Just broke. This better mean better pictures and not crappy shit like "Chicken Little."

Smart move.

As long as Eisner doesn't ruin them. No details yet but I hope it's more like the Miramax/Disney buyout (before they separated again) then a complete assimilation.

Eisner's long gone.

That would be interesting, seeing how he no longer runs the mouse.

about time they finalized this. i believe jobs is now going to be the single largest disney shareholder. according to most of the releases the pixar folks are going to be running the show in the joint animation house. good move for disney.

Totally missed that. Cool.

Pixar honcho John Lasseter probably got a big ol' blowjob and a couple pieces of land from Disney's Bob Iger to get this deal done. Good for him.

hopefully they will start churning out films again then.

Good for Disney cause they're running on this as opposed to the old formated animation. Bad in a sense because Pixar had great hopes as operating as a seperate entity-not to mention half the animators hate Disney and may very well be reluctant to stick around if this means following the mouse rules. It all depends how this goes. If Disney has a clue they'll keep their hands out of the works and let the outfit run its own shop. Otherwise, it's cooked its own golden goose.

Does this mean Mickey Mouse shaped Ipods will be coming down the pike pretty soon? You know you've got to market to the kids as soon as possible.

Jobs will be running Disney in < 18 months.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Pixar and Disney have some sort of liscensing/distribution agreement, where all prior Pixar films were distributed and marketed by Disney; and that agreement expired basically making Pixar a free agent/entity? If this was the case, my guess is that Disney exercised a good amount of control over Pixar under the last agreement, so things won't change much now that Disney owns it outright.

people are worried about the clash of cultures. disney didn't control any of the prodcution, etc...just the distribution. both sides were in the process of negotiating that. good move for disney as they would have had to share more of the profits. you just hope that disney's animation group is the entity that changes philosophies.

Disney's animation group is NADA, right now. They dumped all of it's inhouse animation staff for computer animation experts and doohickeys. It's a sad state of affairs for the art of animation.

not if you watch a film by Hayao Miyazaki

bUT golly, it's like McDonald's dropping burgers for Tofu, or if Mozart decided to scrap it all and take up gardening..

Does this mean that Pixar is going to suck now?

Not necessarily. Unless someone starts messing with the product and that we'll be pretty noticable pretty quickly. I'd think if it got really nasty they'll just ingest Pixar into Disney altogether and Pixar will be merely a footnote of animation history.

So far this deal has turned out well from a creativity standpoint, huh? Was Ratatouille already pretty much finished by the time the agreement was inked?

I think what happens to Pixar will have less to do with Disney's meddling in production than marketing. If you look at Disney's in house animations post- Lion King, the quality never really dropped off. Atlantis is freakin' brilliant; The Emporer's New Groove is slight but good fun, and so on.

The problem with those movies is that Disney got lazy and did little to nothing to shore up the strength of their brand. If they continue to market Pixar as smartly as Pixar, itself, has, I foresee few problems. If they get complacent, it will be another story.

Emperor's New Groove is so underrated.