Conventional wisdom held that preteen girls comprised too small a market for feature films, that girls would go to boys’ movies as dates or friends, but that boys would shun girls’ movies. But Disney’s The Parent Trap, starring Lindsay Lohan in a 1998 remake of the Disney classic starring Hayley Mills, had unexpectedly grossed $92 million, showing that the market existed. As a result, The Lizzie McGuire Movie was immediately put into development. Hilary Duff would also make her singing debut, and there were plans for a sound track recording from Disney’s struggling Hollywood Records as well as a future Hilary Duff debut album, positioning her as the next Britney Spears. Hopes were even high for a Hilary Duff series on ABC prime time that would chart Lizzie McGuire’s course through high school.
There was only one cause for concern in this whirl of Disney-generated marketing opportunities: Hilary Duff was the daughter of Susan Duff, an exceptionally demanding and tenacious stage mother. It wasn’t lost on Susan Duff that Disney had built a marketing empire on the back of her good-looking and infectiously cheerful young daughter. Susan controlled every aspect of Hilary’s career, including approval of her costumes, hairstyles, makeup, songs, choreography, housing, transportation, and diet. During filming in Rome, where the fictional Lizzie is taking part in a postgraduation class trip, filming came to a halt during a night scene involving 200 extras and a crew of 150 while Susan negotiated with a producer over an extra fifteen minutes of shooting time. After arguing for at least that long, Susan finally said, “So. What are you willing to do to smooth things over and make Hilary happy?”
“What do you suggest?” the producer asked.
“Well, Hilary would very much like to swim at the Wall Center when we get to Vancouver,” Susan said, referring to the film’s next location. The Sheraton Vancouver at the Wall Center, the Duffs’ preferred hotel, had been booked, but a membership at the adjoining spa seemed like a small price to pay, so the producer agreed and filming proceeded.
The Lizzie McGuire director, Jim Fall, heard little from Disney management during shooting, but after a screening of the nearly finished film in Burbank, Dick Cook came up and said, “I can smell a hit, and this is it.” He proposed a sequel, and offered Duff a two-picture deal, including $3.5 million for a sequel plus a $500,000 bonus if The Lizzie McGuire Movie grossed $50 million. Susan said they wanted $5 million. She also wanted a producer credit for herself, and wanted Disney to pay her cell phone bills.
In the midst of these negotiations, Susan acquired a script for a Cinderella remake in which the Cinderella character falls for a boy over the Internet and wins his heart at the school dance. She shopped the project to every studio but Disney, and Cook was furious when he found out. He withdrew the two-picture offer, and the Hilary Duff Cinderella Story went to Warner Bros. Still, negotiations for a Lizzie McGuire sequel, as well as another season of cable programs, proceeded. As the opening of The Lizzie McGuire Movie approached, Cook increased the offer to $4 million plus the $500,000 bonus.
Lizzie McGuire opened on April 26, 2003. Reviews were beside the point: The screenwriters realized that the very qualities that critics like Roger Ebert lamented—“The Lizzie McGuire Movie celebrates popularity, beauty, great hair, lip gloss and overnight stardom”—were exactly the things that the target audience (and their mothers) obsessed over. Lizzie McGuire earned more than $17 million, the film’s cost, in its opening weekend. Within three weeks, the gross had exceeded $40 million, and it seemed sure to surpass the $50 million mark. Susan demanded Hilary’s $500,000 bonus.
Cook refused on principle. She’d get the bonus when gross passed the target, and not before. But he reiterated the $4 million offer. Susan said she wanted $4.5. Cook refused to budge, and gave her a deadline of May 8. The designated hour came and went, with no word from Susan or Hilary’s lawyer or manager.
The next morning Susan called. “Okay, we’ll take the deal.”
“You missed the deadline,” Cook replied.
That same day, May 9, Disney announced that negotiations for a sequel and an extension of the television series had ended. “Disney thought they’d be able to bully us into accepting whatever offer they wanted to make, and they couldn’t,” Susan told Entertainment Weekly. “We walked away from a sequel. They walked away from a franchise.”
While Cook officially made the decision, the tactic had all the hallmarks of Eisner’s stubbornness, determination to stand on principle, and to drive a hard bargain that had been on display throughout his career. But Roy Disney, for one, thought that Susan Duff had a point. He lamented the loss of Duff in a conversation with Gold, noting that both Justin Timberlake and Britney Spears had once been in the Disney fold.
From Disney’s point of view, the “Lizzie McGuire” franchise was already waning, with or without a new deal with Hilary Duff. She was getting too old for the “tween” market, and too expensive for an uncertain future as a teen star. Cook was vindicated in one sense: Box-office receipts fell off drastically for The Lizzie McGuire Movie, and it never reached the $50 million gross that would have triggered the bonus. Still, it’s hard to see what was so important about missing a deadline by a day, when the two sides were so close to reaching a deal, and Susan had ultimately capitulated to Disney’s demands.
Although Hollywood Records released Hilary Duff’s album, Metamorphosis, her next film project—a remake of Cheaper by the Dozen—went to Twentieth Century Fox.
“Lizzie McGuire” continued in reruns, but the once-promising marketing juggernaut expired. Disney turned to its next candidate for cable crossover stardom, the Disney channel’s Raven-Symone, star of “She’s So Raven,” who’d begun her acting career as a three-year-old in “The Cosby Show.” Even better, as Eisner pointed out, Disney should promote an animated character, who made no demands and had no mother—Kim Possible, the tween superhero of “Kim Possible.”
On June 11, 2003, Eisner has invited me to a creative meeting of the feature animation team, led by Schumacher’s replacement, David Stainton. Eisner usually attends these meetings once or twice a month. Roy isn’t there, although Stainton says he would have been welcome. (Roy says he was told to stay away from the meetings after Schumacher left.) This is a lunch meeting. The group picks up sandwiches and beverages and sits around a conference table. On an easel are boards with upcoming release schedules: Teacher’s Pet and The Incredibles for 2004, Heffalump for 2005.
Stainton notes that Heffalump is based on a Winnie-the-Pooh character. “We’ve never done a heffalump,” he says. “Consumer products wants more characters.”
Eisner nods. “Get consumer products behind this,” he urges.
Pam Coats says she has a new title for another project, Angel and Her No Good Sister. Dolly Parton is the voice of one of the characters.
“It’s cute,” Eisner says. “But it feels small…”
“I like it,” Stainton injects. “It’s automatic conflict.”
Eisner nods. “I like it. The title changes the whole movie.”
They turn to a discussion of the script. “We don’t want you to shoot this down,” Coats tells Eisner. He’d read two acts of Angel and hadn’t liked it. The story revolves around a “curse of the blue egg.” In the current version, Coats explains, “Elgin says, ‘Love can overcome the curse.’ He gets knocked out; they haul Elgin to Rose…”
“What do you mean, knocked out?” Eisner asks. “He can’t be unconscious for three days. He can’t be in a coma or on life support…”
Someone explains, “It’s a Gulliver’s Travels thing.”
“He can’t be out cold,” Eisner continues.
“It keeps the love story alive,” Coats practically pleads.
“Well, I like the Gulliver’s Travels angle,” Eisner says, though he doesn’t sound convinced.
Three features are vying for the Christmas 2006 release date: Gnomeo and Juliet, Fraidy Cat, and Wilbur Robinson.
“I’m not in love with any of them,” Eisner says.
Stainton points out
that Gnomeo and Juliet has Elton John writing the score.
“Can we get three hits out of Elton?” Eisner asks.
Stainton volunteers that “Chris [Montan, president of Walt Disney Music] is beating up Elton on this. He likes the first two songs. Elton is on his game.”
The discussion turns to Christmas 2007. Eisner has just read a script for Rapunzel. “Someone told me a woman with long hair is old-fashioned,” Eisner says.
“That’s why this has to be a Legally Blonde–type comedy,” replies Mary Jane Ruggels, another creative vice president.
“Sleeping Beauty was 1938,” Eisner says. “The ending was forced. Like Treasure Planet—it just ended. It wasn’t funny or clever. Are you sure you can save this? Is Ice Queen better?
“You mean Snow Queen,” Ruggels says.
“I love the Taming of the Shrew idea,” Eisner says. “Take Martha Stewart. She’s tough, smart—a worthy adversary. If she was a doormat of a woman, no one would be after her. Marlo Thomas used to call me about marketing ‘That Girl.’ She said, ‘If I was a man, I’d be president of the network.’ ”
Eisner expresses some reservations about the team assigned to Snow Queen, then adds, “John Lasseter. If we make a new deal with Pixar…”
Stainton jumps in: “You mean when we make a new deal with Pixar.”
“I said to John, you can have Snow Queen. He loved it. John said, ‘I want to do a princess movie.’ ”
Eisner asks for the Snow Queen synopsis.
“The Snow Queen is a terrible bitch,” Ruggels says. “When her suitors try to melt her heart, the Snow Queen freezes them.”
“Each one should be a phony, but different,” Eisner says of the suitors.
“Then along comes a regular guy,” Ruggels continues.
“This is perfect!” Eisner exclaims. “I’m afraid to hear more.”
“The regular guy goes up there, he’s not that great, but he’s a good person. He starts to unfreeze her…she melts.”
“It’s great,” Eisner says. “Finally. We’ve had twenty meetings on this.”
“We’ll have a treatment in two weeks,” Ruggels promises.
“Can we have this for 2006?” Eisner asks.
“No way,” Coats says.
More ideas are tossed around: Frog Princess, Rumpelstiltskin, You Don’t Know Jack About the Beanstalk, Hansel and Gretel (with a twist: the kids are obnoxious, the witch likable), Mother Goose as a sassy, Queen Latifah type; and something, maybe Aida, that would feature an African “princess.” Eisner worries that Aida is still too live-action. “What’s the Howard Ashman piece we can layer on?” he asks, one of several times Ashman’s name has come up in the meeting.
“This is good,” Eisner concludes, “a good start.” He gets up to leave. “I love Snow Queen.”
As the July release date of Pirates of the Caribbean approached, Eisner was clearly nervous. Disney had the opportunity to market a line of Pirates products—Depp, Rush, and Orlando Bloom had even been measured for Pirate dolls based on their characters—but in the end, consumer products passed, in part on grounds that the plot was too convoluted for the film to be a hit.
Much like Pearl Harbor, it had been a nearly constant battle to get Pirates to the screen, which wasn’t all that surprising considering the stars and director were gleefully undermining Disney’s straitlaced image right from the beginning. At Depp’s insistence, the first table read of the script was held not at Disney’s headquarters or at Bruckheimer’s office, but in the windowless Viper Room in West Hollywood. The place was dimly lit and even at 8:30 A.M. reeked of cigarettes and alcohol. The Disney executives looked uncomfortable, much to the delight of the Pirate cast.
During the first days of production, Depp showed up with gold-capped teeth, heavy eyeliner, a braided goatee, and sideburns for a hair and makeup test. “I’m nudging toward Keith Richards here rather than Errol Flynn,” Depp said in an aside to Geoffrey Rush.
“Fantastic,” Rush said. He could practically see the Disney executives’ jaws drop at the sight of Depp.
Disney executives were indeed taken aback. “We should talk about the teeth,” Brigham Taylor, the production chief, said to Nina Jacobson, the studio head, as they walked out of the test. The hair, the braids, the capped teeth—they had to go. Depp flatly refused. A meeting was convened with Depp and the Disney executives, with Bruckheimer mediating. “Look,” Depp protested. “You do your thing, this is mine. This is my circle, and you’re not allowed inside my circle.”
“We just want the audience to see more of you,” Taylor diplomatically countered.
Finally a compromise was reached. Depp agreed to reduce the gold teeth to three in return for keeping the braided goatee and the eyeliner. But when filming began, Depp slipped some of the gold caps back on.
Even after the hair and makeup test, Disney executives were unprepared for the sashaying gait, slurred speech, and stoned demeanor that Depp brought to the role. When Taylor saw the first dailies, he called Jacobson. “Everyone has to talk about this. It’s a significant choice he’s making here. I mean, what are we buying with our money?”
Taylor sent the dailies to Cook and Jacobson, who was out of town. When they all spoke by phone, Cook was amused by Depp’s eccentric portrayal. “I think it could be great,” he said. Jacobson was worried. “I think this could be genius or it could be a crazy risk. I’ve got to talk to Johnny and find out why.” Eisner himself weighed in after seeing the dailies: “We’ve hired the sexiest actor in the world and he looks like this?” Not to mention the stereotypically gay mannerisms. Eisner launched into an account of his King David story, in which Richard Gere had worn a skirt and earring, with disastrous results at the box office. But as Disney executives continued to worry, filming proceeded, and Depp brought a consistency and level of conviction to the role that in the end brought them around, albeit grudgingly in some cases. Cook promised Eisner that camera angles could be used to minimize the teeth and facial hair.
Director Gore Verbinski firmly backed Depp, but he was fighting his own battles with Cook, Jacobson, and Taylor, mostly about the budget. He quit or came close to quitting at least four times, and there was talk on the set that Disney would fire him. After one meeting with Verbinski, Bruckheimer, Cook, Jacobson, and Taylor that had devolved into a shouting match, Bruckheimer told Verbinski that it was the worst meeting he’d ever endured as a producer, which was saying a lot. There were numerous compromises: Verbinski got the expensive ship-to-ship battle he desperately wanted but not an interior shot of the longboats rowed by the pirates. The budget eventually pushed toward $150 million.
There was only time for one test screening of Pirates, which was in Anaheim, close to the theme park that inspired the film. The audience seemed captivated and laughed knowingly at visual references to the ride—the dog outside the jail holding the key in his mouth, the redheaded prostitute in the sequence where the town is burned. But it was hard to draw many conclusions from one test. (In a subsequent London screening, the references to the Disneyland ride passed without any audience recognition.)
Eisner was worried about the expense, Depp’s portrayal, the length, but most of all the title. He disliked Pirates of the Caribbean and was afraid associations with the theme park ride would hurt the movie with the key teenage demographic, who would assume the movie was for children. He also wanted something that would lend itself to sequels if the film was a hit, like Raiders of the Lost Ark. Finally he agreed to settle for a subtitle: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
This brought howls of protest from just about everyone, even Taylor and other Disney executives. The Black Pearl was the name of the ship commanded by Barbossa, and thus figured in the plot. But the ship had nothing to do with the pirates’ curse. Verbinski thought it was nonsense. Eisner refused to back down. The Curse of the Black Pearl remained the subtitle, although on most posters and trailers the words were so small as to be barely visible.
Pirates of the Caribbean opened on July 9,
a Wednesday rather than the usual Friday, and after the critical July 4 period. Conventional wisdom was that a summer blockbuster had to be out by Memorial Day, July 4 at the latest. Reviews were mixed: Elvis Mitchell in The New York Times found it “an often frenetic, colorful and entertaining comic adventure,” while critics in Chicago and Los Angeles panned it. But nearly everyone found Depp’s performance to be riveting. “Depp and Rush fearlessly provide performances that seem nourished by deep wells of nuttiness,” wrote Roger Ebert in the Sun-Times. “Depp in particular seems to be channeling a drunken drag queen, with his eyeliner and the way he minces ashore and slurs his dialogue ever so insouciantly. Don’t mistake me: this is not a criticism, but admiration for his work. It can be said that his performance is original in its very atom. There has never been a pirate, or for that matter, a human being like this in any other movie.”
Like Disney executives, the critics—most well past their own rebellious youths—failed to gauge how unerringly Depp’s performance tapped into the irreverent instincts of moviegoing teenagers. Audiences burst into applause even before the movie was over. Verbinski kept the pace so brisk that audiences didn’t have time to puzzle over the convoluted plot that had worried Disney’s consumer products people.
Pirates of the Caribbean joined The Sixth Sense as that increasingly rare phenomenon—a movie with “legs.” Backed by Disney’s marketing muscle and across-the-company promotions, Pirates had a good opening weekend with minimal competition. But ticket sales kept surging—Pirates was among the top five grossing films for a record twelve weeks. Many teenage boys saw it multiple times. Eventually, Pirates grossed $305 million in the United States, and $348 million internationally. And this time, Disney hadn’t sold off the profits.
Disney moved swiftly to capitalize on its new franchise, signing Verbinski, Depp, Rush, Bloom, and the winsome Keira Knightley to two sequels, to be shot simultaneously, like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Verbinski assured me that he and Depp will have more surprises for audiences—and for Disney. “We’ve already grafted the pirate genre with the supernatural. I think we’re fair game to go into everything from the Orient to sea monsters,” he said. “We have a wonderful opportunity to tie up loose ends and open the thing up, take the genre to a wild place. You don’t do something because it’s a sure thing. You don’t do something for the bank. That’s the one that flops. That’s a riskier proposition than doing something completely original. It’s risky to be safe.”
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