Pixar veteran may be back in the frame
By Christopher Parkes in Los Angeles
Published: January 19 2006 18:58 | Last updated: January 19 2006 18:58
It was Walt Disney's indifference to computer animation that drove John Lasseter away from his job at the company’s fabled cartoon studio and into the little-known Pixar in the mid-1980s.
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And now the man whose creation of Toy Story and the revival of on-screen storytelling for the digital age may be on his way back, as a key member of the Pixar team that has generated an uninterrupted sequence of six hit films, to help restore Disney Animation’s faded fortunes.
Mr Lasseter claimed to have seen the future in 1982, with Disney's early computer animation work in Tron. Technology could take the genre to the next level, he believed. “But...Disney was only interested in computers if [they] could make what they were doing cheaper and faster. I said: ‘Look at the beauty of it.’ But, they just weren’t interested.”
It was perhaps inevitable that there would be differences between Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who nurtured Pixar through its difficult early days, and Michael Eisner, Disney's former head who presided over his company's slide down the animation rankings.
But the bitterness and personal nature of the relationship that came within an ace of wrecking one of the most profitable production-distribution partnerships in film history was startling even by Hollywood's standards.
In one of their final exchanges, with the partnership on the brink of collapse and Mr Eisner fighting to keep his job, the Disney chief said he thought Pixar's efforts in its latest release, The Incredibles, were “pretty pathetic”.
His remarks on a film that grossed $260m in the US, were a near-reprise of his prediction that with Finding Nemo in 2003, Pixar was on its way to receiving a “reality check”.
In the event, it ended up taking a record $370m in the home market.
After Mr Eisner’s attack on The Incredibles, Mr Jobs had a ready response, rattling off a list of Disney’s flops: “Our films don’t stack up to Atlantis, The Emperor's New Groove or Treasure Planet,” he said.
But with Mr Eisner gone, the peaceable Bob Iger in his place, and Disney still in need of a lift, the way has been open for a happy ending for more than a year.
Under Mr Eisner Disney's animation division had been whittled down to a shadow of its former self, and it withdrew from hand-drawn animation.
Ten years after Pixar’s pioneering breakthrough, Disney last November released its first all computer-generated feature, Chicken Little. At $133m, its domestic ticket sales so far suggest that Disney has work to do perfecting the art. Either that, or it should buy the talent to do the job for it.
By Christopher Parkes in Los Angeles
Published: January 19 2006 18:58 | Last updated: January 19 2006 18:58
It was Walt Disney's indifference to computer animation that drove John Lasseter away from his job at the company’s fabled cartoon studio and into the little-known Pixar in the mid-1980s.
<!--startclickprintexclude-->
And now the man whose creation of Toy Story and the revival of on-screen storytelling for the digital age may be on his way back, as a key member of the Pixar team that has generated an uninterrupted sequence of six hit films, to help restore Disney Animation’s faded fortunes.
Mr Lasseter claimed to have seen the future in 1982, with Disney's early computer animation work in Tron. Technology could take the genre to the next level, he believed. “But...Disney was only interested in computers if [they] could make what they were doing cheaper and faster. I said: ‘Look at the beauty of it.’ But, they just weren’t interested.”
It was perhaps inevitable that there would be differences between Steve Jobs, the Apple Computer co-founder who nurtured Pixar through its difficult early days, and Michael Eisner, Disney's former head who presided over his company's slide down the animation rankings.
But the bitterness and personal nature of the relationship that came within an ace of wrecking one of the most profitable production-distribution partnerships in film history was startling even by Hollywood's standards.
In one of their final exchanges, with the partnership on the brink of collapse and Mr Eisner fighting to keep his job, the Disney chief said he thought Pixar's efforts in its latest release, The Incredibles, were “pretty pathetic”.
His remarks on a film that grossed $260m in the US, were a near-reprise of his prediction that with Finding Nemo in 2003, Pixar was on its way to receiving a “reality check”.
In the event, it ended up taking a record $370m in the home market.
After Mr Eisner’s attack on The Incredibles, Mr Jobs had a ready response, rattling off a list of Disney’s flops: “Our films don’t stack up to Atlantis, The Emperor's New Groove or Treasure Planet,” he said.
But with Mr Eisner gone, the peaceable Bob Iger in his place, and Disney still in need of a lift, the way has been open for a happy ending for more than a year.
Under Mr Eisner Disney's animation division had been whittled down to a shadow of its former self, and it withdrew from hand-drawn animation.
Ten years after Pixar’s pioneering breakthrough, Disney last November released its first all computer-generated feature, Chicken Little. At $133m, its domestic ticket sales so far suggest that Disney has work to do perfecting the art. Either that, or it should buy the talent to do the job for it.
