Image courtesy hollywoodreporter.com |
Image courtesy hollywoodreporter.com |
image courtesy jimhillmedia.com |
Image courtesy muppet.wiki.com |
In 1994, Frank was killed in a helicopter crash. Around that time, Michael suffered a massive heart attack. Katzenberg lobbied for Frank's position, but Roy Disney threatened a shareholder fight if he got it, so Katzenberg left to start his own studio, Dreamworks, poaching as much talent as he could on the way out. Michael brought in Mike Ovitz as President, but Mike only lasted 14 months before getting a massive payout to leave, sparking lawsuits that dragged on for a decade. And to top it all off, EuroDisneyland, which had opened in 1992, was hemorrhaging money and threatening to drag the whole company into the pit of despair.
In the midst of all this turmoil, Michael began making serious missteps. He added the role of President to his duties for a time, which meant that he was in charge of creativity and finances, never a good plan. He failed (and some would say refused is actually the word we're looking for) to create a succession plan. Without great people in charge of individual business units, he began trying to micromanage everything himself, slowly squeezing every ounce of creativity out of the company. Television efforts on ABC began to fail. The film division put out a string of flops. In animation, not only was the renaissance over, but Home on the Range failed to turn a profit. Disney's California Adventure opened to terrible reviews and would take years to become something worth seeing. And eventually, Roy, the man who'd hired Michael in the first place, had had enough.
A very public, very ugly battle between Michael and Roy (who was utilizing a website for his side called savedisney.com) began in 2004. Roy managed to get a whopping 43% of shareholders to vote against keeping Michael on the board of directors. The fight would continue for another year until a beleaguered Michael reluctantly agreed to resign a full year before his contract expired. Although he says that having Bob Iger, the company's current leader, in place convinced him to tender that resignation, there's evidence that the board made Bob his replacement whether he liked it or not. On September 2005, Michael severed all formal ties with the Walt Disney Company after more than two decades of both magnificent high points and devastating low points.
Since leaving Disney, Michael has done all right for himself (helped in no small part by the stock he took with him). From 2006-2009, he hosted his own talk show on CNBC, Conversations with Michael Eisner. He's created an investment firm, The Tornante Company (it's the Italian word for hair-pin turn), that owns an English soccer team, half interest in the Topps Company (the baseball card folks) and produces a hit show on Netflix, Bojack Horseman, among other ventures. In 2010, he published a book, Working Together, describing the great partnerships he (and others) has had over his lifetime and why partnerships succeed (too bad he couldn't remember that advice in the late Nineties). And it's not like his relationship with Disney has remained completely sour. In 2006, the Team Disney building in Burbank was renamed the Michael D. Eisner Building.
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