“The board of Pixar Animation Studios, the digital animations company, is set to meet [Monday] to approve the company’s $7bn (£3.9bn) takeover by Disney,” Andrew Murray-Watson reports for The Telegraph. “The all-share deal will make Steve Jobs, the chief executive of Apple, around $3.5bn and the single largest shareholder in Disney. Jobs created Pixar in 1986 when he paid $10m for the computer animations division of Lucasfilm, owned by Stars Wars creator George Lucas.”
Full article here.
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First of all, I bet that Cars is going to be so successful that it will alone justify the cost of this takeover. The NASCAR moms and kids will go nuts over it — BOOM!
At least now all of Disney will go back to the mac platform.
I had an interview there a few years ago and the office reception woman had a friggin g4 cube on her desk! She didn’t know anything about it, and I don’t think she even liked it since it was probably still running OS 9, but it was memorable.
It used to be a mac friendly place, and the largest shareholder better try and switch them, dammit!
It’s ironic to me that the very people who are crying that Disney is going nowhere, and is not a good investment, are the same people who preach about Steve coming back to Apple and bringing them from beleaguered to where they are now.
Are you guys afraid that he can’t do it again? I’m not.
Does this mean Steve gets a Disneyland gold card?
Hey Steve, can you do something about those lines for the rides?
“Nickelodeon, we’re coming after you, you’re in our sights.”
It’s all about the content and control. The access. Disney was great at one time, then it turned into a slockfest controlled by suits with no talent. Sounds a little like Apple’s history. I think Jobs sees the parallels and the challenges. Other companies will be cranking cankers though since they know the amount of media Jobs could have access to. Media that is tied into the Itunes music store and ipod.
Think about it guys…
JOBS WILL BE THE LARGEST SHARE HOLDER IN DISNEY!!
Do you know what this means?
It means Jobs will basically control disney.
With this deal he hasn’t given disney anything. He used pixar as the golden carrot to get control of Disney. He is majority shareholder, therefore in a prime position to take full control of disney, and therefore expect the Apple logo on EVERYTHING!
This is one hell of a clever business move.
Everyone wins – Disney get pixar, Jobs get disney and pixar, apple will get there branding on anything they want and will have exclusive deals with disney for all content only on itunes!
What a move!!
Does anyone know what percentage of overall shares Jobs would end up with if this deal goes through.
This “news” is from a UK paper. They don’t know squat. The deal is still far from done.
As for what percentage? Pixar is roughly $7B. Disney is roughly $50B. Steve owns half of Pixar’s shares. The rest is math.
“Remember, its John Lassetter who is the creative genius behind Pixar. Steve knows when he’s got a good thing with the staff assembled there. I suspect there are really strong reasons for agreeing to the takeover – and its NOT about the money. Steve is trying to take up the gauntlet against Gates again so this is more about leveraging an opportunity for Apple whilst continuing to grow Pixar.
I’ll keep my fingers crossed that things continue to flourish.”
You all know where John Lasseter worked before he weht to Pixar, right?
Disney.
This deal, if the story is true, will change nothing regarding the quality of Pixar films.
How old are Bill Gates’s kids?
I can just envision B&M Gates sitting down with the family to Toy Story 3. Next thing he sees is free Apple product placement all over the screen. ANDY GETS AN iMAC for whatever occasion, and the Woody and Buzz whip up some cool tunes with GarageBand and make billions in Monopoly money with their groove on iTunes!!!
The nightmare is just beginning for BG and MS and there will be no </end> to it!
Man
I was hopeing for pixar to be around so that my future animation company could compete with it.
Darn.
Steve Jobs would be the greatest SINGLE shareholder. Not have the biggest post of shares bar none.
And as musch as I love Pixar, I really think this is a good move for Apple. All of Disneys content available on iTunes or whatever the next big thing is…
Well, I dunno, maybe, maybe nt.
The only thing that doesn’t smell right about this is the money.
Pixar is worth a shade of $7 billion today, with no apparent takeover premium in effect.
I would imagine that the deal may actually be for as much as $8-8.5 billion, which – if true – would give SPJ around $4.25 billion worth of stock, or just under 10% of Disney, and around 2.5 times as much stock as even the largest institutional shareholders (Citigroup, with Barclays following closely behind).
A further note of future interest is revealed by digging around a little: three of Disney’s five largest institutional shareholders (Barclays, FMR and State Street) are also Apple’s largest institutional shareholders and, between them, they control another $4.8 billion of Disney stock.
The question here is that, if there were ever a civil war between a Jobs cabal and a “reactionary” Hollywood camp, whose view of the future would the institutions back?
Hey KenC,
What the hell has the fact it is a UK paper got to do with it? The London foreign exchange market is the largest in the world, with an average daily turnover of $504 billion, more than the New York and Tokyo exchanges combined, so when it comes to business I would rather listen to a UK paper than some piss poor rag from the US.
Tim Coughlin
http://timcoughlin.typepad.com
Who gives a shit. I thought this was MAC Daily News. Not Pixar, Disney Daily News. On with the MAC News Gents!
Repeating myself, I know, but if this is true, it is Bob Iger who is orchestrating it. Bob wants to clear out Eisner’s people and get the company back to being creative, and this is the perfect way to do it.
Under Bob Iger, ABC commissioned Lost and Desperate Housewives, two of the most commercial and popular US-produced global hits from the past three years. I think he’s nurtured something at ABC that he wants to take to the rest of the company.
IMHO, he also needs to get the Weinsteins back at Miramax. Without them, Miramax is dead in the water.
How stupid does that first sentence above read? I meant to say that Bob Iger has the most to gain.
Oh well.
Just as the companies of Pixar and Apple did not really cooperate – Pixar did not use Apple computers, Apple did not get to use the Pixar characters in Promotions or did not put little Apple computers in their animations,
neither will Apple have anything special to do with Disney.
Something else is going on here that we don´t know that is why Steve has been trying to sell. And I doubt it is some great positive thing for Apple. Pixar burned out, Steve burned out with Pixar, Steve wants to enlarge his portfolio…But nothing about the Pixar deal has anything to do with Apple.
Pixar did not use Apple computers
bzzzz wrong answer.
Pixar used a mix of equipment BEFORE Steve Jobs return to Apple (because Apple was floundering then) and when the release of the G5 based Mac’s began, Steve then made Pixar mostly all Mac G5 house. Including the renderfarm which used to be Linux PC servers is now propbally Linux on G5 servers.
(Linux is a very customizable and can be made bloat free to run faster)
Renderman, the software Pixar and Jobs created runs on Mac’s as a Maya plugin now.
History repeats itself:
Steve jobs built NeXT from $0 million
NeXT bought Apple (not really) for $420 million
Apple is now worth $70 billion
now
Steve jobs bought Pixar for $10 million
Pixar bought Disney for $7 billion
Disney will soon be worth $??? million
Is this guy a good builder of worth or WHAT! Now, if only SJ can build Disney into the best entertainment portal on the Internet…
Wha’ th’..? HOLY SHIT!?! Say it AIN’T SOOOOOO!!
>Steve then made Pixar mostly all Mac G5 house. Including the renderfarm which used to be Linux PC servers is now propbally Linux on G5 servers.
Probably? Uh, no. the correct answer was INTEL.
http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/18809.html
Thus began a Steve to Intel relationship that eventually spawned the new MacBook Pro…
All us armchair pundits are overemphasising the importance of the Apple-Steve Jobs-Pixar relationship.
My bet – little or no Disney connection….other than maybe Steve being a stock holder….and “advisor” to Pixar/Disney during the transition.
Steve may be a computer visionary, but I think Steve never really got the creative animation thing – just look at how weak (and stolen ideas) the last commercials Steve has put out for Apple.
(I bet when the history comes out about Steve and Pixar the stories will be about he just didn´t get it – “Monsters that talk??? Nobody wants to see that!” “Why is his name Buzz Lightyear – wouldn´t Zip Lightyear be better???”
The big winner – Disney; if it keeps John Lasseter and the rest of the geniuses at Pixar.
John Lasseter – if he gets more control over the animation of all Disney properties.
Jobs – he got richer.
Loser – Apple. It never got much from Steve owning Apple and will have less clout in Hollywood la-la land now that Pixar has been severed from the perceived relationship between Apple-Steve Jobs-Pixar relationship.
Yeah – MacDude – Apple until very recently has taken a back seat at Pixar.
I like the sentence fromlink above:
“..when it switched its artists from SGI-based desktop computers to Linux-based Intel workstations manufactured by Dell.”
In 2003 Pixar was using DELL computers!!!
Correction to last sentence above:
Loser – Apple. Apple never got much from Steve owning Pixar and will have less clout in Hollywood la-la land now that Pixar has been severed from the perceived importance between the Apple-Steve Jobs-Pixar relationship.
I can just see it a couple of years back, Steve is doing his semi-annual visit to Pixar studios and sees all the animation work being done on Intel processors.
“Why you guys using Intel?”, says Steve.
John L.: “Because they are a lot faster than those PowerPC things you sell. You oughta think of shifting Apple to Intel”.
And so it was….and Steve stopped drinking his own Kool-aid.