Preview: The Rice Capades
A Disney shake-up shocks the town to its core
As Hollywood transitions go, the end of the Peter Rice era at Disney is a big one, a question mark suddenly in the path of one of the best-known, most-speculated-about executives in the business.
Until today, Rice lived one of the most charmed lives of any executive in Hollywood. With his special relationship as an honorary Murdoch, he rose up through the cage-match ranks of News Corp., moving from success to success across just about the full range of entertainment divisions. Then coming to Disney, the Golden Boy seemed perfectly cast to step in while another charmed executive rode off into the sunset.
But when you reach those heights, the battles get personal. Luck and timing play as big a role as skill. Lately, it has seemed like the gods have turned on their once favored child, but for him, the day is still young.
For Bob II (a.k.a Chapek), it's a big move — particularly from the perspective of someone still finding his footing in the community taking on an exec who's as close as you get to a Hollywood made man.
The move either makes total sense or is the apotheosis of a misbegotten set of priorities, depending on where you sit. A lot to break down, so let's get breaking.
In no particular order:
While the news seems sudden, it's not necessarily shocking. There were questions about what was Rice's place in the magical Chapek kingdom. What was shocking to many was the unceremonious dispatching, sans development deal of someone who has given his entire career to the Fox/Disney project after a seven-minute meeting where he was told, again after 30 years, that he wasn't a fit.
Maybe there's no good way to fire someone, but there's definitely a bad way, and Chapek seemed to have nailed that.
When you say who cares about style points, maybe we haven't got time to get too cuddly around here, but we're running a solid business and that's what matters. The problem is that, unfortunately, this is Hollywood. A creative community in which the better part of the game is getting the most creative people to work with you (more about this later), style points do matter. They matter lots.
There's the tech world fantasy that all that is a lot of grumbling but in the end, people come for the paycheck. Not untrue, but if you become not the producer of choice, better be prepared to add a couple of zeroes onto those next checks to win out over competitors who do pay attention to the style points.
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