Disney the brand may symbolize all that is innocent and magical, but Disney the business is another story, as described here by James B. Stewart, a former page-one editor for The Wall Street Journal. Of course, naming the book DisneyWar does give the reader a good idea of what's to come.
The story may not be pretty, but it is fair: Stewart requested and was granted "a degree" of access by then-chairman and CEO Michael Eisner to follow the company for a year; Stewart would maintain editorial control of the result. The original intention, though, was to describe how one of the world's most popular media and entertainment companies dealt with its artistic and technological challenges—how it meshed a profit motive with creative aspirations. During the following months, however, the company endured a boardroom blitz, a shareholder revolt against Eisner, a takeover bid by Comcast, and nasty senior management struggles. After Steve Jobs and Pixar Animation Studios severed negotiations with Disney—a business catastrophe, but by this stage one of many—Eisner tells the author, "I can see your book is turning into Barbarians at the Gate."
Written in a present-tense, you-are-there style, DisneyWar describes how the organizational machine behind the brand coped less with creative and technological challenges than with a surplus of outsized egos, backstabbings, flashes of anger, two a.m. phone calls, lawsuits, warnings, tears, and mean victories. In a passage typical of the book's tone and attention to detail, Stewart writes, "Several weeks later, on March 30, I meet Eisner in his office at the ABC building in New York. Disney has just had some good news, winning a lawsuit brought by the heirs of the Milne estate over the rights to Winnie the Pooh."
Despite the piling on of unflattering information about key characters (Eisner in particular, since he is the eye of the storm), a seam of admiration for Eisner runs throughout the book. When he was appointed chairman and CEO of the Walt Disney Company in 1984, he had never seen Snow White or Sleeping Beauty; he was a child of Park Avenue weaned on Broadway musicals. The multimillionaire CEO who wanted to bestow on his longtime assistant the gift of a letter-opener also helped grow Disney's film library from 158 to 900 theatrical releases, led the company to 140 Academy Awards, and raised revenue from $1.6 billion in 1984 to a projected $30 billion twenty years later, among many other corporate achievements. (Eisner will step down as CEO this September and will be succeeded by Robert A. Iger.)
As enjoyable as DisneyWar is, it's best appreciated as a page-turner about mistrust and runaway ambition. To learn how a popular entertainment company meshes the profit motive and creative aspirations, we must sit tight for a sequel.—Martha Lagace