Disney’s very expensive mistake: how the firing of a man who made the film studio billions cost them even more ‘after being their greatest rival

In the mid -90s, the Walt Disney Company Jeffrey Katzenberg fired, the executive that was generally credited for reviving the flagging fortunes of the studio and heralding a golden age of animation.

In addition, they may have made one of the most expensive mistakes in the history of the Hollywood company.

Jeffrey, now 74, did not only go together with Dreamworks SKG with Steven Spielberg And David Geffen, but under his leadership the new studio soon became Disney’s most formidable competitor in animation.

It was a turn that few could have predicted in the industry, but Jeffrey’s journey from Disney’s Inner Circle to rival Mogul reformed the landscape of modern entertainment.

Jeffrey’s film career started in 1974 when he became a member of Paramount Pictures as the assistant of the chairman, Barry Diller.

His work ethics and ambition soon became clear and after a short time he was promoted to work directly under production Michael Eisner, according to the La.

He became a familiar lieutenant and soon supervised big hits such as Saturday Night Fever, Grease and Beverly Hills Cop.

And when Eisner Paramount left in 1984 to become CEO of Disney, Jeffrey followed him, appointed chairman Walt Disney Studios during a time of considerable decline.

At the time, Disney’s animation division was almost collapsed. Jeffrey immediately started reforming unity, scraping under -performance projects and helping to complete a handful of decent successful films.

But his real impact came with the Little Mermaid, the first film about which he had complete creative control.

It became a huge cash register and signaled the beginning of what is now known as the Disney Renaissance.

Under the leadership of Jeffrey, Disney produced a series of hits, including beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King.

These films raised billions of dollars, revitalized the reputation of the company and restored animation as a dominant power in global cinema.

But Jeffrey’s influence reached beyond the animation. He supervised all filmed content of the studio, from films and television to home video distribution.

He also played an important role in launching Disney’s touchstone photos and producing a series of adult-oriented comedies such as Good Morning, Vietnam, Dead Poets Society and Pretty Woman.

Under his influence, Disney rose from the bottom of the Box Office rankings to become the most successful studio in Hollywood by the end of the 1980s.

He launched Hollywood photos together, supervised the acquisition of Miramax and Greenlit the Historic Partnership with Pixar, which resulted in the production of Toy Story.

But even with these achievements, Jeffrey’s relationship began to deteriorate with the company.

He had always been a very ambitious manager and in 1993 he even sought promotion to president of the company.

But after the early death of the then President Frank Wells in a helicopter crash the following year, CEO Michael Eisner Jeffrey decided not to promote the empty role.

According to Jeffrey, Eisner had previously assured him that the position of him would be available, he said The Hollywood Reporter.

Instead, Eisner stepped into the role itself, reportedly under pressure from Roy E. Disney, who felt uncomfortable with Jeffrey’s aggressive style and growing influence, the La reported.

Jeffrey left the company in October 1994, completed its contract but passed his departure with bitterness.

And shortly thereafter he brought a lawsuit against Disney and claimed that he owed bonuses and back -wages. The case was eventually established outside the court in 1999 for a reported $ 250 million.

In the same year, Jeffrey started a new chapter in his career that the animation industry would change again.

With the encouragement of Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Dreamworks SKG founded only two months after leaving Disney.

He was given the primary responsibility for the animation department of the studio and started to rebuild it.

Initially the studio experimented with both traditional and stop-motion animation and produced titles such as the Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run and the Road to El Dorado.

But the big breakthrough came in 2001 with Shrek, a computer-animated satire of the traditional fairy-tale stories that Disney had made popular.

Shrek was not only a commercial hit, but also a critical success and won the very first Academy Award for the best animation function.

The humor appealed to both children and adults and established a groundbreaking new tone in family entertainment.

It has also produced a franchise of billion dollars, complete with follow-up, merchandise and spin-offs that have passed for more than two decades, with the next Shrek film that came to the cinema at the end of 2026.

Before he asked his time early, Jeffrey acknowledged that the future of animation was in computer-generated images.

After the commercial failure of the traditionally animated Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas in 2003, which lost more than $ 100 million to the company, he shifted Dreamworks completely to CG animation.

This transition led to a series of hits, including Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda and how you can train your dragon.

By the mid-2000s, Dreamworks Disney’s most serious competition had become in the animation market, both in terms of Box Office performance and cultural influence.

In 2016, Jeffrey Dreamworks -entertainment to NBCUIVERSAL SOLD for a stunning $ 3.8 billion, Awn reported.

He personally received an estimated $ 500 million from the deal, which brought a lucrative end to a chapter that had started with his dismissal from Disney more than two decades earlier.

It seems that Disney’s decision to remove him in 1994 was rooted in internal politics and personal rivalry.

But the company created a competitor who would challenge its dominance for years.

In the story of Hollywood’s modern animation era, Jeffrey is a central figure, not only for what he built, but for what he built after he apparently was told that he was no longer necessary.