Monday, April 10, 2006

As someone who hopes to work at Pixar some day, people have been asking me what I think of Disney buying Pixar. Something like this was inevitable and it makes sense that the buyer would be Disney. Pixar needs the powerful marketing and distribution experience Disney has for children's media, only Nickelodeon can come close and still Disney is the best. Disney needed Pixar's content which was making them money when they took 50% of the profits.

I hated Disney. But that was then and this is now and the difference is Michael Eisner ain't the big cheese no more, it's Robert Iger. Iger is not Eisner. He made the bold move of distributing ABC television shows on iTunes. Then he bought Pixar giving Jobs, Catmull and Lasseter big positions in the stake of the company. Now he's offering the TV shows for free in iTunes in May.

The man has balls of brass.

Now the question whether he and Jobs will continue to get along. And the whole animation world is waiting to see what becomes of Catmull and Lasseter's new positions and how it affects (or doesn't) the new content to be released by both studios.

Personally, I'm optimistic.