Bob Iger spoke yesterday about a range of topics, including Disney's purchase of Pixar in January 2006... that $7.2 billion purchase.
"No, we didn't overpay," he said, in response to a question. "It was clearly fully priced," he added, jokingly. "Maybe that's a euphemism.
Can we all agree that buying Pixar for the innovation-less Disney was completely, totally, unambiguously worth it? It put Steve Jobs on their board, made gabillions in merchandising from Cars alone, (he even announced rolling out a MMO video game environment based on the Cars universe), and the stock is up 9 points since he took over.
Oh, and Pixar happens to make incredible movies. Not only do they have a deal for Toy Story 3, but here's the newest Wall-E trailer. Can't wait.
He also discussed something else that caught a few eyes around the industry.
Iger said that since hooking up with Apple's iTunes a year and a half ago, consumers have downloaded 40 million-50 million episodes of Disney-generated TV shows and 4 million movies.
Now, most journalists just say, "whoa... those are big numbers," and leave it at that. I like to call that lazy journalism. Silicon Alley Insider, however, decided to do some homework... and I quote:
- Pali Research's Rich Greenfield estimates that Disney (DIS) is getting about $14.50 for each movie sold through Apple (AAPL). 4 million x $14.50 = $58 million.
- We estimate that Disney gets about $1.44 for each video it sells. 45 million x $1.44 = $64.8 million
- Grand total: $122.8 million: In other words, a little less than 10% of the $1 billion digital revenue goal Iger has laid out for his company this year -- and a rounding error for a company that generated $35 billion in sales last year.
Now... $123 million is truly nothing for a company of Disney's size, but it is all incremental revenue, as SAI reports. The net is that digital sales of TV and movies aren't going to be moneymakers anytime soon. I am curious though... how much does a Comcast make from VOD sales? Is it dramatically more than this... or generally on par?
I don't love Noah's writing, but his Summer Movie Preview is pretty complete, if nothing else. I find myself looking forward to Iron Man, Speed Racer, Indiana Jones, Get Smart (why open this on the same day as another huge comedy, The Love Guru?), Wall-E, Wanted, Hancock (could be Will Smith's first misfire in some time), The Dark Knight, Step Brothers, The X-Files sequel, Choke, Pineapple Express, Tropic Thunder, The International, Towelhead, Hamlet 2, and finally, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 (no, not really). 
