His goal? Creating a string of follow-ups that will become lasting, and lucrative, classics. ““What Walt Disney did in the old days,’’ he explains.
Steve Jobs morphing into avuncular Walt? Don’t laugh. Two weeks ago Pixar announced an epochal deal with none other than the Walt Disney Co., binding the two companies for 10 years and five films. Not to mention videos, CD-ROMs and licensing loot from action figures to toothbrushes. This extends and supersedes a previous pact that was heavily stacked in Disney’s favor. ““Toy Story’’ was made under the original deal, and Pixar will get only about 12.5 percent of the estimated $400 million in profits; everything from now on is a nifty 50-50. (Disney also bought a small stake in Pixar, with options to increase its share to 5 percent.) And Pixar has been quick to take advantage of the terms, announcing this week that it’s producing, under the new terms, a made-for-video ““Toy Story’’ sequel–with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen reprising their roles as Woody and Buzz.
This equal-footing partnership is an unprecedented concession from the Empire of the Mouse, but after ““Toy Story’s’’ success, Steve Jobs had Mickey over a barrel. Putting out animated films is ““the essence of what we do,’’ as Disney CEO Michael Eisner explained when the deal was announced. Not only do those Uber-cartoons pack theaters, but their characters can be recycled in TV shows, toys, books and commemorative plates. Best of all, the Little Mermaid and her ilk have never demanded a piece of the back end.
It’s no wonder other studios are trying to duplicate Disney’s success. ““Everyone has tried to do it; everybody is going to keep trying,’’ says Steve Jobs. ““But up until December 1995, everybody else failed. Now there two.’’ Disney, whose recent animation efforts have been mild disappointments (somehow America failed to go bonkers over a French hunchback), didn’t want to risk losing Pixar to a rival. So when Jobs asked for parity, Eisner agreed.
BUT WHAT MADE THE DEAL really irresistible to Disney was the chance to lock up animation’s hottest superstar: Pixar’s Oscar-winning John Lasseter. The laid-back, bespectacled 40-year-old director of ““Toy Story’’ is the first person to bridge the gap between the esoteric technology of computer graphics and the mass medium of the Hollywood blockbuster. When he arrived at Lucasfilm in 1983, he recalls, people were still talking about synthesizing Droids. ““Let’s think about old cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse,’’ he said, and blew everybody’s mind. ““Computer animation has nothing to are do with computers,’’ he insists. ““Pixar creates stories and characters.''
““John Lasseter is a genius,’’ says Peter Schneider, who heads Disney’s animation division. ““He views the world unlike any of the rest of us–he has the ability to invent characters and funny situations, and then be amused by what he has created.''
Jobs agrees that ““John is clearly the creative guiding light.’’ But he’s not worried about losing the Cecil B. DeMille of computer graphics: since Lasseter holds millions in shares of Pixar stock, he is unlikely to bolt.
Lasseter himself says he loves the free-flowing collaboration at Pixar and has no problems with Jobs as his boss: ““He has faith in me and my staff to leave the creative stuff to us.’’ To followers of Jobs’s career, that is the most startling of all.
In a strange way, the relationship between Jobs and Lasseter is a successful resolution of the more awkward dynamic between Jobs and his first collaborator, Steve Wozniak, inventor of the Apple II computer that started it all. Some sniped that Woz was the genius and Jobs the packager, but Jobs never thought of himself as Colonel Parker to anyone . . . more of an Elvis in his own right. He took creative control of Apple’s Macintosh project, a success that should have shut up his critics–but a year after the Mac’s 1984 debut he was booted from his own company, with no more ceremony than a disk being ejected from a Mac floppy drive. His answer was the computer startup NeXT, and few paid much attention to his $10 million purchase of George Lucas’s computer division, which he renamed Pixar.
Over the next decade, Jobs quietly put $50 million into Pixar, recognizing that its artists, particularly Lasseter, would one day be able to make a real movie, as opposed to a five-minute short to wow the nerds at the annual SIGGRAPH show. But it was Disney that decided Pixar was ready. Frustrated at Lasseter’s repeated rejections of its job offers, Disney said, in effect, ““OK, John, make a movie for Pixar and we’ll pay for it.’’ Even though Disney structured the three-picture contract to reap nearly all the rewards, Jobs still thinks it was a great deal, mainly because his people could benefit both from Disney’s marketing prowess and its creative mastery.
Indeed, the wizards from the Magic Kingdom unfailingly offered sound advice, and Pixar welcomed it even though it meant temporarily shutting down production when the story was deemed unconvincing. When it became clear that Lasseter’s effort was not just a ““boutique film that would make $30 million,’’ says Jobs, Disney bestowed ““Toy Story’’ a precious holiday slot. It was the top 1995 release.
Pixar went public, and the ““Toy Story’’ buzz sent its valuation to infinity and beyond–making its CEO a billionaire. But once investors understood how little Pixar stood to make in its Disney deal, the stock plummeted. The deal had to be redone. Jobs got it redone. The stock flew back up.
Pixar now has to prove that ““Toy Story’’ wasn’t a fluke. The company is almost solely devoted to movies and spinoffs, and if it suffers a flop, says CFO Lawrence Levy, ““I don’t think it will be fatal, but we’ll have to batten the hatches.''
The first test will be ““Bugs,’’ slotted for release in late 1998. The plot, explains Lasseter, is derived from the fable ““The Ant and the Grasshopper,’’ ““with a little “Music Man’ and “Seven Samurai’ added to the mix.’’ To protect his colony from marauding grasshoppers, an ant named Flick sets out to hire tough warrior bugs, but mistakenly retains an out-of-work circus, run by one P. T. Flea. After two years of story development, the animation is underway, and an early clip showing the ants conga-lining it across a leaf looks very cool.
But there’s a fly in the ointment. DreamWorks SKG, whose animation division is closely overseen by Disney alum Jeffrey Katzenberg, is planning its own computer-generated epic. The Pixar people, who told Katzenberg about ““Bugs’’ when their project was well underway, were dismayed to hear several months later that the DreamWorks film would be . . . ““Ants.’’ (It’s a story tailored to Woody Allen, who does the main voice, about one ant’s disenchantment about the drudgery of his life.) Katzenberg insisted that he had the idea long before he’d heard about the Disney-Pixar project, but he probably wouldn’t mind showing his former employer who’s king of the anthill. In any case, ““Ants’’ is scheduled for spring 1999, after ““Bugs’s’’ debut but before its probable video release.
Such intrigues aside, it’s clear that Steve Jobs relishes the switch from hardware to Hollywood. ““When you’re in charge of a technology company,’’ he says, ““you get up every morning and read The Wall Street Journal to see if Microsoft introduced a product to put you out of business.’’ Instead, he commutes from Silicon Valley to Pixar’s industrial-park headquarters in Point Richmond, Calif., where he happily spews showbiz jargon. He insists that speculation that he will assume a major role in Apple Computer is ““pure fantasy,’’ claiming that he will soon cut back the mere half day he spends each week as an Apple adviser. Don’t think of me as a techie is his message.
““I think I trust people more,’’ he says of his evolved management style. ““I take a longer-term view. Michael Eisner is my role model; I feel my role is to support these brilliant people.''
But he’s clearly thinking of Disney’s first executive when he talks of the recent reissue of ““Snow White.’’ ““Our family bought it; our son loves it,’’ he says. ““And I realized, hey, I don’t know anyone who doesn’t know “Snow White.'
““Our stuff has more of a contemporary sensibility, but in a way it’s akin to when Disney started out,’’ he says. ““We want to put those myths right into the culture.’’ He pauses, perhaps recalling his past and relishing his future. ““You won’t be able to boot up a Macintosh in 60 years,’’ he says. ““But we hope that 60 years from now, people will still be enjoying “Toy Story’.''
