Almost every job in Hollywood that is involved in actually making movies is freelance. People are hired for a specific movie. They work on that film and then have to go find other jobs. Animation was unique because people were actually employees and not contractors. It made sense an animated films takes years to make and it's more skill driven than most other film occupations. Becoming a good animator requires years of practice, being a grip or gaffer just takes a union card.
One of the big changes that started at Disney, and accelerated by Katzenberg over at Dreamworks, was to run animated films like "regular" movies. The concept was to hire/fire animators on a project-by-project basis, just like everyone else in town. As both Disney and Dreamworks quickly found out, that process doesn't make a lot of great movies.
Companies like Pixar and Blue Sky are kind of a middle ground. They employee animators, but the company as a whole can be contracted to work at one studio or another. Pixar makes the movies it does because they have a strong team of people who work well together.
I suppose if Disney wanted to rebuild their in house group they could. Jobs hard to come by in any field about town. The real question would be the caliber of people youd get. What happened to The Secret Lab, Disney's treatment of the traditional animators and the labor camp CGI training routine are all well known. So yes, you'd get people applying but the applicants would show the same loyalty to Disney that Disney showed to them the first time around.
My instinct tells me Eisner was hard nosed with Pixar over Toy Story 2 because a) The Secret Lab was going to blow them away and b) Pixar without a Disney contract would be a shell of a company so that c) Eisner could buy them for pennies on the dollar in the future.
Except Pixar produced a string of mega hits and made them a major player. Disney's own efforts misfired and then were completely abandoned. All Pixar has to do is sign a deal that not's worse than the one they have with Disney and Wall Street will love them even more. Any deal will certainly be financially better, and there are much better distributors around (say GE/NBC/Universal with theme parks, movies, and a prime time series on the #1 network
but you didn't hear that from me). Instead of Eisner having the upper hand, Pixar does.
"AV, please clarify your position. It seems you are saying that if ME allowed TS2 to count toward the five Pixar would have extended the deal..........to 7?, 9?, 20?, indefinitely?...........and wouldn't be exploring their options for when that extended contract (if it materialized) ended. Is that what you are trying to say?"
At the time I think both groups wanted an extremely long term relationship. Pixar wanted to make movies and not worry about distribution and stuff; Disney found a tremendous source of new characters for the parks and merchandise. There was also a great sense of respect between Disney Feature Animation and Pixar. The guys up north wanted Disney's expertise in character and storytelling (like understanding the core of Toy Story isn't "toys come to life", but the relationship between Woody and Buzz), the guys down south wanted all the technical marvels that could make their animation even more spectacular (like the ballroom sequence from Beauty and the Beast where the animation soared).
The relationship soured at the top and spread down. An interesting exercise is to watch all the extras on the DVDs for Pixar movies. There are a lot of Disney people in the material for Toy Story. But by the time you get to Monsters, Inc. Disney is represented by the already fired President of Feature Animation doing a separately filmed in a broom closet far away from Pixar. And the chimp
does the phrase "monkey on our backs" have any relevance?
I think the reason the relationship is so bitter is because everyone had so much hope for it. The worst divorces are always between people who were the most passionately in love with each other when they got married. The same thing happens to companies.
