Rich Ross will be the new chairman of Walt Disney Studios

Jennifer McClelland | RSS | Tue, Oct 06 2009 | 0 Comments

Rich Ross is the guy behind the comeback of the Disney Channel, which was [once upon a time] doing very poorly. He is also the person you can blame for things like Hannah Montana and High School Musical.

And now he is going to be the chairman of Walt Disney Studios.

Ross will be taking the place of Dick Cook. Cook was fired in September because he did not come up with enough hit movies last year.

Disney Chief Executive Robert A. Iger had this to say about Ross,”Rich has an outstanding record of creating high quality family entertainment that delights audiences around the world. With his success in building the Disney brand across many of our businesses, his astute marketing sensibility, his proven ability in working effectively with talent and his skill at navigating complex global markets, I’m confident he is the perfect leader for our studio group.”

Of course, Iger sees dollar signs when he thinks about the franchises that Ross has started with the Disney Channel. I wonder how much money Disney has made off of Hannah Montana. All I know is that if Ross never worked for Disney, perhaps I would not have to change the radio station every time the Party in the USA song comes on.

He is also the reason that stores are filled with Hannah Montana merchandise (and why they continue to be barraged with Disney Channel junk). He was able to take a year off the TV linked merchandise to retail outlet time it usually takes.

Disney, like all the movie studios, is having a hard time bringing in the audiences that it would like. Most of the movies that it has released in the past year have underperformed according to the studio. When you think about it though, the movies that the studio has released have all been junk. Disney was so out of ideas that it remade “Witch Mountain.” It also made a 3D movie about super spy guinea pigs…no wonder the studio was doing so badly.

The best thing that Disney has done is to partner with Pixar. At least Pixar’s movies are good, if not great for the most part.

Perhaps these movie studios need to change their entire creative departments. The movies that are coming out are getting progressively worse. I don’t know how many sequels can come out before the studios have diluted the original so much that the entire franchise is trash. What’s worse is that a lot of studios are trying to rush the sequels to hit movies so they can “hurry up and make money.” This almost always means that the movie will not even come close to the original as far as quality goes and the story will definitely be lacking.

Rich Ross has his work cut out for him.

Source

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Tags: quality family entertainment, witch mountain, hannah montana