DISNEY - JOE ROTH PREDICTS PIXAR WILL "INFUSE" DISNEY

Revolution Pictures Chairman Joe Roth has indicated that although Disney is buying Pixar Animation, he expects that creatively Pixar will be taking over Disney. Roth, the former chairman of Walt Disney Studios and currently a member of the Pixar board, told Fred Topel, who writes a newsletter for the About.com website: "I think what will happen is that Pixar will totally infuse Disney with its own stuff. ... If Disney can't make movies up to the quality of Pixar, they'll have to stop." Roth predicted that Disney will eventually produce two animated features a year, one original and one sequel. "By the way," he said. "I think that pays for the [$7.4-billion acquisition] themselves, the fact that these guys are doing the sequels, if they would, to Monsters, Incredibles, Toy Story, Nemo, and things like that." Pixar chiefs Steve Jobs and John Lasseter have long said that they would only agree to produce a sequel if it was better than the original, and that they would be opposed to producing the kind of direct-to-video "cheapquels" that Disney has lucratively churned out in recent years.

16/02/2006