple for negative $400 million.'

Look at what's happening now! Like NeXT, one of Steve's projects, was bought by Apple, and its technology incorporated into the company to revamp its product line, Pixar, again a project of Steve, may very well save Disney. For the purists that either hate to see Disney's long-lived traditional animation replaced by computer 3D rendering, or fear that Disney will mishandle Pixar's talent and resources and bring an unfortunate end to the latter studio's remarkably successful run of films, consider two facts: since this isn't a hostile takeover, clearly the folks in charge at Pixar, Steve Jobs included, believe that this will be as good for Pixar as it will be for Disney. They wouldn't be doing this if they thought that Disney was going to ruin them. Also consider now that Steve Jobs is the largest shareholder at Disney. That really carries some weight. Steve has a reputation for getting what he wants, and I also don't doubt that he made this deal without knowing he would have a significant say in Disney's direction.

So really, guys, calm down! Just imagine the headline read, 'Pixar buys Disney for -$7 billion.'

Too much focus on Jobs

[namekuseijin (604504)]

I don't think much of the success of Pixar is due to Steve Jobs.

Rather, the main man over there is John Lasseter, the legendary animator directly responsible for some of the companies most memorable movies. Would Pixar be anywhere today wasn't it for the brilliant movies?

Jobs is just this one guy who sees ahead better than most and invest in people who can make it happen, like Lasseter or Wozniak...

In other news...

[TheOtherAgentM (700696)]

Steve Jobs will begin designing rides at Disneyland. You know there will be an acid trip ride, something Alice and Wonderland style. I can't wait.

Pixar and Disney

[walnut_tree (905826)]

This is quite a development! I suspect that Pixar will continue to operate (largely) autonomously, but there will undoubtedly be a good deal of knowledge sharing between Disney and Pixar. John Lasseter has often expressed his admiration for Disney's animators and their pioneering role in developing the medium. While there might seem to be a lot of enmity between the two companies, I suspect there's also a lot of mutual respect between the artists at both studios.

People may not like the management decisions made by Disney (which have often dictated the direction of their films) but the company still employs a great many talented artists. And of course, Pixar continues to benefit from Disney's considerable marketing muscle - few other companies know how to so thoroughly milk their products for every cent they can get (and I don't say that as praise).

Disney empire

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

Keep in mind that the Disney empire also includes ABC, ESPN, the go.com network, as well as a bunch of movie studio (Touchstone, Miramax, Dimension) and record company imprints. Several of these operate somewhat autonomously, but Jobs will have some say in things as the single largest shareholder in Disney. Gates wants to control the living room. Jobs will control the living room.

Jobs doesn't make $3.5bn

[ottffssent (18387)]

This deal doesn't make Jobs $3.5bn, as the article claims. It barely makes him any money at all.

Pixar's market cap is just a hair under $7bn, about half of which Jobs owns. Disney is buying all $7bn worth of Pixar stock with $7bn worth of Disney stock. So Jobs isn't making any money, he's just changing the name on part of his stock portfolio (Disney's buy is a bit above market value for Pixar, so he does make SOME money, on the order of 1% of the $3.5bn the article mentions). He's also going from being a 50% owner of a $7bn company to a 14% owner of a $50bn company.

So maybe Jobs thinks he can get in and infect Disney with Pixarness and save it. Maybe he just wants to cash out and do something else, and figures he can sell 14% of Disney a lot easier than he can sell half of Pixer. Could be he thinks Pixar will do better with Disney behind it than with Disney as an enemy. Possibly there's another explanation. Let the speculation continue - we'll know in a few years what the plan was and whether it worked or not.

Steve Jobs is

[Centurix (249778)]

Loaded. In his house is a giant walk in wardrobe with a long line of turtle-neck sweaters, you fight through it all and at the back is a snow filled landscape where iPods grow on trees.

You see Steve Wozniak talking to a CGI lion on the technical production of blue boxes. In the background is a giant Intel factory, where little orange men are packing new iMacs into crates marked Nigeria...

Re:Quelle Horreur

[tcdk (173945)]

Ah, beat me to it! But let me echo it - I just have to:

Nooooooooooooooooooooo!

My son is two and a half and he's very much into animated movies. Nemo, Shrek (1+2), Toy Story (1+2), Winnie the Pooh (tons), Ice Age, Robots, etc, etc. Some of it a bit scary, so we are always by his side, so I've seen these movies a bazillion times.

The ones that last (both for us as adults and for him) are the Pixar ones. You can watch these movies again and again and they stay funny, and you can find new deepts in them. The disney ones are usually okay, but they always play the emotion card a bit heavily, which gets old really fast (dreamworks and fox is rather uneven, but usually okay, too).

Re:the big question

[Jacob Moogberg (876462)]

Steve Jobs has little to no creative input concerning Pixar: John Lasseter is in charge. The last time Jobs tried to interfere with the filmmakers choices was just after the first private screening of a finished "Toy Story". Jobs hated the score by Randy Newman and wanted to replace it. Lasseter and the other guys stood by the Newman score and songs, which brought "Toy Story" an Oscar nomination and Newman four additional scores for Pixar. Jobs has an office at Pixar but he's never there. A documentary about the old Pixar headquarters around the "Monsters Inc." release (2001) showed an empty office with just a desk and a PC, not a Mac. Lasseter even jokes about the room, the least crowded area at Pixar. As a sidenote, this footage about the office could be seen on videos part of the original EPK: the "Monsters, Inc." DVD includes the same documentary but the footage is missing. (The explanation for the PC is that Jobs, after his return to Apple, didn't use a Mac running Mac OS 8 or 9 for himself. He still had a PC running OpenStep instead. When Mac OS X became the system of choice, he switched to the Mac.) On the other hand, Jobs plays the main part concerning business deals with Disney and other partners (Intel for the rendering part, for instance) and his input has been more than valuable to Pixar. Jobs and Pixar both run the company. If a deal is closed with Disney, Lasseter must be a part of it, because Pixar wouldn't be Pixar without him. So, I guess a term of the deal would be to grant Lasseter artistic direction of the whole departmetn. Else, there's no guarantee that Pixar future projects won't suck as much as most of Disney releases.