Can the beleagured head of Disney take this hit? He’s got a lot of angry shareholders to answer to. Will the Weinsten brothers become Hollywood’s next big power players?
Oh, the suspense.
Define “hit.” Michael Moore’s film will undoubtedly do VERY well for a documentary, but it’s not going to be a blockbuster.
Now, Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ,” on the other hand WAS a blockbuster. And yet, as far as I know, NOBODY had been fired for refusing to distribute it! You’d THINK some heads would have rolled (“Nice going, moron! WE could have had a percentage of that 400 million, but you were too principled to duistribute that… funny how you never had any similar qualms about Freddy vs. Jason! You’re fired!”).
Eisner is on thin ice, and he may be finished soon anyway… but it won’t have anything to do with Michael Moore.
I asked in another thread about the mathematical ceiling of F9/11’s gross but I didn’t get an answer.
I’ve heard theatre figures anywhere from 500-850 but I can’t finish the math because I don’t know what ticket price is used and how many seats each theatre has.
In any case, being shown in so few theatres, it’s not going to be the next financial Smashing of the Christ.
One thing I read about Eisner not wanting to release the movie (which seemed to get little coverage) was because of the Florida employees’ pension plan. Apparently, the florida retirement plan owns around 7.3 million shares of Disney stock and Jeb, as governor, gets to decide whether to support Eisner or not. Jeb did not support Eisner at the last board election - and so now maybe Eisner is hoping the Jeb will support him at the next one. Either way, it should be interesting.
While F9/11 might not be a big hit (uh…) dollar wise, it certianly has a significant amount of prestige to release a potential Oscar contender (or even highly regarded film) and given that Pixar’s whooping Disney from one end and if Eisner hamstrings their other operations (like Miramax), he’ll be getting hit (uh…) from the other too. I think the shareholders will be looking at him and saying, “you had an opportunity to put out a product that had a great risk-reward ratio and you blew it. Explain yourself.”
I’ve been reading about the downfall of Eisner for awhile and am just wondering if this will fuel the fire of the shareholders who already appear to be looking for any excuse.
In the case of THE PASSION, I don’t think that’s necessarily a valid comparison since Gibson handled prettymuch everything on his own (although I have to confess I’m not familar with how he handled the distribution). Besides, the risk-reward ratio would be completely skewed for that, so I don’t think anyone could be blamed for not releasing it. Perhaps F9/11’s the same thing.
I am really looking forward to the Eisner book when it comes out.
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For all of Eisner’s bad reputation, the two most egregious (recent) decisions that spotlight his infamy are things I’d have done no differently. Prolonging the existing relationship with Pixar wasn’t an option for him, and Fahrenheit 9/11 was pretty far afield of Disney’s “family entertainment” mission. If Eisner gets the axe soon–and he certainly deserves to–it shouldn’t be because of these two incidents.
I’d almost believe this argument if Disney subsidiary ABC wasn’t airing Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly on their radio stations.
“Don’t want to get politicially involved in an election year,” my eye…
It’s 800 theatres and is selling out as we speak. I’m seeing it tonight.
So was Kill Bill. But that didn’t stop Miramax releasing it.