Départ de Dick Cook, Président des Walt Disney Studios

http://www.deadline.com/hollywood/exclusive-dick-cook-fired-from-disney/

Rien à dire à part ...

Une news assez choquante, sachant que Dick était présent il y a une semaine à peine à l'expo D23 pour présenter l'agenda des films à venir...

Ce type a commencé comme opérationnel sur le Railroad à Disneyland, et a fini président d'une des Major d'Hollywood. Il a aidé à la validation et à la création de quelques uns des plus gros blockbusters de la société, et a complêtement redynamisé la branche cinéma live de la Walt Disney Company... on ne peut que lui dire MERCI. Quand je l'ai croisé de près par hasard à Cannes en mai dernier, personne ne le connaissait, mais ça m'a fait vraiment quelquechose.

Quand aux réelles raisons de ce "départ" (on l'aurait plutôt poussé dehors), il me tarde d'en savoir plus...

QUOI ? ...

Très inattendue comme annonce et très bizarre. D'un côté Disney/Iger qui affirme qu'il n'a pas été viré, de l'autre les proches de Cook qui parlent de licenciement.

En tout cas Johnny Depp qui est très proche de Cook a annoncé que sa "motivation est descendue d'un cran vis à vis du tournage de Pirates 4". Dick Cook étant l'un des argument majeur pour lequel il avait signé sur les premiers films. Pareil pour Spielberg.

C'est vrai que c'est assez étrange. Et je comprends le point de vue de Johnny Depp.
Et comme beaucoup, j'ai hâte de voir les raisons de ce départ.

Pour moi il s'est fait viré, mais pour quelle raison, c'est ça que j'aimerai bien savoir! Je l'avais également croisé à Cannes avec GM, et il m'a semblé être un homme très gentil. Après tout ce qu'il a apporté à l'entreprise je trouve cette décision complètement incohérente!

Et maintenant la question qu'ont peut ce posez c'est : Qui va le remplacer ?

Il semble à première vue qu'on lui ait laissé le choix de partir ou rester en s'adaptant à la vision de Bob Iger (en même temps vu la série de flops qu'ils ont pondu ces derniers temps, il y a du avoir de la tension dans l'air). Il a préféré partir... dommage, visiblement il était considéré comme l'un des plus charmants et honnêtes businessman du milieu cinématographique.

Je suis estomaqué par cette nouvelle ! Je fais également partie de ceux qui l'ont croisé à Cannes et son nom a toujours été associé aux Walt Disney Studios pour moi (pensez donc, depuis 38 ans !).
J'ose espérer que son remplaçant saura faire preuve de la même qualité de travail que son prédécesseur.

Nouvelle particulièrement choquante, heureusement que j'étais assis quand j'ai lu ça. Je suis toujours dégouté quand quelqu'un de bien part dans des circonstances floues (Viré ? pas Viré ?) et j'espère que nous en saurons plus sur l'affaire très prochainement. J'espère également que son remplaçant mettra la même énergie et le bonheur dans son travail.

http://disneyandmore.blogspot.com/2009/09/could-dick-cook-lay-off-cost-disney-4.html

La semaine dernière c'était la folie des bonnes nouvelles sur les projets Disney, et là d'un seul coup .

Selon Variety, il se pourrait que ce soit Rich Ross, l'actuel responsable de la branche Disney Channel dans le monde qui prenne le relais. Je sais pas trop quoi en penser, je ne connais pas vraiment le bonhomme ... L'article a l'air d'attribuer le parachutage de Cook à certains bides comme Mission-G, Race to Witch Mountain ou encore Histoires Enchantées. Mouai, ça sent pas mal la langue de bois tout ça ...

Source : http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118009566.html?categoryid=18&cs=1

Il est clair qu'aussi gentil et honnête que soit Dick Cook, le dernier vrai succès des studios Disney (tout label confondus hors Pixar) est Pirates 3 en 2007. Cela commence à faire.

D'un autre côté, Rich Ross a remporté de vrais succès avec Disney Channel : HSM, Hannah Montana et là Jonas et Les Sorciers de Waverly Place sont aussi bien parties. La manoeuvre est tout à fait logique de la part de Bob Iger. Surtout que d'autres studios le convoite vu que le succès de Disney Channel fait des jaloux.

Quoi qu'on dise, il a trouvé le filon qui plait aux adolescent. Bob Iger espère qu'il fera de même avec la branche film.

Maitenant, il parait que l'homme est un vrai requin. Saura-t-il aussi bien jonglé avec des personnalités comme Johnny Depp, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tim Burton, John Lasseter, Steven Spielberg ou Robert Zemeckis... Rien n'est moins sur...

Une chose est sur l'empire Disney devient très aggressif, encore plus que durant l'aire Eisner. Pour l'instant je ne vois pas cela d'une mauvais oeil car je trouve qu'ils s'appuient plus sur des artistes que durant la fin de Eisner qui avait une vision financière et bureaucratique. Mais il est sur que dans 10 ans Disney ne ressemblera plus à ce que l'on a connu !

Zuzu a écrit:

Une chose est sur l'empire Disney devient très aggressif, encore plus que durant l'aire Eisner. Pour l'instant je ne vois pas cela d'une mauvais oeil car je trouve qu'ils s'appuient plus sur des artistes que durant la fin de Eisner qui avait une vision financière et bureaucratique. Mais il est sur que dans 10 ans Disney ne ressemblera plus à ce que l'on a connu !

En même temps, chez Disney, ils n'ont pas forcément le choix. Ils sont encore le dernier grand studio "indépendant" d'Hollywood (j'entends par là que c'est encore le seul studio à s'appartenir pleinement), et l'Empire Disney attise les convoitises. Depuis quelques temps maintenant, la règle c'est "manger ou être mangé", et personnellement, je préfère voir Disney dans une position de dominant que de dominé.

Je pense comme toi TheForceCode, mais d'un côté, j'espère que Rich Ross ne se mettra pas à dos, Steven Spielberg, Tim Burton, John Lasseter et les autres.

D'intéressants articles sur la vision de Rich Ross sur les films Disney et la manière de les promouvoir :

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-ross23-2009nov23,0,4976058.story

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ct-disney12-2009nov12,0,7027280.story?track=rss

Sinon, toujours sur Rich Ross mais sans aucun rapport sur manière de diriger un studio : c'est le premier dirigeant d'un grand studio hollywoodien à être ouvertement gay :
http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/10/disneys-rich-ross-hollywoods-first-openly-gay-studio-chairman.html

Ce serait possible d'avoir une petite synthèse de ces articles en français ?

merci !

C'est désormais à Oren Aviv, le Président de Walt Disney Motion Pictures Production, et ancien bras droit de Dick Cook, de quitter la société... le nouveau patron des Studios Rich Ross semble vouloir imprimer sa patte en s'entourant de ses fidèles.

Today, Oren Aviv announced that he is resigning his post of president, Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production.
Avis said, “As of today, I'm stepping down from my position as president of Production, Walt Disney Studios. I have loved every day that I have been at the studio and feel incredibly privileged to have been part of a team that enriched my life for 20 years.
I will miss all the amazing filmmakers, the many talented actors and most importantly the lifelong friends I've been so lucky to work with throughout my Disney career.
I'm proud of the hundreds of movies I've helped to make and market, especially the studio's upcoming films, from Alice in Wonderland and Prince of Persia to The Sorcerer's Apprentice and Tron. All have been extremely rewarding creative and personal endeavors for me, and have allowed me to work with the best group of executives and staff in the business.
I wish Disney, Bob Iger, Rich Ross and their new teams great success for many years to come.“
Rich Ross, chairman, The Walt Disney Studios stated, “Oren’s significant contributions to The Walt Disney Studios are well-documented and countless movie-goers have been entertained by his diverse portfolio of films,” said The Walt Disney Studios Chairman, Rich Ross. “We appreciate his work and wish him all the best in his future endeavors.”
A successor will be named at an appropriate time.

Et si tous les films produits par Cook et Aviv avant leur départ ont du succès, c'est Ross qui en retirera tous les lauriers...

Article très intéressant (en anglais) sur comment Rich Ross voit la distribution chez Disney :

Citation :

Three months after Rich Ross put on a hard hat and started renovating the Mouse House's executive suites, the dust is settling and the future of Disney has begun to reveal itself.
What the studio's new chairman is building with his boss, Robert Iger, is a company clearly focused on both the bottom line and the big picture.
Disney has a lot of pipelines to fill. And after years of demanding that the studio focus on movies that define the Disney brand -- and can be exploited on TV, DVD, online, and through games, theme park attractions and merchandise at its Disney Stores -- Iger may finally get what he wants.
Through Ross, the studio now aims to devote most of its development and production dollars to making only a few movies per year, which will capitalize on the appeal of the Disney brand with moviegoers.
The studio's slate will likely take the form of five tentpole releases per year: one during the spring, like this year's "Alice in Wonderland," and then two animated pics and two live-action films during the summer and fall. It'll look similar to the Disney-branded roster unspooling this year.
The Mouse House, as Hollywood currently knows it, will become less of a moviemaker and more of a film distributor, turning to Marvel Entertainment (which it now fully owns) and DreamWorks to supply the rest of its slate of releases through the Touchstone banner.
Producer Sean Bailey starts this week as the studio's new president of production. The appointment surprised some in Hollywood, but Ross isn't looking to play it safe.
Bailey's credits include "Gone Baby Gone," "Matchstick Men" and "Best Laid Plans" -- films that aren't the kinds of pics Iger wants Disney to make. But Ross sparked to Bailey's long-term thinking about the types of movies that should get the greenlight.
He pushed for reboots of "Tron" and "The Black Hole," both of which he set up at the studio through his shingle Idealogy and both of which lend themselves to lucrative opportunities to mint considerable coin through the company's other divisions.
Ross and Bailey will spend the next several months choosing which projects to move forward with. So far, producers who have met with the duo have often left impressed with the execs. But the big question is what kind of films they'll make.
There are some hints of what direction they'll take.
Ross has said that "The Blind Side" (the Warner Bros. Alcon release) should have been made by Disney. Films already in development heavily target teens and tweens, with projects about high school kids in plays or planning proms or kids discovering that their neighbors are monsters. For older auds, Disney had previously bought Bailey's franchise-hopefuls like "Hexum," an actioner about a worst-case-scenario analyst, and war thriller "Liberty," which Bailey also wrote.
And of course there are also the more recognizable names like a third "National Treasure," a fourth "Pirates of the Caribbean," "The Lone Ranger," a sequel to "Enchanted," a new Muppet movie, Robert Zemeckis' "Yellow Submarine," as well as "Jungle Cruise" and "Tomorrowland," both inspired by Disney's theme parks.
Disney still needs to hire a head of marketing, and the role can't be filled soon enough since the studio has been without a marketing chief since Jim Gallagher was ousted in November.
Ross has been keen on hiring a candidate from outside Hollywood, especially an individual used to marketing packaged goods, because he believes the rollout of a new movie often closely resembles the launch of a new retail product. The cost to market a movie has also escalated over the years, so having a marketing chief with ties to brands or someone who can broker promotional partnerships is considered more valuable than ever.
The reorientation has some producers on the lot anxious that first-look deals could be reduced, though prolific producers like Jerry Bruckheimer and Zemeckis are expected to stay put.
The move was probably inevitable. Studios have been earning less for their corporate parents and in down years have cut into profit margins even more.
Last year, Disney's film studio generated $6 billion, but that figure represented just 17% of all of the Walt Disney Co.'s revenues in 2009. The film side reported just $175 million in profits last year, down from $1 billion a year earlier, according to Disney's annual report.
Iger had called the results "extremely disappointing."
Iger, not surprisingly, has been keen on reducing the risk of making movies whose commercial prospects seem like a gamble.
"Going forward, we will focus almost exclusively on making branded films from Disney, Pixar and Marvel," Iger recently wrote in the company's annual report summarizing 2009. "Consumers know and love these brands and this gives us a competitive advantage. A high-quality Disney, Pixar or Marvel film can be of great value to the entire company over many years."
Disney had already been pursuing that vision to a certain extent, relying on its own toon shop and Pixar, as well as the "Pirates of the Caribbean" and "National Treasure" franchises, for example. But the Ross regime aims to make Iger's words a mantra.
More recently, though, the Mouse House has been working to find the sweet spot with its pic mix.
While it was a critical success and has sold a lot of merchandise, especially Princess Tiana dolls and dresses, "The Princess and the Frog" didn't exactly become a B.O. blockbuster. After nine weeks, it's earned $99 million domestically and is just starting to unspool overseas. Zemeckis' "A Christmas Carol" has fared a little better, earning $138 million, but it cost nearly $200 million.
The rest of Disney's 2009 slate was filled with movies like "Bedtime Stories," "Confessions of a Shopaholic," "Surrogates" and "Old Dogs" -- movies that didn't necessarily cost a lot but didn't lend themselves to lucrative spinoffs, either. When those films failed to perform at the box office, Iger soured on their type even more.
As a result, Ross has spent the last several months pulling the plug on those kinds of projects. He killed "Wedding Banned," a comedy that would have starred Robin Williams, and a sequel to "Wild Hogs," which was a major hit in 2007.
He also ended McG's plans to reboot "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea," mainly because of its hefty pricetag, creative issues that still needed to be worked out and worries that it's an aging property. It didn't help that "Race to Witch Mountain" failed to re-energize a 34-year-old franchise last year.
Specialty arm Miramax Films is basically out of the bigger Disney picture. The one-time production-distribution arm has become a distribution label these days: Iger says that seven films will unspool through the label in 2010, but in future years, Disney plans to release just three films through Miramax. After Daniel Battsek left late last year, its Los Angeles and New York offices shuttered as of Jan. 29. Producer Scott Rudin is starting to consider other homes for his prestige pics. (And the Weinstein brothers are reportedly looking to buy back the Miramax name.)
With Ross, Iger has an exec who knows what entertains kids and families through his many years running the Disney Channel and turning it into a franchise factory and major moneymaker with hits like "Hannah Montana" and "High School Musical."
He's also someone Iger can depend on to make the difficult cost-cutting moves as Disney tightens its fiscal belt. Ross has already overseen several rounds of layoffs across various divisions of the studio since taking the job last October.
"Our industry is evolving rapidly," Ross recently said in a statement. "In order to remain at its forefront, we are adapting our organization to be more agile, creative and responsive."
Ross' colleagues are used to that leaner mandate. He ran the Disney Channel as frugally as possible. He's known for making quick decisions and demanding that every staffer be able to defend their role at the company.
That mentality can often seem harsh. To carry out Iger's mandate meant wiping away any fingerprints Dick Cook may have left when he resigned from the company last September. In a housecleaning move, Ross ousted Disney's president of production, president of the motion pictures group, marketing chief and president of international distribution, in addition to Miramax's chief exec.
No other layoffs are planned, and Ross is working overtime to inspire his remaining staffers.
The irony is that all of these changes come as Disney is readying to unspool one of its potentially strongest slates in years, with Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland," big-budget videogame adaptation "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time," Miley Cyrus drama "The Last Song," "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" (starring Nicolas Cage in a live-action variation of the tale told in "Fantasia"), "Toy Story 3," an animated "Rapunzel" and "Tron Legacy" all on the schedule.
"Movies remain at the core of what we do, providing many of the rich stories, memorable characters and compelling worlds that are Disney's hallmarks," Iger said in Disney's annual report.
Over the past several months, Disney has struggled somewhat to find those kinds of stories. But now that its own corporate drama is dying down, the Mouse House can finally get back to making movies that fulfill that ethos.

Source

Donc en gros la Walt Disney Company deviendra moins un studio de production et plus un studio de distribution. Pour autant, Disney va continuer à produire des films en ce centralisant sur le label Disney. En gros, cinq gros films par an :
- un film "live" au printemps à la "Alice" de Tim Burton,
- un gros film "live" et un film d'animation en été,
- un gros film "live" et un film d'animation en hiver.

A côté de ça, ils distribueront les films Dreamworks et les productions Marvel via le label Touchstone.

A priori, ils devraient continuer leur lien avec Bruickemer et Zemeckis mais il sera de plus en plus difficile d'avoir aux producteurs d'avoir le feu vert à Disney...

Enfin, en lisant cet article on comprend mieux le bordel actuel au studio, que cela soit au WDAS, à la partie vidéo ou dans le planning des futurs sorties cinéma. Rich Ross est en train de faire un bouleversement complet et c'est l'attentisme en attendant que toutes les têtes tombent et que les nouvelles prennent la tête.

Le futur de Disney va être bizarre, c'est le moins que l'on puisse dire. Un cash machine, c'est sur. Des produits de qualité, cela l'est moins. Un synergie entre les films, les parcs et les merchandising, c'est clair !

En tout cas, les fans de la première heure vont être complètement destabilisés ! Rich Ross et Bob Iger vise le Grand Public; le Consommateur de Masse.

Merci pour cet article Zuzu. Effectivement, sacré changement en perspective.

Bizarrement, il n'est pas question de revente de Miramax...

Accessoirement, Rich Ross vient de foutre le projet Némo directement à la poubelle... Dommage...