Disney Officially Saved

Show’s over folks. Time to head home. Disney is officially saved, according to THIS LETTER that Roy Disney Jr. posted on SaveDisney.com. Disney is, in fact, so saved that SaveDisney.com will be shutting down on August 7. The results of the campaign, you ask? The studio will once again begin valuing creativity over the bottom-line, executives will stop interfering in the creative process, Eisner-lite Bob Iger will be replaced by creative visionary Steve Jobs, California Adventure is shutting down, and the animation department will stop producing cheapquels that dilute the Disney name. Wait…um…actually, none of that is happening. But at least one of the company’s largest stockholders is happy and after all, isn’t that all that really matters.

I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of this deal or what happened behind the scenes, but somehow my cynical side can’t shake the feeling that the end of this campaign had less to do with “saving Disney” and more to do with making Roy happy. (If you know the facts to be otherwise, I’d be happy to be corrected on this, but from an outside vantage point, it’s hard to assess the situation any other way.) Roy’s unwillingness to divulge details about the specific steps they are taking to turn the studio around doesn’t inspire any faith in the matter. Disney fans and supporters threw an incredible amount of support behind the SaveDisney campaign; don’t they at the very least deserve an explanation of what their efforts have achieved? Instead they get the lame corporate-speak “everything’s ok now…go back to your business” letter from Roy. Here’s to hoping that there are some truly significant changes happening, and that the studio will once again strive to become an organization driven by creativity and originality.