That’s the picture some analysts have recently drawn of The Walt Disney Company. At first blush, the giant entertainment conglomerate would seem to have hardly a worry. Its latest animated movie, “The Lion King,” looks set to break all box-office records. Problems at the Euro Disney theme park, which helped hammer Disney’s stock in recent years, seem finally to be on the mend. But then came word last week that Disney’s charismatic chairman, Michael Eisner, 52, had undergone quadruple coronary bypass surgery. It mattered little that he left the hospital within days and has since smoothly run Disney by phone. The scare was enough to push front and center an issue that Eisner has determinedly been dodging: whom to pick as his anointed successor – studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, his hopeful protege, or someone entirely new?
For top managers, picking a No. 2 is one of the most ticklish issues there is. It’s especially problematic at Disney just now. Four months ago the company lost its highly regarded president and chief operating officer Frank Wells, who died while heli-skiing in Nevada. Wells had been key to Disney’s renaissance. He was a practical Sancho Panza to Eisner’s mercurial Quixote, a tough-as-nails negotiator and lawyer-cum-numbers guy who freed Eisner to do what he does best – think creatively about everything from movies to international theme parks. Together, they built Disney from an ailing $2 billion Hollywood also-ran into a $22 billion empire. Eisner speaks almost reverently of Wells and his genius for pushing Disney into ventures far afield of mere moviemaking. “It wasn’t like he was president and I was chairman. He was a partner; we worked together. He kept the synergy going,” Eisner told Newsweek editors in New York month before his heart surgery. His death, Eisner said, leaves a void “impossible to fill.”
In fact, Eisner has hardly tried. At Disney headquarters in Burbank, Wells’s huge office (adjoining Eisner’s) stands eerily and symbolically empty. During the discussion with Newsweek, Eisner said his post-Wells regime would be modeled after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. In other words: a powerful CEO without a strong second-in-command. Eisner added that the plan was the “suggestion” of Roy Disney, vice chairman and nephew of the company’s founder.
That doesn’t please Katzenberg, head of the immensely profitable Disney studios. He wants the job, insiders say, and might quit if he doesn’t get it. Certainly he seems to deserve it. He’s responsible for a third of Disney’s revenues as well as its biggest recent success. Among them: “The Lion King,” which cost $40 million to make and is likely to bring in as much as $1 billion. Eisner has credited Katzenberg for the studios’ accomplishments in film and television, and clearly considers him as important as Wells in building up Disney.
Yet Eisner has been reluctant to appoint Katzenberg president, and no one can fully explain why. Some insiders suggest Katzenberg is simply not right for the job. His strengths as a “creative” programming executive are too similar to Eisner’s, they say, and he lacks the financial and strategic planning skills that made Wells so invaluable. Other Disney sources talk about “chemistry,” or the apparent lack of it between the two men. “There was always a thinly veiled contempt,” says one, describing how Eisner treats Katzenberg as a sort of little brother – capable, likable, but never ready to sit at the table with the big boys. Neither Eisner nor Katzenberg agreed to be interviewed for this article, and the Disney company plays down reports of bad blood.
It’s not clear whether Eisner will change his mind about Katzenberg, though his operation might prompt him to rethink his earlier decision – and probably lighten his workload. One board member reports Disney’s top management has been debating the succession issue “openly and continuously” since Wells’s death. How best to manage Disney is still very much an “open question,” says this source. “It’s more complicated than just picking a body to sit in a seat.” Disney isn’t just films and TV anymore. It’s everything from hockey teams (the Mighty Ducks) to theme parks (from Euro Disney to its proposed historic theme park in Virginia). Increasingly, the talents of a financial and strategic dealmaker are as needed as the instincts of a movie mogul.
That may all be true enough. But Katzenberg is nonetheless widely considered to be Disney’s most valuable human resource, and Eisner’s biggest challenge is to keep him happy. His contract with Disney expires at the end of the year. If he isn’t named president, rumor suggests, he might jump to another studio, perhaps Lew Wasserman’s MCA-Universal. Such talk has been avidly reported in the Hollywood press, but few of Katzenberg’s intimates genuinely believe he would willingly give up one of the best jobs in the entertainment industry. One leading talent agent contemptuously dismisses the speculation. “Everyone says he’s gonna walk. Walk where? He’s got a very, very good gig.” “Jeffrey’s made it clear he wants to stay,” says another. The problem, he adds, is image. If he doesn’t get the job, “it will look like he’s been slapped in the face by Eisner.”
Handicappers on Wall Street and even at Disney are hoping that Katzenberg will eventually get what he wants. “If we have made any money in Disney stock over the last five years – and we’ve made lots – Katzenberg is probably 80 percent responsible,” says Larry Haverty of State Street Research and Management in Boston. For Eisner, the solution may mean giving Katzenberg the title he covets, while grooming a new Frank Wells. Already a bevy of up-and-comers at Disney are divvying up Wells’s chores. Executive vice president and chief legal counsel Sanford Litvack, for instance, has taken on additional administrative duties at the company. Says the Disney board member: “From a functional level, obviously, Jeffrey doesn’t have the same background as Frank. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments if you want to. I’m not saying anybody’s going to do that. I’m just saying it’s not a big issue.”
One thing is clear. Disney’s biggest outside shareholders want a clear line of succession, and many hope it will be Katzenberg. But they are confident that Eisner and his board will make the right choice, and for a time they will be willing to wait. Want proof? Stock price before Eisner’s surgery: $41.75. Stock price after a week of hand-wringing in the press? $41.75.
title: “Looking For Mr. Right” ShowToc: true date: “2023-01-18” author: “Jesse Himenez”
That’s the picture some analysts have recently drawn of The Walt Disney Company. At first blush, the giant entertainment conglomerate would seem to have hardly a worry. Its latest animated movie, “The Lion King,” looks set to break all box-office records. Problems at the Euro Disney theme park, which helped hammer Disney’s stock in recent years, seem finally to be on the mend. But then came word last week that Disney’s charismatic chairman, Michael Eisner, 52, had undergone quadruple coronary bypass surgery. It mattered little that he left the hospital within days and has since smoothly run Disney by phone. The scare was enough to push front and center an issue that Eisner has determinedly been dodging: whom to pick as his anointed successor – studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg, his hopeful protege, or someone entirely new?
For top managers, picking a No. 2 is one of the most ticklish issues there is. It’s especially problematic at Disney just now. Four months ago the company lost its highly regarded president and chief operating officer Frank Wells, who died while heli-skiing in Nevada. Wells had been key to Disney’s renaissance. He was a practical Sancho Panza to Eisner’s mercurial Quixote, a tough-as-nails negotiator and lawyer-cum-numbers guy who freed Eisner to do what he does best – think creatively about everything from movies to international theme parks. Together, they built Disney from an ailing $2 billion Hollywood also-ran into a $22 billion empire. Eisner speaks almost reverently of Wells and his genius for pushing Disney into ventures far afield of mere moviemaking. “It wasn’t like he was president and I was chairman. He was a partner; we worked together. He kept the synergy going,” Eisner told Newsweek editors in New York month before his heart surgery. His death, Eisner said, leaves a void “impossible to fill.”
In fact, Eisner has hardly tried. At Disney headquarters in Burbank, Wells’s huge office (adjoining Eisner’s) stands eerily and symbolically empty. During the discussion with Newsweek, Eisner said his post-Wells regime would be modeled after Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. In other words: a powerful CEO without a strong second-in-command. Eisner added that the plan was the “suggestion” of Roy Disney, vice chairman and nephew of the company’s founder.
That doesn’t please Katzenberg, head of the immensely profitable Disney studios. He wants the job, insiders say, and might quit if he doesn’t get it. Certainly he seems to deserve it. He’s responsible for a third of Disney’s revenues as well as its biggest recent success. Among them: “The Lion King,” which cost $40 million to make and is likely to bring in as much as $1 billion. Eisner has credited Katzenberg for the studios’ accomplishments in film and television, and clearly considers him as important as Wells in building up Disney.
Yet Eisner has been reluctant to appoint Katzenberg president, and no one can fully explain why. Some insiders suggest Katzenberg is simply not right for the job. His strengths as a “creative” programming executive are too similar to Eisner’s, they say, and he lacks the financial and strategic planning skills that made Wells so invaluable. Other Disney sources talk about “chemistry,” or the apparent lack of it between the two men. “There was always a thinly veiled contempt,” says one, describing how Eisner treats Katzenberg as a sort of little brother – capable, likable, but never ready to sit at the table with the big boys. Neither Eisner nor Katzenberg agreed to be interviewed for this article, and the Disney company plays down reports of bad blood.
It’s not clear whether Eisner will change his mind about Katzenberg, though his operation might prompt him to rethink his earlier decision – and probably lighten his workload. One board member reports Disney’s top management has been debating the succession issue “openly and continuously” since Wells’s death. How best to manage Disney is still very much an “open question,” says this source. “It’s more complicated than just picking a body to sit in a seat.” Disney isn’t just films and TV anymore. It’s everything from hockey teams (the Mighty Ducks) to theme parks (from Euro Disney to its proposed historic theme park in Virginia). Increasingly, the talents of a financial and strategic dealmaker are as needed as the instincts of a movie mogul.
That may all be true enough. But Katzenberg is nonetheless widely considered to be Disney’s most valuable human resource, and Eisner’s biggest challenge is to keep him happy. His contract with Disney expires at the end of the year. If he isn’t named president, rumor suggests, he might jump to another studio, perhaps Lew Wasserman’s MCA-Universal. Such talk has been avidly reported in the Hollywood press, but few of Katzenberg’s intimates genuinely believe he would willingly give up one of the best jobs in the entertainment industry. One leading talent agent contemptuously dismisses the speculation. “Everyone says he’s gonna walk. Walk where? He’s got a very, very good gig.” “Jeffrey’s made it clear he wants to stay,” says another. The problem, he adds, is image. If he doesn’t get the job, “it will look like he’s been slapped in the face by Eisner.”
Handicappers on Wall Street and even at Disney are hoping that Katzenberg will eventually get what he wants. “If we have made any money in Disney stock over the last five years – and we’ve made lots – Katzenberg is probably 80 percent responsible,” says Larry Haverty of State Street Research and Management in Boston. For Eisner, the solution may mean giving Katzenberg the title he covets, while grooming a new Frank Wells. Already a bevy of up-and-comers at Disney are divvying up Wells’s chores. Executive vice president and chief legal counsel Sanford Litvack, for instance, has taken on additional administrative duties at the company. Says the Disney board member: “From a functional level, obviously, Jeffrey doesn’t have the same background as Frank. But that doesn’t mean you can’t make adjustments if you want to. I’m not saying anybody’s going to do that. I’m just saying it’s not a big issue.”
One thing is clear. Disney’s biggest outside shareholders want a clear line of succession, and many hope it will be Katzenberg. But they are confident that Eisner and his board will make the right choice, and for a time they will be willing to wait. Want proof? Stock price before Eisner’s surgery: $41.75. Stock price after a week of hand-wringing in the press? $41.75.
title: “Looking For Mr. Right” ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-08” author: “Earl Dawes”
The mirror that actor turned director Forest Whitaker holds up in “Waiting to Exhale” is as glossy as those Technicolor women’s movies turned out by producer Ross Hunter in the ’50s (“Imitation of Life,” “All That Heaven Allows”). Whitney Houston’s Savanna, driving a silver Firebird, tools into Phoenix, Ariz., to start a new life. Angela Bassett’s Bernadine lives in a sumptuous home with walk-in closets big enough in which to park that Pontiac. Lela Rochon’s Robin is a dressed-for-success career woman. Loretta Devine’s Gloria owns the hip beauty salon where her three friends come to prepare themselves for the quest that dominates this story–the search for Mr. Right.
“Waiting to Exhale” takes its old-fashioned soap-opera formula and refurbishes it for the age of Oprah. What that means is that while the script by McMillan and Ronald Bass serves up moonstruck romantic fantasies, it speaks in the language of self-empowerment and is fueled with an undercurrent of rage. The movie is torn: it wants to celebrate female self-sufficiency, but every woman in it defines herself in terms of men. With two glowingly idealized exceptions (played by Gregory Hines and an uncredited Wesley Snipes), the men these women pursue are woefully unworthy of their love. Boy-crazy Robin is the blindest, careering from cracksnorting Troy (Mykelti Williamson) to pudgy, clumsy Michael (Wendell Pierce) to old unreliable Russell (the actor named Leon). Sleek Savanna has no better luck with self-enamored Lionel (Jeffrey D. Sams) or married man Kenneth (Dennis Haysbert), who says he’ll leave his wife.
Bernadine is in the most pain. She’s just been dumped by her rich husband, who’s trying to screw her out of the fortune she helped him build and has left her for his young blond bookkeeper. Her revenge begins with the burning of his car and clothes. Only the sweet, overweight single mom Gloria gets her knight in shining armor-the mellow widower (Hines) who moves in next door. The two good men in McMillan’s tale have either dead or dying wives, and their goodness is revealed by their ability to keep their pants on.
The trouble with the movie’s parade of cardboard men isn’t just that they squelch any possibility of romantic interest; they make our heroines seem foolishly adolescent for pursuing them. Only when they are in each other’s company do we get a glimpse of who these women are. The real juice in this broad, glitzy drama is in its sisterly complaint, the heroines’ sassy, sexually specific assessment of their romantic plight. But except for one drunken birthday celebration, these four actresses didn’t convince me they were inseparable buddies- especially Houston, who seems adrift on her own private cloud. What saves “Waiting to Exhale” from terminal clunkiness is its ability to see the humor in all this misplaced yearning. At such moments, anyone who has ever found themselves furiously pursuing Mr. or Ms. Wrong will laugh with rueful self-awareness at this report from the sexual battlefront.
