http://www.jimhillmedia.com/article.php?id=1870

One aprticular interesting peice from the article.

And speaking of stories that have yet to be played out, let's look ahead to July of this year. When the Walt Disney Company completes its acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios. More importantly, when Steve Jobs becomes Disney's largest individual shareholder.

Now you may have seen some stories lately that have speculated about whether Apple would ever make an attempt to acquire the Walt Disney Company. That Steve might take a stab at grabbing the Mouse Factory and making it his own. Which -- given Jobs' agressive nature and previous work history (EX: Look at what happened to poor Gil Amelio when Steve returned to Apple in February of 1997. Within six months, Amelio was out as Apple's CEO and Jobs was then named as the new interim head of that corporation) ... Well, I guess you can see why some people might have some concerns about Bob Iger's long term job security.

Which brings me to a story that I've now heard several times from several different sources in Burbank. Which has to do with an office betting pool at Disney.

The way I hear it, there are two office betting pools currently being operated by middle managers at the Walt Disney Company. One will allegedly allow you to pick the date that you think Steve Jobs will be named as George Mitchell's successor (I.E. Meaning that Jobs would then become Disney's next Chairman of the Board). FYI: The range of dates for that wager reportedly runs from July 2006 through December 2007.

While the other Mouse House betting pool supposedly allows you to select the date that Steve Jobs will replace Bob Iger as CEO of the Walt Disney Company. And the range of dates for that pool reportedly runs from July 2007 through December 2008.

Something about Jobs taking ahold of Disney intrigues me, if he can apply his same style to rebranding Disney as was done when he came back in 97 and re-branded the Mac, Disney could be in excellent shape.

Then again, this is all scuttlebutt at the moment.

Let's hope this is the begining of a revolution in the animation industry.

Tater Salad
Did Disney finally realize that CGI movies are shit unless its either Shrek or something from Pixar?

We've got the folks who made Doogal and Hoodwinked to prove to the world that fancy-shmancy CGI does not a good movie make. Hopefully Disney can realize this before making something worse than Chicken Little.

I just recently heard that Disney axed Rapunzel. This made me a bit sad, because the still shots were looking beautiful. My guess is that good ol' Lasseter took the helm and noticed that Rapunzel's story wasn't up-to-snuff.

More likely, Disney probably pulled production on a few movies in order to come up with the finances to buy Pixar.

The Pixar aquisition was a shift in stock. Disney didn't pay a dime for the company, they simply traded Disney stock for Steve Jobs' 51% of Pixar stock. In fact, Disney supposedly made money off of the deal.

Don't expect Jobs to be taking Iger's job anytime soon. It's one thing to be on the board, it's something else entirely to be the CEO, especially when you already run a company. I doubt Jobs even wants the position. The merger was more an oportunistic move for Jobs to get Disney's backing on Apple products and distribution. Things like exclusive rights to music and video from Disney and its subsidaries for iTunes.

I wouldn't hold too much faith in Jobs to turn things around for Disney anyway. He is a businessman much in the same way Iger is. Innovation is less important to him than profit. Recent trends with the iPod and the mac kind of prove that he's willing to sacrifice product quality to cut costs as long as people will buy their products anyway.

.: isukun :.

but still disney has been around for a looong time, its probibly the oldist thing.