Cook Exits Disney…
Just saw the news after a long day’s night returning from TIFF and not even looking at the Blackberry . As usual, the hype machine – mostly people hyping themselves – has been pumped up. Cook, being a smart man, clearly arranged for Johnny Depp to be his spokesman on the issue, with Depp doing an unusual phoner with the LA Times to make the case. This, as much as anything, makes it clear that Cook was, indeed, fired. (The only other realistic option was that he found out he was very sick.) Based on other dealings with Disney lately, I would say this has been in process for at least a couple of months before being announced on a sleepy Friday afternoon.
I really need more time to consider this, but the Marvel buy and even the DreamWorks deal certainly flew in the face of the “Disney-focus” concept that Cook had spearheaded in the last few years. Taking Disney small and rebuilding it as a specific brand was a very good idea. The kids and family market is where all the money is these days. But then it needed to be executed. And they never quite found the handle. The effort to go into chick flicks as a business model, for instance, was not in that path. And the huge success of The Proposal, now being forgotten by some in favor of beating Confessions of a Shopaholic to death, suggests that they could make it work… and more of the same with DreamWorks.
Anyway… Dick Cook is The Mensch of Menches. But he is also a symbol of The Past. DreamWorks and Marvel are symbols of what Iger sees as the future.
We’ll see… more later…
Well, since this is such a popular post, I’ll weigh in on it.
Cook is a near legend in the film distribution business, but those talents don’t necessarily translate to the production side. Although the studio has had a good run the past few months theatrically, Cook’s output over the past few years has been decidedly lackluster. He made a big deal a couple years back that the studio was emphasizing a new strategy, where they would cut back the number of releases per year and focus only on the highest quality Disney-branded titles. Well, the result has been mediocre crap like Bedtime Stories, Beverly Hills Chihuahua, College Road Trip and Race To Witch Mountain. These were supposedly the “home runs” that he promised.
But, aside from that, the media observation that Cook was adverse to new technology is garbage. Disney has been a leader in digital cinema, the driver of 3-D into the theatrical marketplace and an early proponent of Blu-Ray.
I’m not sure how Iger thinks the studio can be radically reconfigured to meet the needs of a 21st century media landscape, or whatever bull he’ll spout when the new studio head is announced (probably some kid from Club Penguin or something). The fact of the matter is that a film studio has to work within the confines of its extremely particular business practices, dictated by the industry around them. If Dick Cook was a traditionalist, then so is every other sudio executive out there.
Finally, seeing a dude like Cook, who’s been a Disney loyalist for nearly four decades, unceremoniously kicked to the curb like this is a bit disheartening. Even Michal Eisner was given the opportunity to step down gracefully. A lot of Cook lieutenants are extremely upset by how their long-time leader was axed. They’re also nervously looking over their shoulders, because they know that they’re next.