Michael Eisner

“Arguably the greatest two-person management team in media company history, Michael Eisner and Frank Wells.”

“All told, 27 of their first 33 movies that they make are profitable, which, in Hollywood, to have a hit rate like that, that's like making 33 venture capital investments and only losing money in six of them.”

“Roy had made them promise not to fully kill animation, and then he had made them make him, Roy, chairman of the animation division, under Katzenberg, who's running all the studios.”

“Operating profit at the company goes from well under three hundred million when they take over in 1984 to just under two billion a decade later. So, you know, almost, what's that, eight X operating profit in a decade.”

“Michael strikes a deal for the Walt Disney Company to acquire ABC Capital Cities for nineteen billion dollars, which was the second largest acquisition in history to that point.”

“Roy and Stanley gold, his business partner, who also resigns from the board would promptly turn around and launch a first of its kind public grassroots shareholder campaign with the website, savedisney.com. With the stated goal of mounting a proxy vote to oust…”

“At the end of the day, 43% of the shareholder base votes to withhold support for Eisner as CEO, which is a huge number.”

“By the numbers, Michael's tenure was unbelievable. He comes in with a market cap a little shy of two billion, leaves with it worth, I don't know, fifty-ish billion. I think there was some dilution, so it wasn't quite a 25 X, closer to a twenty-X of the stock. …”

“He proposes a deal to Eisner, and this is where the relationship becomes irreparable. Pixar should actually be getting a hundred percent of the profits, not 50%, and they're now prepared to fund the budget themselves, too. Disney would just get a 10% distribut…”

“And those three men, Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg, would pull off probably the greatest media company comeback in history.”

“Michael Eisner was testifying against without knowing what the term actually meant. So it was upsetting to Steve.”

“Michael Eisner was still the CEO, and he would not have continued with Michael Eisner. So, since we were getting into the contract, he started discussions with other studios which would mean, you know, them doing the distribution.”

“Disney found that it could raise prices a lot for the Disney parks and attendance stayed right up. So a lot of the great record of Eisner and Wells came just from raising prices at Disneyland and Disney World”

“And a few months later, as if on cue, Eisner calls, saying that he wants to renegotiate the deal and keep us as a partner. He accepted Steve's offer of a fifty-fifty split.”

“Which was that when the film comes out, then Michael Eisner will realize he's just created his worst nightmare, because with two more films, you know, the deal's over with, but now we're a free and independent company, and so we then become a competitor. So St…”

“When I got to Disney, it was very clear there was a head-to-head conflict, and Michael undercut me every chance he could, and after a couple years, I just didn't want to deal with it anymore”

“What finally landed me an internship at Disney was sending a comic strip of myself to Michael Eisner and his direct reports. And so this was the comic strip where Back then there was a movie called Honey, I Shrunk the Kids, and I basically used that as a narra…”