''DisneyWar'' is a book that serves as an exposé of

Michael Eisner Michael Dammann Eisner ( ; born March 7, 1942) is an American businessman and former chairman and chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company from September 1984 to September 2005. Prior to Disney, Eisner was president of rival film ...

's 20-year tenure as chairman and CEO at

The Walt Disney Company The Walt Disney Company, commonly referred to as simply Disney, is an American multinational mass media and entertainment conglomerate headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios complex in Burbank, California. Disney was founded on October 16 ...

by James B. Stewart. The book chronicles the careers and interactions of executives at Disney, including

Card Walker Esmond Cardon Walker (January 9, 1916 – November 28, 2005), commonly known as E. Cardon Walker or Card Walker, was an American businessman who served as a top executive at Walt Disney Productions from the 1960s through the 1980s. He was born i ...

, Ron W. Miller,

Roy E. Disney Roy Edward Disney Order of St. Gregory the Great, KCSG (January 10, 1930 – December 16, 2009) was an American businessman. He was the longtime senior executive for the Walt Disney Company, which was founded by his uncle, Walt Disney, and his ...

Frank Wells Franklin G. Wells (March 4, 1932 – April 3, 1994) was an American businessman who served as President and Chief Operating Officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until his death in 1994. Life and career Wells was born in Coronado, Califo ...

Jeffrey Katzenberg Jeffrey Katzenberg ( ; born December 21, 1950) is an American media proprietor and film producer. He served as chairman of Walt Disney Studios (division), Walt Disney Studios from 1984 to 1994, a position in which he oversaw production and busin ...

, Michael Ovitz,

Joe Roth Joseph Emanuel Roth (born June 13, 1948) is an American film executive, producer and director. He co-founded Morgan Creek Entertainment in 1988 and was chairman of 20th Century Fox (1989–1993), Caravan Pictures (1993–1994), and Walt Dis ...

Bob Iger Robert Alan Iger (; born February 10, 1951) is an American media executive who is chief executive officer (CEO) of the Walt Disney Company. He previously was the president of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) between 1994 and 1995 and p ...

and Stan Kinsey. It was published in 2005 by

Simon & Schuster Simon & Schuster LLC (, ) is an American publishing house owned by Kohlberg Kravis Roberts since 2023. It was founded in New York City in 1924, by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. Along with Penguin Random House, Hachette Book Group US ...

. Its uniqueness was attributed to the large amount of access allowed to Stewart in putting the book together. Publishers originally planned on releasing the book on March 7, 2005, only to accelerate the launch date to February 9 after

vendor In a supply chain, a vendor, supplier, provider or a seller, is an enterprise that contributes goods or services. Generally, a supply chain vendor manufactures inventory/stock items and sells them to the next link in the chain. Today, these term ...

demand, and Disney executives had acknowledged recently acquiring a leaked edition of the manuscript. By coincidence, the revised publication coincided with Disney's annual shareholders meeting, which kicked-off the following morning at the Minneapolis Convention Center. In his 2006

afterword An afterword is a literary device that is often found at the end of a piece of literature. It generally covers the story of how the book came into being, or of how the idea for the book was developed. An afterword may be written by someone oth ...

, author James B. Stewart acknowledged the last conversation he had with his subject (just before the book's initial launch, over the phone):

'''Eisner vowed that he’d never speak to me again.

Content

Stewart's book describes some of the following: *

and

Stanley Gold Stanley Phillip Gold (born September 10, 1942) is the former president and CEO of Shamrock Holdings, Roy E. Disney's private investment company, from 1985 to 2013, and is currently serving as chairman of its board of directors. He was on the W ...

's removal of Disney CEO Ron W. Miller in 1984. * Stan Kinsey's clash with

over creating films using computer animation. * The struggle to get ''

Who Framed Roger Rabbit ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' is a 1988 American fantasy comedy film directed by Robert Zemeckis from a screenplay written by Jeffrey Price and Peter S. Seaman. It is loosely based on the 1981 novel ''Who Censored Roger Rabbit?'' by Gary K. Wol ...

'' made in time and on budget despite the ambitions of

Robert Zemeckis Robert Lee Zemeckis (born May 14, 1952) is an American filmmaker known for directing and producing a range of successful and influential movies, often blending cutting-edge visual effects with storytelling. He has received several accolades incl ...

and Richard Williams to make the film bigger and bolder. * Eisner's tension with

before Wells's death. * Eisner's friendship-turned-rivalry with

. * Eisner's tension with Michael Ovitz during Ovitz's short-lived presidency. * Sold off both foreign and domestic rights to '' The Sixth Sense'' (1999) (while still in production; Eisner also forced out the studio executive responsible for acquiring the property), only for it to become the live-action studio's biggest box-office success. * The purchase of the

ABC Family American cable television, cable and satellite television network Freeform (TV channel), Freeform was originally launched as the CBN Satellite Service on April 29, 1977, and has gone through four different owners and six different name changes dur ...

channel and content, and the fallout resulting from Disney's inability to revive it. * Eisner attempting to shut down the first ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' movie. *

's abrupt resignation on November 30, 2003. * The

Comcast Comcast Corporation, formerly known as Comcast Holdings,Before the AT&T Broadband, AT&T merger in 2001, the parent company was Comcast Holdings Corporation. Comcast Holdings Corporation now refers to a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation, not th ...

hostile takeover attempt. *

Hilary Duff Hilary Erhard Duff (born September 28, 1987) is an American actress, singer, author and businesswoman. She is the recipient of List of awards and nominations received by Hilary Duff, various accolades, including a World Music Awards, World Mus ...

's decision to quit

Disney Channel Disney Channel is an American pay television television channel, channel that serves as the flagship (broadcasting), flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company ...

because of low salary. *

Pixar Pixar (), doing business as Pixar Animation Studios, is an American animation studio based in Emeryville, California, known for its critically and commercially successful computer-animated feature films. Pixar is a subsidiary of Walt Disney ...

's decision not to renew its relationship with Disney. * Financing of the 2004 documentary film '' Fahrenheit 9/11''. * The 2004 shareholders' meeting that led to Eisner's resignation as chairman. Michael Eisner was still CEO of Disney when ''DisneyWar'' went to press. He finally agreed to step down in March 2005, eventually abdicating executive oversight to

, less than a month after ''DisneyWar'' debuted.

Reviews

A ''

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

'' article by journalist David Lieberman stated that the story "may not sound like a page turner, but ''DisneyWar'' is." He referred to Stewart as an "accomplished storyteller who had the luck or foresight to stake out a company filled with colorful executives in a glamorous business—at the moment investors decided they had had enough".

Editions

References

2005 non-fiction books Books about Disney Simon & Schuster books Books by James B. Stewart Michael Eisner Jeffrey Katzenberg {{Disney-stub