WALT DISNEY - PINK SLIPS RAIN AT DISNEY

PINK SLIPS RAIN AT DISNEY

The long-expected axe fell at the Walt Disney Co. Tuesday, with roughly 650 employees -- or about one in five employees -- receiving pink slips, half in domestic operations, half overseas. Among those caught in the purge was Nina Jacobson, president of Buena Vista Motion Picture Group, the studio's top decision maker for live-action films. She will be replaced by Oren Aviv, who, as part of a company-wide reorganization, has been named president of production of Walt Disney Pictures. The firing of Jacobson stunned Hollywood, coming as it does just months after her contract with the studio was extended three more years and slightly more than a week after Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest became the biggest hit of the year. Several reports mentioned that it also came on the same day that her partner gave birth to their third child. L.A. Weekly's Nikki Finke reported Tuesday that Jacobson had called Walt Disney Studios Chairman Dick Cook to share the news and was told in the same conversation that she had been fired. Commented Finke: "Not since Dawn Steel learned she was ousted as president of production while on maternity leave from Paramount has a top woman movie executive found out this brutally she'd been axed in Hollywood." Today's (Wednesday) Los Angeles Times reported that Cook offered her a production deal at the studio. However, Jacobson told the newspaper that she had declined, saying "I would rather start fresh with something new. ... I feel very sad to be leaving a job that I have loved." She added that she had always tried "to treat the job as a privilege, not an entitlement."

19/07/2006