Michael Eisner, every mention

Disney: The Renaissance and the Empire · Acquired Aug 10, 2026 · 44 mentions

• ▶ 15:12 Ben Gilbert And there was another memo leaked later by Jeffrey Katzenberg, who, you know, speaking of the lieutenants, you got Barry Diller's lieutenant is Michael Eisner, Michael Eisner's lieutenant is Jeffrey Katzenberg.
• ▶ 16:00 Ben Gilbert Michael from Paramount has not seen Disney movies.
• ▶ 17:11 Ben Gilbert Michael is supposed to get
• ▶ 17:25 Ben Gilbert And Michael basically, his contract says that he's owed a check if he does not get the job when Barry leaves.
• ▶ 17:32 Ben Gilbert So Michael decides, you know what?
• ▶ 17:54 Ben Gilbert So, Frank is offered the top job, and Michael's offered number two.
• ▶ 18:00 Ben Gilbert Then there's a second iteration where they're sort of offered co-CEOs, and Michael basically tells Frank, hey, look, if I'm gonna do this, I'm CEO, or I'm, I'm chairman, I think is even what he says, and you're number two, because we need…
• ▶ 18:54 Ben Gilbert Michael says works for me.
• ▶ 24:46 Ben Gilbert Okay, so flashback to the day that Michael and Frank take over.
• ▶ 25:21 Ben Gilbert I was having breakfast with Jeffrey to prep for this episode, and he told me this story where Michael calls Jeffrey into his office on his first day.
• ▶ 25:30 Ben Gilbert And this is before animation had been moved out to Glendale, so he's still pointing down at the original animation building, and he points to the ink and paint door, and Michael says to Jeffrey, do you know what they do down there?
• ▶ 25:42 Ben Gilbert And Jeffrey goes, no, because, you know, Jeffrey's background is live action, Paramount stuff with Michael.
• ▶ 25:48 Ben Gilbert And Michael says, neither do I.
• ▶ 25:56 Ben Gilbert And so Jeffrey, like Michael,
• ▶ 33:38 Ben Gilbert Michael Eisner actually announces then they are going to build a new animation building and bring
• ▶ 40:29 Ben Gilbert Hurt anything, not dampen any demand, because Michael Eisner would sort of later famously point out, people buy these tapes, but they break, they lose them.
• ▶ 44:45 Ben Gilbert Since they were sort of grown-ups by the time the Eisner era hit.
• ▶ 47:47 Ben Gilbert So Eisner in this era really did crack the extensions of the brand thing, and he also kind of dipped his foot back into traditional marketing more.
• ▶ 55:37 Ben Gilbert Michael's a big personality.
• ▶ 56:31 Ben Gilbert In the hospital while they're feeling the loss of Frank Wells, there's a lot of decisions that need to get made, and there's a lot of, like, personnel clashes that needed to get sort of through, but what can Michael do?
• ▶ 1:00:58 Ben Gilbert Yeah, it's the Michael Eisner Company now, through and through.
• ▶ 1:03:57 Ben Gilbert And I think there's, there's so much great lore around this, but I think this was like a parking lot conversation, where Michael had been hoping to run into Warren Buffett, and he finally did, and Warren calls over Tom Murphy, who was…
• ▶ 1:14:25 Ben Gilbert And Eisner's thought going in was, it is important to have the Disney brand and our products and our content distributed on television.
• ▶ 1:18:48 Ben Gilbert And that could have happened to Disney too, but amidst all these very high valuations of the dot com era, and I watched a bunch of interviews of Michael at this time, he was skeptical and very careful about not
• ▶ 1:21:12 Ben Gilbert Cuz neither Ovitz nor Eisner thought there was any chance this was gonna fall apart, and so the Walt Disney Company was willing to put in a contract and say, if you don't make it
• ▶ 1:31:24 Ben Gilbert He went on a blistering three-page critique of Michael's stewardship of the company.
• ▶ 1:32:02 Ben Gilbert Michael sort of famously had an eye for making the theme parks great, the sort of second only since Walt.
• ▶ 1:32:23 Ben Gilbert By this point, distributing Pixar's early films, but Eisner and Pixar had a, uh, very contentious relationship.
• ▶ 1:41:17 Ben Gilbert Initially, it actually said internal and external candidates, and Bob Iger was reviewing the press release, because he's COO, and he goes to the board and says, wait, Michael's gonna be CEO for another year?
• ▶ 1:41:43 Ben Gilbert People will need someone to look to for leadership, because no one's going to be looking to Michael.
• ▶ 1:46:14 Ben Gilbert Michael Eisner's tenure at Disney, in my mind, is really two chapters.
• ▶ 1:47:34 Ben Gilbert By the numbers, Michael's tenure was unbelievable.
• ▶ 2:22:23 Ben Gilbert Michael Eisner wants to renegotiate after realizing,
• ▶ 2:22:35 Ben Gilbert With joint participation fifty-fifty in the upside, now that Pixar has the cash to do it, Michael Eisner agrees as long as they can expand into a brand new five-picture deal, rolling the remaining two from the old contract into the new…
• ▶ 2:23:47 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, the relationship with Michael Eisner is, is...
• ▶ 2:25:15 Ben Gilbert He goes to Eisner and says, hey, can the five picture deal include sequels?
• ▶ 2:25:20 Ben Gilbert Meanwhile, Michael Eisner is like, why would I do that?
• ▶ 2:26:22 Ben Gilbert It's Michael Eisner.
• ▶ 2:28:42 Ben Gilbert And Jobs can see that Michael thinks Nemo's bad.
• ▶ 2:31:35 Ben Gilbert He proposes a deal to Eisner, and this is where the relationship becomes irreparable.
• ▶ 2:32:08 Ben Gilbert Eisner stands his ground and declines.
• ▶ 2:33:49 Ben Gilbert So all this happens in the last breaths of the Eisner administration.
• ▶ 3:49:54 Ben Gilbert So before we get to the business today, we should talk about the beginning and end of Bob Iger's tenure, just like we did with Michael Eisner.
• ▶ 3:54:47 Ben Gilbert Yeah, that was an Eisner thing.