Disney War is probably the best anything I've ever read in terms of understanding how movie decisions are made at the corporate level.
Sure, we all know that greedy corporate bastards only care about the bottom line. But this goes into the politics of executives who champion certain films, and the battle they have to go through with co-workers who compete against them, as well as how corporate realignment affects things, the stock price, appeasing outside companies/governments, incorporating bad ideas from the top executive, etc., etc...
For example, a newly appointed president of one of Disney's film divsions, Vogel read the script for Sixth Sense and needed to make a decision immediately because of the intense bidding war surrounding it, but his boss was nowhere to be found. So he ended up giving an unprecedented amount of money for the script as well as right to direct the film to Night (which ended up being the reason Night chose Disney). When Joe Roth (his boss) came back he was furious and called it a boneheaded decision. Nobody in all of Disney cared about the project despite Vogel screaming out to anyone who would listen that it was the best script he had ever read. As the film was in production, Disney cared so little about the project they sold domestic and international rights to Spyglass Entertainment, yanking Vogel off the project he championed. Later Vogel ended up quitting. A year later when the movie became a sensation and the biggest grossing live-action movie ever for Disney, it didn't matter, cause all they got was a distribution fee. Nobody from Disney ever called Vogel to tell him good job.
Anyway, there's a lot of stuff like that in there. It's not all about movies (only 20% or so) but it's a big book so there's still a lot of good stuff in there. And all the other stuff about the failure of EuroDisney, Katzenberg's fallout and his 12.5 billion dollar lawsuit against Disney, Eisner screwing over his best friend of 30 years, Ovitz, is really fascinating. Check it out.
Sure, we all know that greedy corporate bastards only care about the bottom line. But this goes into the politics of executives who champion certain films, and the battle they have to go through with co-workers who compete against them, as well as how corporate realignment affects things, the stock price, appeasing outside companies/governments, incorporating bad ideas from the top executive, etc., etc...
For example, a newly appointed president of one of Disney's film divsions, Vogel read the script for Sixth Sense and needed to make a decision immediately because of the intense bidding war surrounding it, but his boss was nowhere to be found. So he ended up giving an unprecedented amount of money for the script as well as right to direct the film to Night (which ended up being the reason Night chose Disney). When Joe Roth (his boss) came back he was furious and called it a boneheaded decision. Nobody in all of Disney cared about the project despite Vogel screaming out to anyone who would listen that it was the best script he had ever read. As the film was in production, Disney cared so little about the project they sold domestic and international rights to Spyglass Entertainment, yanking Vogel off the project he championed. Later Vogel ended up quitting. A year later when the movie became a sensation and the biggest grossing live-action movie ever for Disney, it didn't matter, cause all they got was a distribution fee. Nobody from Disney ever called Vogel to tell him good job.
Anyway, there's a lot of stuff like that in there. It's not all about movies (only 20% or so) but it's a big book so there's still a lot of good stuff in there. And all the other stuff about the failure of EuroDisney, Katzenberg's fallout and his 12.5 billion dollar lawsuit against Disney, Eisner screwing over his best friend of 30 years, Ovitz, is really fascinating. Check it out.
