Disney's Newest Studio Chief Got The Job By Asking One Key Question

A few weeks ago, Walt Disney's president of motion picture studios, Sean Bailey, stepped down from his position at the company. He had been in that role for 15 years, and under his tenure, Disney went all-in on a plan to release live-action remakes of the studio's classic animated movies. All told, Bailey was responsible for making around $7 billion for Disney, a good percentage of which came from those live-action remakes. But now Bailey's out, and Disney appears to be heading in a new direction.

David Greenbaum, who has spent the past 14 years running Fox Searchlight (now Searchlight Pictures), has taken over, and in a recent article, Puck News reported that Greenbaum's pitch to Disney leadership that got him the job included a single question that summarized his approach to greenlighting things at the studio going forward: Does this movie need to exist?

That's the type of question that Disney seemingly has not been asking as of late — just look at misses like "Artemis Fowl," "Lightyear," and "Pinocchio," as well as under-performers like "The Little Mermaid" and "Haunted Mansion." But if that question indeed becomes the defining lens through which major projects are judged before they get the go-ahead, we could be in for an exciting new era of live-action films from The Walt Disney Company.

At a recent investor conference, Disney CEO Bob Iger admitted that despite the company having "not been that public about it," Disney has recently "killed a few projects already that we just didn't feel were strong enough." That, combined with the news of Oscar winner Sarah Polley no longer being attached to a live-action "Bambi" movie, has me wondering if Greenbaum's tighter approach is already being implemented at the studio. A report from IndieWire stated "there is a sense that Disney will focus more on originality and creativity rather than digging deeper into its IP library" under Greenbaum, and "there is an appetite internally for something new" at the studio. All of this doesn't necessarily mean that the days of live-action adaptations of Disney movies are done forever (there are still a few in the pipeline), but in a best-case scenario, we could be seeing some more original swings at the studio instead of the boring, tired approach they've been taking for years.

We spoke more about this and several other topics on today's episode of the /Film Daily podcast, which you can listen to below:

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