How does recession impact Pixar, Disney animation companies?
By Paul Nelson A University of Utah alumnus is sitting on top of one of the most powerful companies in Hollywood. But what can his company do to keep from being hurt by the recession? He’s the head of two major animation studios, and even he, at one time, had doubts of his animation skills. Pixar Animation and Disney Animation Studios President Edwin Catmull said, “By the time I got ready to go to college, I came to believe I couldn’t draw well enough.” He added, “I now know in retrospect that I had the skills that I could have gotten there.” Catmull says tough economic times can make people revert to behavior that’s worked in the past to avoid risk, which doesn’t always work. “Something will go wrong. So, your measure is not whether you avoid risk or not. It’s what you do when things go wrong,” he said. Catmull says even his companies haven’t grown to recession-proof status yet. “We’re always at the edge of having something disastrously go wrong. I think part of the trick is just to r
