How did we get here? As a Disney fan for over 50 years, I was a die-hard fanboy of the company, to the point that Film Threat readers referred to me as a Disney shill. I used to spend thousands of dollars each year throughout the parks, buying merch, and watching every film the Walt Disney Company produced. But something changed, and the so-called Disney magic began to fade. Today, thousands of dollars have turned into a scant tens of dollars. I haven’t visited a park since the “dark times,” and my excitement for anything Disney has turned to disdain…so again, what happened?
Our story begins with a single event not so long ago that fundamentally changed the company culturally and creatively. Mind you, this single event is not the reason for the fall of Disney; as we’ll show, those seeds had been planted long ago during the Eisner era. This event served as the catalyst for the inevitable creative and financial collapse of the company that Walt Disney started 100 years ago. As Elon Musk surmised, “Walt Disney is spinning in his grave like a drill bit.”
That single event was the removal of Disney’s Chief Creative Officer, John Lasseter. This story of Lasseter’s demise will be told from the perspective of the rank-and-file employees at Disney and Pixar, revealing what they observed and how they felt when it happened.
“This story of Lasseter’s demise will be told from the perspective of the rank-and-file employees at Disney…”
John Lasseter, the Creative Visionary
Any Disney fan knows the impact of Lasseter’s creative influence on the company. Along with founder Steve Jobs, Lasseter’s groundbreaking work at Pixar gave birth to the computer-generated animated feature industry as we know it today. After the release of Toy Story, he was thrust into the public eye as the bright future of Disney. Through his guidance at Pixar, innovations in animation quickly eclipsed the legacy set by the initial Disney savior and CEO, Michael Eisner. Dare I say, John Lasseter was poised to become the next Walt Disney as the creative demigod and public face of the company.
Eventually, in 2004, news of Pixar’s impending divorce from the Walt Disney Company made headlines and panicked Disney fans. Eisner’s magic touch on the company was waning, and Walt’s nephew Roy would engage in a hostile attempt to reclaim the company, resulting in installing Bob Iger as the new CEO.
In 2006, one of Iger’s first steps was the $7.4 billion purchase of Pixar, making John Lasseter Disney’s Chief Creative Officer. The merger put Lasseter in charge of overseeing multiple aspects of the company—primarily Pixar and Disney Animation.
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John Lassiter was a true legend. We often mourn the loss of him at Pixar, because we have seen the decline in the movie quality since he left. Thank you for writing a balanced article, because very few articles will give him the benefit of the doubt. he was one of a kind and the soul of Pixar.
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Great article Alan!!! Doing the job the biased mainstream entertainment media wont do.
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I’m so sad about what happened to John. So sad. As you write so well, his behavior could have been corrected long before he was fired from Disney. I’m convinced he was framed and made a scapegoat. I’ve never quite understood why no one has come to his defense. Your article sheds some light on the subject. If you are reading this our beloved John, rest assured that we will never forget you. We will never forget you.
Thanks Alan, a fascinating read and an insightful look into how Disney kill everything.
It’s truly sad that what started as a justifiable culling of sexual predators in Hollywood so quickly turned into a baseless witch hunt against too many others. The fear and the cancel culture that has taken hold since 2017 has been nothing short of despicable and it is all down to duplicitous “activists” using virtue signaling to further their careers because they don’t have the talent alone.
MeToo should be remembered for sending monsters like Harvey Weinstein to jail, but I fear it will be looked on in history synonymously with McCarthyism and Salem.
Great read! Thanks. I’ve been a Lasseter fan going back to the first Toy Story. If some of the worst stories are true go ahead and prosecute him, but the fact no one has makes me think it didn’t rise to that level. Definitely something that should have been addressed rather than used to destroy him. Maybe Nelson Peltz can bring him back to become the next CEO of Disney. If not I hope that he has what he needs at Skydance to continue his legacy of greatness.
Really surprised to hear people think Coco was the pinnacle of Pixar greatness. It’s fine, but can’t hold a candle to Wall E.
The idea that Lassiter’s behavior could have been “addressed” and fixed is a GUESS at best. Some men will say all the right things, then go on touching women, making comments, etc., as if the “correction” never happened. John may have been one such man.
But you know what? He’s a GENIUS, so, if Disney wants success, they needed to MANAGE and PUT UP WITH any bad behavior.
Because he’s a genius.
That’s how it’s always worked. Temperamental geniuses get special treatment. That’s how we get great films.
Or at least how we GOT great films.
Thank you Alan, fascinating read. Can’t wait for part two! 🙏 Kind regards from Amsterdam.
Great Job, looking forward to the upcomming articles.
English 101 grammar errors in this article. How far the bar has been lowered…
Thanks Mr. Enlightened
I want to congratulate the art department (or whomever) on the hero image. That is a certified banger — well done you!
Great article Alan. Looking forward to part 2. I too once loved Disney. I didn’t grow up on Disney but once I started raising my daughter, my family never missed anything done by Disney. I grew to love their films. Adults and children could both enjoy their films and I developed a deep loyalty. The last decade has been extremely disappointing to say the least. I feel betrayed and grief-stricken Afraid it will take a decade to correct the current HR nightmare. Good Luck going forward and hope your journalism will prompt other to come forward.
It’s a tricky one. Genius and high-achievement are often accompanied by extreme personality traits. Lasseter was either oblivious to the personal boundaries of his colleagues (he does sound a bit spectrumish), or he was a typical workplace management narcissist who saw it as an entitlement. That wouldn’t stop him being talented and effective, but it would leave him very open to accusations, and also vulnerable to the predations of those who saw an opportunity for ‘advancement by other means’. But to dismiss the chance that it might have been entirely concocted is also dangerous. Not only have I seen all of this happen before, I’ve had it happen to me personally. Sexual advance FROM a female CEO? Rejected, and out of an extremely nice, creative job within 2 months. Me-Too’d? A campaign started BEFORE I joined a company because of my previous creative work, and was prosecuted with great ferocity for months WITHOUT me finding out about it until the very last moment. Activist takeover? I stood beside the aforementioned female CEO and female marketing manager as they planned the gradual ousting of male department managers and their replacement with females. ‘The girls are in charge now!’, they boasted to me (this was 2016). These things are extremely real and used not just for sexual gratification, but also for political positioning and posturing amongst peer groups. My personal experience is that females are exactly as guilty as males in this respect.
Human history need to record all the destructions woke has caused. Every woke person’s name should be listed. The person who wanted a woman to run Pixar should be revealed to the public and recorded. That person is part of the woke cancer.
This was an excellent article. Props to Alan. My only problems was the layout of the article on the website like the milk toast pull-quotes and general clunky functionality of the website. I really wish you could find out from Lassiter himself or someone close to Lassiter what went one through his point of view.
Pretty sure Lasseter is under an iron-clad NDA and legally unable to defend himself.
To paraphrase Jim Garrison: “Let Justice be done, no matter who has to fall.” You strike a clanging hammer blow for the people who still hope Disney can turn it around, AlaNg! Well-researched article, can’t wait to see where this goes next. Hopefully Lassiter wasn’t a lightening in a bottle thing for Pixar/Disney, and can recapture the magic at Skydance.
Thanks for taking the time to bring this forth, Alan. Things that should have been addressed in public long ago. Your take is balanced and fair (and accurate, for those of us who know). Time will be the ultimate arbiter for not only Lasseter’s disgracefully unfair treatment by the studio, but as a measure of where things went off the rails, and then accelerated into Chernabog’s abyss.
Interesting stuff, Alan, and that culture has been brewing under the covers for a long time. A friend worked as a cast member at WDW back in the late 80s, & she described a culture of intimidation that at the time I found hard to believe – until decades later, I found myself working for a SF-based megabank. The DEI mind virus is real, and it’s demonic. I look forward to your next installment.
Great article. I am mainly aware of Film Threat in the UK via the Youtube Channel. Would you please be willing to do a video on each chapter so subscribers can be notified of new releases?
Disturbing seeing Pixar’s downfall so soon… Coco was the last, real Pixar movie for sure.
You can be sure that if they had solid evidence on him, they would have slapped a scarlet MeToo on his Hawaiian shirts and made an example out of him. After learning about Iger’s behavior during the whole Chapek situation, I would put money on both of these exits being about politics—specifically resistance to Disney’s push to blatantly propagandize through their films and TV offerings and be activists for polarizing causes. Lasseter wasn’t playing along, and he may have even made the mistake of reaching out to and being friendly with (insert evil music riff) Republicans and conservatives during his tenure. We know that Chapek was working to pull back at least some of the activism—Perhaps Lasseter was not interested in letting all of that get in the way of a good story, and someone took that as him being racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise insensitive. He had to go, of course. After all, he’s white. And male.
My point is this: if he had done something truly wrong, he’d have been fired on the spot (or as soon as investigators found out). Instead, they put him on leave for 8-9 months planting suspicions in people’s minds, gathering all the stories about all the times when people maybe kind of felt like they might have gotten the icks—people who wouldn’t have been at all offended if they weren’t asked to second-guess themselves in light of the MeToo and company climate—then presenting him with a stack of those bogus reports, telling him that his employees have lost confidence in him. Then, they let him finish THE REST OF THE YEAR. No one who is even suspected of egregious conduct would be allowed to do that, especially during that time in Hollywood history.
Somebody wanted him gone; they found a chink in his armor, and they drove in the lance.
I just don’t think Lassiter was picking up the vibes of what was going on. A top tier leader who has had unassailable success doesn’t look down to see if everyone is questioning and looking to stab him in the back. I mean what kind of insane egomaniac would kill the golden goose be sue of insecurity that would lead to the creative downfall of the organization he was ALREADY in charge of and celebrated as a visionary business person? I mean who would do that? What kind of weak person would be so fragile and delusional as to screw up a good thing for their own selfish motives? A real piece of human garbage I would expect. Possibly an ex-sportscaster or a weird little man that takes multiple showers in his office a day.
Why are the D Files not on the front page of Film Threat? Chris has been talking this up for weeks now. This post does not seem to reference the source at all. Is this just the overview and the real details are in the next post? Can’t this all be displayed on 1 page? I mean are click counts still a metric you are being held to? My engagement time should be enough.
I think its HEE-larious that Disney’s creative cred has gone int toe toilet, (and I VERY MUCH look forward to many employees losing their jobs) as a result of the company’s new direction… all because one guy liked to drink and was an “aggressive hugger.” Btw, the #MeToo movement packed up shop as soon as it had done enough damage and was no longer in vogue. EVERY. SINGLE. DESTRUCTIVE. IMPULSE. Hollywood has leveraged against its best, most creative individuals (and NONE OF YOU OUT THERE are as good at story as Lasseter, #FACTS) has come back on itself to add to its slow suicide. They have met the enemy, and its their WOKE- SOCIAL JUSTICE- VIRTUE SIGNALING selves. They EARNED all of this contempt from their audience. They worked HARD for it. Its all theirs, and they are welcomed to it. Good luck next year, Hollywood… as private equity and larger banks finally start to bring you into the “new reality.” You are NOT done taking your licks.
But hey, at least you don’t have that pesky, SUPER CREATIVE, smart story teller running around hugging people and drinking one or two too many glasses of wine.
This is really the end of animation and entertainment as we know it, not destroyed by new technology but through all-consuming ideological brain rot. Companies thought they could use it like The One Ring to defeat their competitors and critics but it infiltrated and poisoned everything to the point where they have no recourse. There are new competitors around the world that can do it faster and cheaper, technology doesn’t require the number of people previously needed to create, and the demands of the guilds are antithetical to maintaining a solvent market. We’re about to see that Hollywood no longer has any incentive to produce what would generate enough jobs for the very people who killed the industry by thinking they could “seize the means of production” from those who built the infrastructure that employed them in the first place. Of course, they won’t learn anything from this. They don’t understand that those same means of production they always talk about aren’t in the buildings, software, finances, or branding but rather they are the very people they persecute and drive away. They’ll just stand there with a bewildered look on their dumb face trying to think of who to blame next for their malevolent failer.
It’s like a child/parent dynamic, or who the kids call a “systemic” by-design problem. People, especially powerful ones, or children, avoid responsibility at all costs if they can. Over time, entities that are responsible for a cog in a system will gravitate to passing the buck until one cog is bearing all the weight. By that point passing the buck/responsibility becomes normalized, like they don’t even remember this was their job, they abdicated it, and are indignant anyone is even asking a question. The insurance industry is an example, so is housing. Just a circle of cogs that look to pass the buck until the day you renew your insurance and suddenly everyone else’s problems are your cost. All the incentives get shifted not in service of good results for all, and just good for them. Unions, no matter what you think of them, are a massive cog. They allow their children… I mean members, to pass the buck to the studios. It’s their job to figure out how to survive and build a market place. Something those members, or the union, have zero knowledge or ability to accomplish. They are part of the system, not the most important part, and generations of passing the buck has allowed them to become mentally decrepit and narcissistic. Free money for too long enables these systems the luxury to shift these incentives while the those cogs didn’t suffer too noticeably. The world has been spinning out of control since the 2010 bust. That’s when we abandoned the idea that money was part of wealth creation and is just something you borrow when you need it. Hollywood, whatever that means, I mean Netflix and Amazon are now Hollywood, will always be around but it’ll be a legacy relic that pops out big production few else could (like a Dune) but the aging pool of talent will shrink hard and once a Nolan retires because there isn’t enough money and costs are so high, that we’ll really sink into a creative spectacle dark age. Technology isn’t far enough ahead and cheap enough yet that even a small team can easily get their new ideas and concepts out. They’re still a labor of love and the amount of time you need free to make a game or short film that’ll never get noticed is still a mountain. AI might make this flatter, but you’ll see the AI art a mile away. It’ll be like a dozen Unreal game engine games all looking alike.
As a long time Disney fan, I’m very interested to see where the series of articles go. It’s painfully obvious that Disney’s quality has plummeted over the years and no sign of recovery in sight. I no longer watch new Disney content, it’s just bad storytelling that resonates with no one.
Well-written article Alan, looking forward to more on these D-files and I hope more current and former employees speak up and out to you and others who can shine the light. And hopefully, shareholders will wake up and right the ship – and stop Walt and Roy from spinning in their graves
Very interesting article can’t wait for the rest
Really well written Allen. Like in all these, “We kicked out the problematic problem” cases, are things better? Has DEI made things better and for who? Costs have skyrocketed and new jobs have nothing to do with core business and quality. Looking forward to part II.
However, the web site layout, magazine style, is great but for multipart stories the Back/Continue is too subtle and a page reads like a page. You need at 1 of X, highlight the Continue button with FT orange, a better indication this is a long read, something. Possibly switch to a full flow page like most long reads. I know the page turner is what you’re going for, but the way it’s done many will read a page and wonder why the article is done. On my iPad I don’t scroll to the bottom of the page. I scroll to the bottom of the writing and wonder if it’s a cliff hanger, and scroll past to see the buttons. Just call the Continue button out better and label it with the number of remaining pages.
I saw a showreel of computer animation in about 1987. The dancing spoons were the most impressive.Later I went to see a new full length animated feature, Toy Story. I expected it to be set in one room with some toy object moving smoothly about. But wow! This was a good movie! The sequel was even better. And Pixar seemed to release one classic after another. For Disney to destroy Lasseter and the Pixar brand in a few short years is mind-boggling. To see Disney self-sabotage merely to score ideological points is just sad.
Fantastic article! You’re doing God’s work dudes. Keep it up.