Rich Ross named chairman of Walt Disney Studios
Rich Ross, the television
executive who helped revive the moribund Disney Channel, now has to prove he can work movie magic at Walt Disney Studios.
The 47-year-old former talent
department head has been tapped by Disney Chief
Executive Robert A. Iger to fill the post formerly
held by Dick Cook, who was ousted last month after clashing
with his boss and failing to deliver enough hits over the last year.
Iger will look to Ross to
reinvigorate Disney’s flagging box-office fortunes and develop film franchises that can be sold across the entertainment giant’s lines
of businesses — including theme
parks, consumer products and television — as well as
grapple with a host of technological issues that are quickly reshaping
Hollywood.
“Rich has an outstanding record of
creating high-quality family entertainment that delights audiences around the
world,” Iger said in a prepared statement. “With his success in building the
Disney brand across many of our businesses, his astute marketing sensibility,
his proven ability in working effectively with talent and his skill at
navigating complex global markets, I’m confident he’s the perfect leader for
our studio group.”
By picking an executive from
outside the clubby precincts of the movie business, Iger is signaling that he wants Ross to shake up a studio that the Disney chief views as entrenched in the past, from relying on
high-priced, aging stars to open films to spending extravagantly on movie
marketing.
To achieve this, Ross may be
borrowing liberally from the playbook he followed to turn around Disney
Channel, which has eclipsed the movie studio in recent years as a hothouse for
talent and ideas that could be packaged and resold across the company’s various
platforms. Ross has proved himself adept at turning entertainment into brands -- high profile examples include "Hannah Montana,"
which launched pop star Miley Cyrus' career, and "High School Musical,' which was
created for television but quickly found life — and revenue — in recorded
music, a big-screen blockbuster and a stage show.
Indeed, at a company that stresses
team playing among its executives, Ross may be the ultimate team player.
“I am very excited to play a key
role in continuing the storytelling legacy of The Walt Disney Studios. There
has never been a better time to entertain our global audiences with high-quality and compelling content and introduce new characters that will become
family favorites. I look forward to working with Bob, the team at the studios
and all of our Disney family towards that goal,” said Ross.
Since his arrival at Disney
Channel in 1996, Ross worked closely with other divisions of the Burbank-based company.
For example, when the channel cast Cyrus as Hannah Montana in 2005, Ross
ordered an internal “road show” to introduce the new program to other parts of
Disney. Within six months of the show’s premiere, the consumer products group was
shipping Hannah Montana
clothing to stores — shaving a year off the time required for new TV-linked
merchandise to reach retail outlets.
Such cross-division collaboration
is a priority for Iger, and something he felt was lacking
at the movie studio. Moreover, Disney Channel, under Ross' lead, has become a model for Iger’s oft-touted
franchise strategy, in which entertainment properties can feed other parts of
the Disney empire.
A prime example is 2006's “High
School Musical” — a chaste tale of improbable high school romance between a brain and a jock. Ross revved up the Disney marketing machine, leading to the
release of a soundtrack that was a top-selling CD, a sold-out 42-date concert tour in
North and South America, a show at Disney’s theme parks and a slew of
merchandise.
The 2007 sequel, “High School Musical 2,” became the
highest-rated telecast in cable history at the time, and the third installment in 2008,
“High School Musical 3: Senior Year,” raked in more than $250 million in
worldwide box-office sales. Merchandise based on "High School Musical" and other Disney Channel movies and TV series accounted for $3.6 billion in retail sales worldwide last year -- not including DVDs and CDs.
But despite his success in
television, Ross has virtually no experience in feature films — a more
protracted process and one encumbered by big egos, longtime habits and much
higher-cost
structures. He must quickly reach out and calm anxieties among Disney’s movie
talent, including director Steven Spielberg, producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Scott Rudin, and stars like Johnny Depp — all of
whom were close to Cook and distraught over Iger pushing him out.
High on Ross’ list doubtless
will be figuring out how to integrate the latest planned addition to Disney’s
family, Marvel Entertainment, whose library of super-hero
characters the studio will seek to exploit. Disney has lagged behind rival
studios that have successively produced film adaptations of Marvel properties such as X-Men and Spider-Man.
Another priority for the incoming
studio chief will be forging ties with Spielberg’s DreamWorks Studios, which
recently signed a multiyear distribution deal with Disney and expects to supply
the studio with four to six movies a year.
But Ross’ greatest challenge will
be to address Disney’s creative dearth. Although Disney isn’t the only studio to have
suffered a bad year at the box office, the division lost $12 million in its
most recent quarter — its first loss in four years. A number of its recent
movies, including the Adam Sandler family comedy
“Bedtime Stories,” the costly 3-D guinea pig saga
“G-Force,” and the latest installment in the 1970s "Witch Mountain" sci-fi adventure franchise, “Race
to Witch Mountain,” failed to attract wide audiences.
And like all studio heads, Ross will find himself grappling with a number of sea changes in the business caused by a
slump in DVD sales — the most lucrative part of a film’s revenue stream — and
technological shifts that have changed how, when and where people watch movies.
--Dawn C. Chmielewski and Claudia Eller
Photo: Rich Ross, left, with "High School Musical" director Kenny Ortega. Credit: Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times
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