Can Pixars personality survive the Mouses mandates?
Here we go again: another adulation moment for Pixar. The emergence of “Toy Story 3” as Pixar’s llth hit in a row has crusty Hollywood types asking, “How do they do it?” Then comes the followup question: “Can they keep it up?” In the movie business, hot streaks always come to a crashing halt, but Bob Iger and his Disney acolytes insist Pixar will prove the exception. The quirky animation company headed by Ed Catmull and John Lasseter has always defied the rules, they argue. Still, “success is a great killer of innovation,” the Economist pointed out in its recent piece on Pixar. And skeptics point to the remarks of the oracular Steve Jobs several years ago when he warned that Pixar’s uniqueness could be compromised by a commitment to sequels. Pixar must maintain its individuality, he said, adding that Disney’s ventures into sequelitis had proved “embarrassing.” (These remarks were made just prior to Disney’s $7 billion acquisition of Pixar.) Having paid the big bucks for Pixar (and more
