Disney’s Rich Ross: The Rise And Fall Of An Entertainment Mogul
After two and a half years at the helm of of Walt Disney Studios, Chairman Rich Ross, 50, stepped down on Friday. Ross’ departure comes on the heels of the high-profile failure of the sci-fi/fantasy epic John Carter. The $250 million film, which Disney hoped would be the year’s first blockbuster, only earned $269 million worldwide. After distribution and marketing expenses, John Carter‘s dismal take equals a loss of $80-120 million for Disney.
Ross issued a statement attributing his departure to the idea that he wasn’t the right man for the job:
“The best people need to be in the right jobs, in roles they are passionate about, doing work that leverages the full range of their abilities,” he said. “I no longer believe the chairman role is the right professional fit for me.”
Disney CEO Robert Iger also released a statement praising Ross and wishing him well:
“Rich Ross’s creative instincts, business acumen and personal integrity have driven results in key businesses for Disney,” Iger said. “I appreciate his countless contributions throughout his entire career at Disney, and expect he will have tremendous success in whatever he chooses to do next.”
After stints at Nickelodeon and FX, Rich Ross came to Disney in 1996, where he served as vice president of programming and production, and he rose to president of Disney Channels Worldwide in 2004. As head of Disney Channels Worldwide, Ross was responsible for such brands as Playhouse Disney, Disney XD, Jetix, and Radio Disney.
Ross helped Disney Channel become the kids-and-tweens juggernaut that it is today. He launched the Disney Channel Original Movie franchise, which spawned enormous hits like the High School Musical and Camp Rock series. Radio Disney became a stepping stone for pop music success. Under Ross’ leadership, Disney Channel produced phenomenally successful shows like Hannah Montana, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody, Phineas & Ferb, and Wizards of Waverly Place. Playhouse Disney (now Disney Junior) increased its dominance under Ross as well.
It’s such a load that we’re so obsessed with box office numbers that John Carter never stood a chance. The film wasn’t Oscar gold, but it could have had a nice shelf-life as escapist fun, except that three days into its release it was already an “epic flop” because of box office receipts. Perception drives reality, and the movie had already been dubbed a flop just based on how much was spent to bring it to the screen. If no one takes chances anymore, we’ll start getting what we deserve: crap.
You may be right, but from all the reviews I’ve read, especially by people who knew the stories and looked forward to seeing the movie, it was disappointing; those who liked it best were, apparently, non-English-speaking audiences who saw it with subtitles.
But to spend $250 million dollars on a movie is pretty silly anyway. Yea, Pantaloon — I mean Pandora — I mean Avatar — was quirky drivel as a movie (but then I saw it in 3D which detracts a bit) and though it made money, the studio was betting big money for big profits; that’s something you only do when you can afford to lose.
I remember, and I bet you don’t, when the first remake of King Kong came out — the TV was all abuzz with it’s record-breaking production cost of 44 million dollars! (Don’t believe the Wiki.) They built a 40-foot tall robot Gorilla to act along side a life-sized Jessica Lange, but it didn’t work so all they used was the hand. If a story can’t be told a second time, then more money won’t make it any better.
Give me Casa Blanca.
Now John Carter is all CG with no real character development and a story line that was thrilling say a Century ago. But today we have The Transformers to tickle the fancy and stir the imagination.
Jonathan, I have to agree with you here. One article I read a while back (and I couldn’t find it last night or I would’ve referenced it in the post) stated that even a major flop is no big deal for Disney because its other, more successful divisions will cover the loss. It’ll make its money back on DVD, BluRay, and streaming.
” The Third Man”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, “Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World” Three different genres of film. All masterpieces. All of them 50 years old or more and all still relevant. Still exciting, still funny and still mysterious. The last movie house I went to was in New York 20 years ago. I saw “Pulp Fiction”. A pretty good flick. Since then though, eh. I guess I’m an old fogey.
The marketing campaign for John Carter was unimaginably dismal. A couple of weeks before it opened we got a few TV spots showing an incoherent Conan-ish thing with no context.
Who was the marketing genius who decided it would be better *not* to title it ‘John Carter of Mars?’ At least that title (“of Mars” was part of every ERB book title) has something of a hook. Who was the Mensa member who decide the marketing campaign not mention that this was an Earthling out of place, someone we could relate to?
Compare this to the mass-market pimping which turned a mediocre sci-fi tale, Avatar, into a record-breaking money machine.
They should have stuck with A Princess of Mars for the title.
I felt either John Carter & A Princess Of Mars would have been a good and descriptive title, if a mouthful.
Alternatively they could have called it Warlord Of Mars.
Just simply John Carter? Hey, wasn’t that Noah Wylie’s character on ER? So it’s an ER movie? Set on Mars? What the…? Yeah, it doesn’t tell you anything.
It was actually Andrew Stanton who went with John Carter as the title:
“Here’s the real truth of it. I’d already changed it from A Princess Of Mars to John Carter Of Mars. I don’t like to get fixated on it, but I changed Princess Of Mars… because not a single boy would go.
And then the other truth is, no girl would go to see John Carter Of Mars. So I said, ‘I don’t won’t to do anything out of fear, I hate doing things out of fear, but I can’t ignore that truth.’”
I believe that Mr. Stanton needs to review the use of punctuation. He should have said, “I don’t won’t [sic] to do anything, out of fear”.
The team behind “Wild Hogs II” met last night in a seedy Culver City Bar. They held their glasses high and bitterly toasted the demise of Mr. Ross.
Misery loves company.
I see the genesis of a screen play here!!!
Er… maybe the main reason John Carter flopped is because it’s simply a lousy movie, a great story turned to trash by dire screenwriters, dismal dialog and gaping holes in the plot. The result: an actively irritating movie that makes Dune and Waterworld look like masterpieces. And nobody near the top of the totem pole saw it coming or knew what to do. Hollywood may have finally jumped the shark? As for Disney, couldn’t happen to a nastier bunch.
Allright, so John Carter was cheesy…but I liked it. Yes, I liked it.
It’s the same old story. Some wonder guy or girl takes over a corporation that’s doing well and then invests everything on a monumental movie, in this case John Carter. Instead of staying with smaller movies that have the potential of making big money, they always have to go with the blockbusters that usually fail. Look at a modest movie like Act of Valor. It only cost $12 million to make (positively tiny by today’s Hollywood standards) and as of today it has grossed over $77 million world wide. Now THAT is a good return on an investment. Think of how many smaller movies could have been made for the price of one John Carter? They could have probably made at least 15 smaller movies and even if two or three of them failed the loss wouldn’t be that great. But the others could have brought in big paydays for a modest investment. Many times thinking “big” in the movies is NOT the way to go.
Well, I do wish they’d get marketing right. There’s at least five movies that we would have seen in theatres if we’d known the content, character, dialogue, etc. We can’t tell- there are just these wordless montages- who can tell if the dialogue is cringe-worthy? Is it safe for kids? Is it safe for kids and interesting for grownups?
I don’t know how to market, but I wish someone did. Stars? Who cares? They sound better with screen lines. I’d welcome studio leashes. I have no idea about some actors think about all sorts of things- and that’s on purpose. I don’t care what the actors on my favorite shows think about stuff off the show- they deserve a private life. I assume they are good people b/c they are willing to do good work on good shows.
Right now, I’ve seen tv shows from an editorial in the WSJ, a movie from a negative review online ( it was awesome- the reviewer was wrong, but detailed, so I could make an intelligent choice) a single radio comment on a movie, and a movie from a trailer on a video game. I don’t think any of these are expensive, but they were intelligently focussed on finding their right audience.
That’s an excellent point Ari. Hollywood marketing these days seems to have decided they’re so imcompetent at marketing to anyone but teens that they don’t even try any longer. But then that seems true of a lot of marketing – they’ve lost the ability to convey real information about the product. All they can do is try and gereate hype, and hype only works with a small slice of the populace. The rest of us have to go looking for things ourselves.
Did the anti-capitalist, environmental-protectionist aspect of Cars 2 do it in?
It’s funny, sometimes it just comes down to quality. I thought Cars was cute, but not sequel-worthy. If Cars 2 had gotten outrageously good word-of-mouth I would have given it a chance, but without that I simply considered it a money-grab on an overextended punchline.
I think it had more to do with the fact that it was a sequel that wasn’t in demand. Cars was a fun movie, but still kind of strange. Cars 2 wasn’t anti-capitalist and only tongue in cheek enviromentalist if not actually subversive to the whole notion of environmentalism. The general reaction to Cars 2 was simply ,”Why?”
Was still a really fun movie over. Never expected it would be a spy comedy buddy film. Think I liked it more than the original.
Why Cars 2?
Because while Cars didn’t really do all that well in theaters, it was a hit on the video market and an even bigger hit on the toy market.
I didn’t like Mater as a protagonist, but the message was the worst. This movie seemed to say “Other people and situations must adapt themselves to you. If you make a mess and somebody calls you out on it, they’re mean and you don’t have to apologise because you had good intentions.”
It was very grating.
John Carter was a ridiculously fun movie directed with great style by Andrew Stanton. Incredibly fun movie, hope it does better on DVD.
If John Lasseter is up for the position Disney could do no better. The man knows how to create real movies that people can genuinely enjoy. The Princeton/Yale/Harvard set only know how to gut companies and squeeze money from them, But Lasseter knows how to create and build value. That’s not something you can teach in a class.
…a ridiculously fun movie directed with great style
And black is white and up is down. Who do you work for?
Disney has been ruined by political correctness and leftism ever since the mid 90′s. It’s become the ‘G’ rated version of the left. Disney’s politics is a smack in the face of Disney himself. The lovable mouse has turned into a stinking rat.
Rich Ross failed because as an openly Gay man who made his mark pushing girls stuff for Disney Tweens, he has no clue as to what young men want. And they want … guy stuff. Not tweener things that Rich Ross knows best. He was basically a failure with Disney XD, failing to draw boys in.
It was not marketing, or lack of message discipline that made John Carter not click with guys. It was instead over twenty years of bad action movies that failed to deliver, and a script, and leading lady that failed to excite.
There was no clear villain, nor clear victory for the hero. The leading lady was older (age 35) and didn’t appeal frankly to the young male audience who seemed to find her like a younger friend of their mothers. She was a fine actress, just too old. The whole point of the story is a Civil War vet travels to Mars, kicks behind, wins a girl worth winning. What showed up onscreen was a confusing, flash-back driven mess that was too long, with too many characters, no clear villain, and again a leading lady that did not arouse the sort of emotion the film clearly intended. All this was obvious to me as I saw it.
Ross failed, and failed completely. My take is that being a Gay man gave him insight into teen/tween girls. But left him at sea with young men. He had no clue that they’d find the story cold and uninviting. But his biggest failure has been to develop anything that appeals to young men.
Disney entertainment wise is COMPLETELY dependent on young women and tweener girls. That’s who shows up to see their stuff, and buys their merchandise. Marvel is IIRC essentially outside Ross’s direct supervision, it just goes along independently. Like Pixar.
Look at ABC. Not a single show there on that network than any straight man could tolerate for more than five seconds. And that’s the farm team for Disney’s entertainment strategy, along with their tweener empire. That’s the whole point of being a mega-entertainment corporation, synergy. [And of course the seamy side of Disney's Tweener empire leaves them open to massive lawsuits when inevitably one of their graduates sues, and pierces the corporate veil to big-time payouts.]
The biggest talent gap in Hollywood is execs who have any clue what guys want to see on screen. The endless promotion of diversity, and women and gays into the corporate suite, have left them unable to even buy a clue as to what that audience (guys) want to see.
Come to think of it, there is not one single, solitary show on ABC’s current schedule that we bother with, nor NBC either. We would rather watch a re-run of Pawn Stars or American Pickers than suffer through the mindless drivel on those networks.
Maybe Disney, and Hollywood in general, will finally get a clue that real men aren’t the emasculated buffoons they love to portray on TV and in movies. I am not a fool or the constant butt of jokes at my house and I daresay most other men aren’t either.
Playboy’s objectification of women as sex toys and the marginalization of men by woman’s libbers has done incalculable damage to the culture. With help by a socialist nanny state in which men are altogether left out of the family unit, it is no wonder we have roving gangs of feral youths preying on society because they don’t know any better, never having guidance from a loving father.
Fireproof and Courageous made good money for a reason. People crave decency and spirituality, two qualities in short supply in the entertainment industry. As long as people pay to have their values and intelligence insulted, Hollywood will keep turning out this crap. I for one, save my money.
I agree that although Lynn Collins is a fine actress, she is indeed too old to be the Dejah of the ERB books. But there is an important reason why they picked a more mature woman to play Dejah – namely because the writers completely changed her character. In the ERB books, Dejah had one job in life, and that was to be constantly “in distress” by being kidnapped or captured by bad guys, which required John Carter to be constantly rescuing her.
However in today’s diverse world of gay men and dominant women who double as warrior-princesses and kick-ass Buffy vampire slayers, we can’t have the leading woman in any movie need to be rescued by a man. So they made Dejah a scientist and a master warrior who didn’t need to be rescued by anyone. Thus a beautiful but older woman like Lynn Collins was needed to become a believable Dejah, rather than a helpless and air-headed 17-yr old cute chick. End of story.
Roark said it best I think. With the exception of The Muppets, virtually all this guy’s accomplishments are sad blemishes on Disney’s once good name. It seems that Disney started going downhill when they closed their hand-drawn animation department…
There still is a lot of money to be made in the market where Disney works. But Disney won’t be making it as long as they keep releasing half-baked stuff like John Carter, Prince of Persia, or Cars 2.
And above all, they need better production of their sitcoms so that adults can manage to be in the same room as the kids without wanting to wretch. The audio dynamic range painfully compressed; the themes are about people behaving badly, or about ridiculous relationship obsessions; the characters are flat; and the music repeats itself again, and again, and again, and again…
Honestly, that stuff is so bad that I have blocked those channels from my television.
We heard that Disney was doing away with the princess movies after Tangled. I read that Disney wanted to appeal to boys and the princess movies were not bringing in male viewers. I guess I would ask why get rid of something so profitable like their princess arena in order to go after the other sex? Can’t they do both at the same time? I don’t understand why they think they don’t make money off of movies like Tangled. My two granddaughters are everything Tangled. It was a great movie for girls and I haven’t met a woman with or without children that does not own a copy which translates to sales of other products for them also. I really don’t understand what Disney is thinking any more.
I plowed through “Disney Wars” (terrible read considering the good gossip it discussed) and I simply don’t understand why a company that is so successful and based on feel-good was so dysfunctional then and continues to be so dysfunctional even as we speak. Or maybe any company of its size has that level of bitter back-biting and Disney’s is just better reported. But I can’t think of any other company that’s gone through a slate of names like Eisner, Disney, Katzenberg, Ovitz, Jobs and now this latest, and seems to so struggle with simply doing a good job and being decent about it.
Oh well — Mel Gibson is looking for a new job.
Where’s Walt Disney when you need him? Disney is no longer the pristine program it used to be where anyone could go to one of their films with their families and know they will be entertained in a family friendly way. Bottom line is money but it could still be achieved by picking the family friendly films with perhaps a moral to the story (Gasp)!~