Hi-Ho! Work for Disney or Go?

(Business Week) – With the Pixar deal inked, Mouse House brass know their most important task will be to maintain morale and stop a talent exodus. It's a problem common to both Silicon Valley and Hollywood. The assets, folks like to say, walk out the door each night. And now that Walt Disney has clinched its $7.4 billion deal to buy Steve Job's Pixar Animation Studio, job No. 1 for Disney executives will be making sure Pixar's top creative folks don't head out the door. That won't be easy: For many in the movie industry, Disney is the big, bad, and faded ogre that once ruled the animation business. But since the mid-90s, it has been the upstarts – companies like Pixar and PDI, the Northern California computer-animation unit of reamworks Animation SKG – that have been the most daring, creative and, yes, successful of the cartoon companies. No wonder, then, that Disney Chief Executive Bob Iger, in a conference call with investors after the deal was announced, said his outfit will work overtime to make sure "Pixar is allowed to exist in the form that it has existed in the past." "Steve and I spent a lot of time talking about that," Iger says. "One of the really important things will be to continue to protect Pixar and allow its culture to continue. It is such an important part of their success...and as a magnet for talent." That may explain why, as part of the deal, Pixar's two top executives, President Ed Catmull and top creative executive John Lasseter, were given new and more important jobs with the company. Both executives are likely to stay in northern California, says Disney Studio Chairman Dick Cook, no doubt to buoy morale at Pixar. That's crucial, because Disney expects that Pixar will increase its current production to make one film every year, says Disney Chief Financial Officer Tom Staggs. Pixar currently makes movie about every 16 months.
Even before the deal, Pixar was in the process of ramping up production. In a world where Fox, Sony, and even former Miramax co-chairs Harvey and Bob Weinstein are rushing to make computer animated films, Disney and Pixar need to retain that brain power. That means keeping Pixar's Emeryville, Calif. studio the same haven of ping pong tables, Frisbee playing, and even the annual Halloween costume contests that have lured so many folks like Lasseter from Disney's far more rigid environment. No one is likely to know for months, maybe years, whether the two animation cultures can mesh. It will likely take fresh discipline from a Disney hierarchy that has cut costs and laid off employees in the past. Having Lasseter around should help. The 49-year old Pixar creative guru, raised in Southern California, swept streets at Disneyland as a teenager and started out in animation working on Mickey's Christmas Carol at the Disney animation studio. Lasseter decided to leave in 1984 to pursue computer-generated animation at a new animation startup by George Lucas. He's the natural bridge between the two cultures. "He is one of us," says Disney's Cook. And maybe his return will sprinkle some of Pixar's dust around the Magic Kingdom.