Will Rich Ross really have a positive impact on Disney's movie operations?

Quite frankly, though, I don't see anything encouraging about Ross's regime. As far as I'm concerned, it probably will be business as usual for the studio.

He's firing people, which is understandable. But is he cutting costs? Sure, Disney will probably say that he is, but who knows what's really going on. The first thing he needs to do is hire new people who are willing to work for smaller compensation packages. If Disney truly wants to change the way it looks at generating returns from the movie business, it has to make sure that all expenses are reduced, not just the budgets allocated for movie development. Although the latter is obviously important as well. Is Ross prepared to fight the agents and demand that stars accept a lesser amount of millions and no percentage of the gross? I have my doubts.

I find the possibility that Ross will alter the DNA of movie marketing tantalizing, but I'm sure he won't be the catalyst that the industry is searching for. At the heart of the issue is the concept of doing one campaign for both theatrical and home-video releases. To accomplish this, you have to essentially release the DVD almost on top of the theatrical release. Seriously, is this guy going to be courageous enough to pull off such a disruptive mechanism? Theater owners will cry foul, and those within the studio system will be angry, too. Imagine if Toy Story 3 saw a two-week release before a DVD and an on-demand strategy were engaged: would Pixar execs let that happen?

Thing is, this is exactly what Disney needs. The Mouse must pull a Sarah Palin and go rogue against the industry. Sure, if the window buffering the theatrical run and the DVD street date was almost entirely collapsed, revenues would not be maximized. My answer to that: so what? Do it. When stars complain that their pictures aren't pulling in the grosses they should be pulling in, tell them they are. And if they don't like it, they can leave and go to some other studio.

Ask any exec at Time Warner (TWX), News Corp. (NWS), General Electric's (GE) NBC Universal, or Viacom (VIA), and they will agree that the studio model must come up with fresh ideas. No one has the guts to mutate and adapt, however. You can call me skeptical to the extreme on Rich Ross.

Disclosure: I own Disney, GE; positions can change without notice.