Who Will Succeed Robert Iger at Disney?

The names Jay Rasulo and Thomas Staggs don't mean much to animation professionals or fans right now, but the Los Angeles Times speculates that one of them may be Robert Iger's successor when he retires in 2016.

I wonder if they would consider Jeffrey Katzenberg.  I'm not joking about that.  While Robert Iger has been using Disney's money to buy everything in sight, Katzenberg has been building an organization from scratch and diversifying it so that it is stable enough to survive any problems.  Katzenberg also has his own record of success at Disney.  There are many worse candidates out there.

With the exceptional profitability of animated features, combining Disney, Pixar and DreamWorks makes sense from a business standpoint, if not an artistic one.  Who knows?  Since Robert Iger is running out of things to buy, maybe DreamWorks and Katzenberg are already on his list.

Written in Water

Disney recently released its animation schedule through 2018.  There are two and sometimes three films a year slated for release.  There are people, like Charles Kenney, who fear that we're looking at a glut of animated films that will wear out their welcome at the box office.  I agree with that, but I also think that it is inevitable.  The nature of capitalism is for companies to keep making what sells until it stops selling.  Once that happens, they move on to whatever is selling next.  If that's not animation, we're out of luck.  For those who might be skeptical, I can point out that westerns and musicals, both of which were commonplace in past decades, are now rare.  Animation could suffer the same fate.

Whatever happens, it's important to realise that Disney's schedule is written in water.

All predictions are based on current conditions continuing into the future, and that rarely happens.  For proof, we only have to go back to the start of this year.  After DreamWorks' Rise of the Guardians underperformed at the box office, there were layoffs and a schedule shuffle.  Peabody and Sherman was delayed and Me and My Shadow was taken off the schedule all together.

There will be no difference if a Disney film underperforms.  There's nothing like a write-off to get an executive to reexamine the plan and hedge his or her bets.

There's another elephant in the room that nobody is mentioning.  Robert Iger retires as CEO in 2015 and as chairman in 2016.  Iger was a marked departure from Michael Eisner.  While Iger is open to criticism for his decisions, his tenure has been free of the feuds that Eisner had with Jeffrey Katzenberg, Michael Ovitz and Steven Jobs.  Iger's successor, whoever that may be, will undoubtedly bring different ideas and priorities to the job.  Those differences may have to do with animation, including the status of Pixar, John Lasseter and releasing films in 3-D.

Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, is currently 68 years old.  He'll be 70 by the time Iger steps down and he or the studio may decide to call it quits.  That may also result in changes to what happens to Disney animation.

No changing of the guard takes place without a change in the status quo.  While Disney and other studios can plan their release schedules for as far into the future as they like, the truth is that changing personnel and box office results are variables that they can't control.  As they say, past performance is no guarantee of future results.  If it was, we'd be watching Lion King 8 by now.

DreamWorks: The Men Who Would Be King

I've read a fair number of business books about the film industry and this is a good one. Author Nicole Laporte does an excellent job of portraying the three partners, Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffen, who formed DreamWorks.

What's clear from the book is that the company and partnership were always tenuously held together. The partners each had very different personalities and more important than that, very different goals. It's this area where the structural flaws in the company eventually caused problems.

Most companies start small and if they're lucky and well-managed, grow larger. The two words that best define DreamWorks are grandiose and hubris. DreamWorks started out large with large expectations and then systematically shrank over time. The expectations of the partners, the investment community and the public were too large and the partners, for all their money and skills, failed to live up to them.

Those interested in the animation side of DreamWorks will learn relatively little. Shrek and Sinbad, the most and least successful of the animated features, are the only ones covered in much detail. Anyone who has followed Katzenberg's career since his Disney days will have a sense of his micromanagement style and his taste in content. What surprised me is that in this book, Katzenberg comes off the best of the three partners.

David Geffen used his wealth as a weapon to intimidate others with and seemed to have a pathological need for an enemy to conspire against, whether it was Michael Ovitz, Michael Eisner, Sumner Redstone or Brad Grey.

Steven Spielberg comes off as consistently selfish, always making sure that he came out of any arrangement with what he wanted, regardless of whether it was good for DreamWorks or not. For example, on Minority Report, Spielberg made $70 million while DreamWorks only made $20 million. Spielberg was upset with Geffen for selling DreamWorks to Paramount, but had Spielberg directed more films for DreamWorks (he directed several films for other companies while a DreamWorks partner) or worried more about the company's bottom line, the sale would not have been necessary at all.

Each of the three partners also brought their own people into the company, and those people were often at odds, more concerned with protecting their relationships with their patrons than the good of the company as a whole.

In DreamWorks' defense, the media business underwent massive changes during the life of the company. In particular, Disney's purchase of ABC was the death knell for the TV division, both live and animated. However, the three large egos at the head of the company never came together on the specifics and their different agendas made it almost inevitable that the company would fracture as it did.

While this book may frustrate those only interested in the animation side of DreamWorks, The Men Who Would Be King is an excellent primer as to how politics within and between companies determine what ends up on movie screens. Unfortunately, Hollywood is a cross between high school and The Godfather, and while it can be fun to observe from a distance, I find the incessant maneuvering for status and money exhausting.

3D and DreamWorks

Jeffrey Katzenberg was in Toronto last Monday, talking about DreamWorks' commitment to stereoscopic 3D and showing clips from the forthcoming film Monsters vs. Aliens.

Katzenberg believes that in 5-8 years, all movies will be projected in 3D. He stated that there were 10 or 11 films (both live and animated) slated for release in 2009 and two dozen for 2010. All future DreamWorks releases are slated to be 3D, starting with Monsters vs. Aliens. Dreamworks' features currently cost $150 million, and 3D will add an additional $15 million to their price tag.

Bloomberg news reports specifics about what 3D films are coming:

Next year's 3-D releases include a version of the original "Toy Story" from Disney and James Cameron's "Avatar" from News Corp., the director's first feature film since "Titanic" in 1997. Disney plans five 3-D films, the most of any studio. In February, NBC Universal will release "Coraline," based on the book by Neil Gaiman. "Monsters vs. Aliens" is set for March, DreamWorks Animation's only movie of the year.

Katzenberg foresees theatres adding a $5 surcharge over regular admission rates for the 3D experience. There are currently 1000 screens in North America able to project 3D. In 4 months, there will be 2500 and by 2010 there are expected to be 7500. The Bloomberg article implies that the current economic downturn is going to slow the spread of 3D venues.

Cinedigm Digital Cinema Corp., a supplier of software to run digital theaters, had planned to convert as many as 1,500 screens by March 2009. Now, with funds on hold, the company expects 100 to 200, chief executive Bud Mayo said.

While box office grosses have gone up, movie attendance has gone down. The increase in ticket prices is responsible for the increased grosses. The same economic downturn that's slowing down installation of 3D projection may also cut into 3D box office if the theatres charge more for the dimensional versions.

Because not all screens are currently equipped for 3D, DreamWorks will continue to release its films in flat versions to theatres and for home formats such as DVD. Katzenberg acknowledges that films are going to have to be satisfying experiences without 3D and that 3D will be the icing on the cake. He does foresee 3D becoming available at home in the future and expects that its first successful home application will be in gaming.

Katzenberg admitted that it was going to be up to the audience to determine if 3D would become the dominant projection method, but that he was excited about the possibilities since seeing The Polar Express in 3D.

I found the first clip from Monsters vs. Aliens to have some problems, though I'm not sure if it was the clip itself or my need to adjust. 3D imagery contains more information than a standard movie in that the viewer is taking in depth information in addition to everything else. I found the cutting in the first sequence, where the President confronts the alien, to be too fast. I couldn't decipher some shots before they were replaced by others.

However, I found the later two excerpts, the first introducing the monsters and the second a battle on the Golden Gate bridge, worked better for me. I don't know if it was the nature of the direction and cutting in those sequences or if by that time I had seen enough that my brain was more in tune with reading the images.

Certainly, as a society, we take in visual information faster now than in the past. I remember reading an interview with Ward Kimball who talked about having to trim older Disney shorts when they played on television as they were paced too slowly for the TV audience. I don't doubt that with greater exposure to 3D imagery, the audience as a whole will be better at deciphering what's in front of them, but I do think there's a danger of cutting too quickly for the time being.

3D has been tried many times before. Katzenberg said that he felt the move to digital was going to make the difference in terms of audience acceptance. Maybe 3D will be a way for studios to attract more people to theatres in the current economy or maybe bad economic news will prevent that. For now, Hollywood is betting heavily on 3D. Only time will tell if it becomes the new standard or remains an occasional novelty.