A very insightful post from Steve Hulett of The Animation Guild blog this morning. Did The Walt Disney Company make a ‘Titanic’ decision when purchasing Pixar. By which he means Titanic the movie, generally considered to be a huge success despite the financial risk, as opposed to Titanic the ocean liner, which was generally considered to be a huge failure despite the downplayed risk (the unsinkable Titanic they called it).
You also can’t calculate the damage that would have been done to the Walt Disney Company if Pixar had been allowed to waltz off to some other conglomerate and cut a deal there. But Robert Iger and some of Disney’s green eyeshade boys made mathmatical equations, and Mr. Iger obviously wasn’t willing to go near the answer to that particular question. He made a decision made under duress, but he made (I think) the right one.
How can you go wrong with a studio that is a perfect 8 out of 8 in box office success. Barring further disasters, like the tragic loss of Joe Ranft, you can expect that trend to continue. Even Ratatouille is chugging along to the $300 million mark internationally.
Or to put it another way… it’s like betting on Tiger Woods in a Major. If he’s leading going into the second round, it’s a sure thing; 13 and 0. Sure, he’s bound to be defeated some day. But that’s probably not very soon, and when it happens he’ll bounce back. (Read)