Watts Happenings
It’s always an interesting day when things shake up at Disney, giving us a peek behind the finely sheened veneer of the Mouse Empire.
Opinions on the Watts ankling fall more or less into two camps: there’s the character is destiny camp, and the destiny is destiny camp. In either version, Emma goes to Disney was a doomed cause, but either version points to some things that definitely are not part of the Mouse Way.
On the character side, Watts was known as a fairly ruthless operator who was raised, rose and survived in the killing fields of Murdochland. Those qualities were always going to be a tough fit in the low drama Disney halls, particularly under the drama-lite fiefdom of Alan Horn.
Some make the case that being a tough, brutal in-fighting power player are all qualities that would be esteemed in a male exec, and they are probably right. I can think of a few on that very lot who have some shall we say, hard edges to their past.
But fairly or unfairly, Watts had that fearsome reputation in a place where that is definitely not the preferred executive self-presentation. Whatever the justice of it, one didn’t detect too many tears being shed in the division when the news was announced.
I happened to glance at the 20th’ Century’s IMDB pro-page just a couple hours after the news broke and found some eager beaver had already gone ahead and excised her name from the official roster. The sorrow to see her go from her underlings was palpable even on the official database.
Also notable, how quickly Deadline was able to get quotes from Mr. Cameron and Mr. Spielberg seconds after the announcement. Cameron and Spielberg quotes don’t just fall off trees; wrangling a few words out of them, even for a friend or a favorite cause, usually takes a task force of a few dozen people and weeks of preparation. Someone felt the need to have these lined up, ready to go before the news came down, reminding potential employers of all the connections she’ll walk in the door with if you hire this woman.
And fortunately, there’s a studio that could use her help just about now. Given the run that Paramount has had lately, with The Rhythm Section only the latest tragedy, the timing is perfect for Emma to reunite with her old boss over there.
As for the Destiny is Destiny part of this: the fact is, what role was 20th ever going to play in the Disney orbit? Did Ford/Ferrarri convince them they need to drop their entire model, the most successful model in studio history, and start making big-budget adult dramas? Not likely, especially considering the rest of the slate they’ve been unloading this year and how well that’s worked out.
If they weren’t going to have them make the big movies, could 20th become just a specialty label within Disney. They’ve got Searchlight for that, to now to feed films to Hulu. So even if Emma Watts were the most collegial, beloved executive on the planet, the basic question here returns to the mean. When the purchase was announced, the default assumption that they were just going to strip mine the Marvel characters, maybe keep Searchlight/FX/Hulu to create an adult lane within the company (where Miramax had once lived) and throw out the rest.
Two years later, after going through the motions and the niceties, turns out the default was pretty much right.
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