“At least one Wall Street research firm has suggested that an acquisition of Pixar by Disney makes sense. But according to the two people with knowledge of the talks, who asked not to be identified because of the sensitive nature of those negotiations, Mr. Iger has not made an offer to buy Pixar. They added, though, that Mr. Jobs would consider a sale at the right price. Pixar’s market value is about $5.9 billion, a price that would make an acquisition – by Disney or another media company – expensive, given the price per share that most media stocks are trading at these days,” Laura M. Holson reports for The New York Times.
“On Friday, the Walt Disney Company will release ‘Chicken Little,’ its first animated film since revamping its animation studio. The company is hoping the movie will return Disney to the glory of its past in animation,” Holson reports. “Another company that also has a lot riding on “Chicken Little” is Pixar, the Emeryville, Calif., studio that has a joint venture with Disney to make and market animated films through 2006. 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. But according to two people with knowledge of the talks, serious negotiations have not begun, as both sides wait to see how ‘Chicken Little’ performs in movie theaters.”
Full article (free registration required) here.
I hope he doesn’t sell Pixar. I don’t know why, but i kinda like the idea that he owns it.
Not likely I wouldn’t think. But if Disney did buy you’d better believe there would be some tight Apple strings attached to the deal.
Sensitive negotiations? No offer from Iger? Does this story suggest that SJ is suggesting the sale?
I know at least one person who was sure that Chicken Little is a Pixar production. The two may already be too closely linked.
Not likely and I’m pretty sure that the sky is not falling.
I have two small children, I won’t be taking them to Chicken Little, Disney just can’t seem to come up with original ideas anymore. I took them to Wallace and Gromit that will win the Best Animated Picture Award next year, I may have to wait until “Cars” next June for a picture that looks good to me for my kids.
Disney needs to agree NOT to make Toy Story 3 or any other sequel to the Pixar films (and destroying them obviously), then Jobs will probably start to listen again.
I have two small chickens and I won’t be taking them to see Chicken Little either. They can cry fowl all they want.
Pixar should expand its company into making both awesome animated movies and games. Make games for all the consoles as well as the Mac, maybe a Windows release here and there.
If he does sell it to Disney, rest assured that they will lose their magic soon afterward. Disney proved it didn’t have the right stuff to make animated features anymore, and selling Pixar to Disney would just kill the creative culture of a great company.
Pixar should find another partner. to he11 with Disney, who tends to just buy original ideas instead of coming up with their own (like another corporate behemoth we all know).
We don´t need Pixar to be swallowed up by Disney. We need more independant animation studios. Plus Disney should develop its own studio.
More animation studios!!!!
I think Steve should sell Pixar, buy Microsoft and turn around and dissolve it. The loss would be greater than any monetary gain…
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”LOL” style=”border:0;” />
Bad idea,
Sell Pixar and Jobs loses any clout he may have with Hollywood and possibly the music industry. The latter can trust him seeing that he too does not want any of his products (Pixar movies) pirated. W/o Pix. he’ll have a hard time advancing any DRM
I’d be interested to hear John Lasseter’s feelings about this subject.
I think Pixar is a terrific company but I wouldn’t mind seeing SJ dedicated 100% to Apple. It has to be tough being 2 CEOs no matter how much you delegate.
SJ should sell Pixar to Apple. Then Apple would then become an entertainment company. Apple can then put all of Pixar’s movies on iTMS. In addition we won’t see Pixar animation studios, but Apple animation studios. John Lasseter can be in charge of Apple’s Animation division.
This way SJ will still have control of both companies, and get some of Apple’s $9 billion in cash reserves into his pocket.
I hope he doesn’t sell either. I think it’s awesome that he’s CEO of both companies and somehow he has managed to make them both very successful.
The book “iCon” told of Pixar’s origin and it was really interesting. Steve never thought that it would be a movie studio, it was supposed to be a hardware and software company. Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull, who were the heart of what became Pixar, secretly wanted to make computer animated features, but they hid this goal from Steve. Then they started winning awards for the shorts that they made, supposedly just to demonstrate what the Pixar computers could do. Luckily for them, and us both as movie lovers and Mac users, Steve was too busy trying to keep NeXT from failing to really pay too much attention to what they were doing, but he did try to kill some of these projects early on due to lack of finances. He was pretty much paying the salaries of the employees at NeXT and Pixar out of his own pocket as neither was making much profit. Truth be told, Pixar’s early success was probably more in spite of Steve than because of him, however, he was mainly the one responsible for getting as good a deal with Disney as they had before the communication breakdown.
The other interesting thing was how he managed to buy Pixar from George Lucas for a measly $9 million. Lucas want $30 million but he was in a crunch due to going through a divorce, and the fact that other deals had fallen through. Steve played hardball and won. I think that to this day Lucas is still bitter and this is why Star Wars games take so much longer to come to the Mac, if they come at all ; )
Apple Animation has a nice ring to it…
I like the idea of independent studios and separate from Disney.
2 different studios 2 sources for creativity and competicion.
If Chicken Little becomes a success, good for Disney, good for everybody
I think of the Apple Animation as a best worst scenario
On the subject of fowl, I’m sure that Disney can survive after laying the occasional but inevitable rotten egg. I don’t know if you can say that about Pixar.
I would suspect that over the next six or more months or so what with negotiations going on to get video content for the video store, that keeping Pixar independent of any commited deal with any one studio could be extremely useful. Disney despareate to renew the link has already given content and one would suspect has made other would be collaborators all the more anxious to cement a deal in their place. A good time to negotiate and dangle carrots a bad time to commit or worse sell to any one interested party surely. Would have to be overwhelming opportunity to over rule that logic.
From: Less is More
Oct 31, 05 – 12:03 pm
On the subject of fowl, I’m sure that Disney can survive after laying the occasional but inevitable rotten egg. I don’t know if you can say that about Pixar.
That comment would make sense if Pixar actually made a “rotten egg”. but they haven’t. Why? Originality. Pixar movies are about the content, not how it is animated. The stories are foar superior.
Disney seems to be satisfied with churning out remakes, and when they do make a new film, its Sequel-Sequel-Sequel straight to DVD. Unless they can generate a story that will get fans excited — like Aardman Studios, Pixar, and other small studios — they will lose the competition.
Apple should sell iTMS and iPod to Pixar, then tell Paul McCartney and Apple Corps. to f%@k off.
I love Pixar but I don’t think Steve neccesarily needs to own it. As long as the same talented people are still creating the movies all should stay the same. Steve, if he did sell could pump the money into Apple.
>That comment would make sense if Pixar actually made a “rotten egg”….
Wow … infallibility! ‘Nough said.
There seems to be a bit of puffed up foolishness here regarding Disney and Pixar.
A bit ‘o history. The Disney-Pixar talks broke off because, among other things, the then CEO of Disney made assinine remarks about piracy during senate hearings on copyright infringement. Eisner all but identified Apple’s ‘Rip. Mix. Burn.’ campaign as a carte blanche endoresment of the mis-use of protected content. Needless to say this did not go over well with Mr. Jobs, leading to his infamous remarks trashing Disney publicly but more importantly stating he would never partner with them as long as Eisner was at the table. I believe he was justified in his indignation. No company has made more strides to move Hollywood and other content purveyors off their butts on DRM than Apple; whether you agree with the implementation or not.
Anyway, Pixar took their toys and stomped out of the sandbox saying they would simply find new playmates. They quickly discovered that no studio would touch them because the uber-lucrative deal they sought offered no real benefit to the studio. Let’s not forget the current deal between Disney and Pixar saw the majority of the initial risk in the partnership borne almost entirely by Disney and it’s shareholders. Without that risk, that insight, Toy Story would not have been made. I think it’s unfair to suggest, even by Steve Jobs, that Pixar would be in the enviable position it finds itself today without that investment. I’m not just talking about computers and John Lassater’s salary either. Negotiating distribution of films to exhibitors is a complex and sticky business which any studio exec would tell you. One reason why, in the acceptance speeches made by Pixar film directors and creative types, they are sure to thank Dick Cook, president of Walt Disney Studios for his help in making sure their films got on the screen.
I believe that Disney and Pixar will likely re-sign an agreement. It’s possible that Disney may look at buying Pixar outright too someday, but not right now. They’d be too expensive. Meanwhile, Dreamworks Animation, headed by part studio chief Jeffery Katzenberg, would likely have preferred nothing more than to stick it to Eisner’s Disney either in a partnership with Pixar or buying them outright. I mean the ground was fertile there. But the gas is out of the ‘Dream’ at Dreamworks with, among other things, both them and Pixar being called to account by the SEC for lofty DVD sales targets on Shrek 2 and The Incredibles both of which underperformed signifcantly. Interesting to note here, one was a sequel and the other an ‘original’ idea which I see is held in quite high regard here.
As for Disney, I am going to take my children to see Chicken Little because I believe one of Disney’s core strengths, when it chooses to harness it correctly, is telling well known stories, fairytales and legends, in an engaging way that truly resonates with audiences. I site the Disney versions of Cinderella, Snow White, & Pinnochio, to name just a few, as indelibly linked in our collective conscience as ‘the’ benchmark version in each case even though these stories were long in the public domain before a single animation cell was drawn. I utterly reject the notion that something should be dismissed simply because it is based on existing material and I welcome all comers including Aardaman, Pixar, Nelvana, Studio Gibli etc. cuz variety is what makes life more fun if not just a bit more interesting! (Geeze, lighten up and take your kids to a movie more than once a year! Holy crap.)
The deal the new CEO of Disney, Bob Iger, made with Jobs, to distribute ABC content on iTunes, I believe was a good faith gesture to show that the guard has changed at Disney and they value the Pixar/Apple partnership. That doesn’t mean they should bend over and let Pixar do whatever Pixar wants. That’s not a ‘partnership’.
Chicken Little is, without question, Disney’s way of saying to Steve Jobs that it can make compelling, entertaining 3D animated feature without Pixar. (Anyone who suggests there was cross pollenation on this project with Pixar is truly dreaming.) I don’t know if Chicken Little will be successful, and frankly I don’t care. I care that it’s entertaining and let the rest flow out of that.
Great creative companies like Apple, Pixar and yes, by gum, Disney, survive because they reinvent and take risks. It’s when they get into ridiculous pi–ing matches that everyone suffers.