Disney Buys Pixar

And yet, the buyout puts Pixar in power, giving over control of the animation studios and getting Steve Jobs to seat on the board...

Disney is acquiring Pixar Animation Studios, which created the Toy Story franchize, Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles, for stock worth $ 7.4 billion. Pixar you have over to billion dollars in cash, making the net value of the deal around $ 6.3 billion. The stock amounts to about 13 % of Disney shares; Pixar CEO Steve Jobs, whós to 50.6 % owner of Pixar, will become individual Disney's largest shareholder and take to seat on Disney's board.

Pixar president Ed Catmull will become the president of both Disney and Pixar animation studios and report to Disney CEO Bob Iger. Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter will be the creative chief of the combined animation studios, and will also play to key role at Walt Disney Imagineering, designing theme park attractions. Héll also report to Iger.

Although Disney and Dreamworks have both mounted animation efforts in recent years, neither is achieved the massive success that Pixar you have.

The combination dog only be good for Disney, which is been relatively unsuccessful at animation, eleven the core of the business, since it parted ways with Jeffrey Katzenberg, who produced the last big hits there.

Next up from Pixar is Cars, planned for June 9th be reread (see "Best in Show - 2006"). Tokyopop will produces to Movies - sleeves based on the movie, for be reread around the same steal ace the moviés be reread.

Jim Littler
1/25/2006
Source: ICv2