How did we get here? As a Disney fan for over 50 years, I was a die-hard fanboy of the company, to the point that Film Threat readers referred to me as a Disney shill. I used to spend thousands of dollars each year throughout the parks, buying merch, and watching every film the Walt Disney Company produced. But something changed, and the so-called Disney magic began to fade. Today, thousands of dollars have turned into a scant tens of dollars. I haven’t visited a park since the “dark times,” and my excitement for anything Disney has turned to disdain…so again, what happened?
Our story begins with a single event not so long ago that fundamentally changed the company culturally and creatively. Mind you, this single event is not the reason for the fall of Disney; as we’ll show, those seeds had been planted long ago during the Eisner era. This event served as the catalyst for the inevitable creative and financial collapse of the company that Walt Disney started 100 years ago. As Elon Musk surmised, “Walt Disney is spinning in his grave like a drill bit.”
That single event was the removal of Disney’s Chief Creative Officer, John Lasseter. This story of Lasseter’s demise will be told from the perspective of the rank-and-file employees at Disney and Pixar, revealing what they observed and how they felt when it happened.
“This story of Lasseter’s demise will be told from the perspective of the rank-and-file employees at Disney…”
John Lasseter, the Creative Visionary
Any Disney fan knows the impact of Lasseter’s creative influence on the company. Along with founder Steve Jobs, Lasseter’s groundbreaking work at Pixar gave birth to the computer-generated animated feature industry as we know it today. After the release of Toy Story, he was thrust into the public eye as the bright future of Disney. Through his guidance at Pixar, innovations in animation quickly eclipsed the legacy set by the initial Disney savior and CEO, Michael Eisner. Dare I say, John Lasseter was poised to become the next Walt Disney as the creative demigod and public face of the company.
Eventually, in 2004, news of Pixar’s impending divorce from the Walt Disney Company made headlines and panicked Disney fans. Eisner’s magic touch on the company was waning, and Walt’s nephew Roy would engage in a hostile attempt to reclaim the company, resulting in installing Bob Iger as the new CEO.
In 2006, one of Iger’s first steps was the $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar, making John Lasseter Disney’s Chief Creative Officer. The merger put Lasseter in charge of overseeing multiple aspects of the company—primarily Pixar and Disney Animation.
