The L.A. Weekly is your basic urban tabloid for the pony-tailed ennui-ridden Green Party-member set that is all about how the corporation du jour is secretly in cahoots with Vice President Cheney to murder the spotted owls so they can oppress the valiant revolutionary undocumented lesbian inner-city goat herders of color.
That said, they do occasionally have some good journalism in the paper. If you can get through the college newspaper hysteria and hyperbole in the article, the gist of the piece is true. Eisner is very much disliked in Hollywood and that dislike has worn off on the company as a whole. Eisner was known even in his days at Paramount for being untrustworthy and for breaking agreements, now there isnt a single person in Hollywood that trusts the entire Disney corporation for anything. The Pooh lawsuit is only tip of a huge ice berg.* And any sentence that has the names "Disney" and "Pixar" in it must be written in the past tense.
Passing up movies in Hollywood is something that happens every single minute. There are legends surrounding all the people that passed on Star Wars and how they old regime at Disney passed on E.T.. Almost all of the times it happens is when the project is still in the script stage and theres usually a pretty good reason. There is a huge gap between a writers idea and a final film and most projects are drastically improved during the process. You can check out a lot of the earlier versions of the Star Wars script on-line and youll see. Most of them are flat out awful. When a studio agrees to do a movie, they are mostly agreeing to the potential that they see and are betting that the development process will produce good results. It's a bet made with millions of dollars and so it's not made lightly.
But what is unique about the major films Disney passed on is that the development process had been completed Disney knew exactly what it was going to get. For The Lord of Rings everything had been completed from the script to the costumes to the storyboards to the sets to the locations to the initial casting. In fact, Miramax had already spent over $20 million on the film by the time Eisner said no. Things were so complete that the director, Peter Jackson, was able to put together a thirty minute show reel of the film to present to other studios when Eisner killed the project. The quality of the final film wasnt in doubt at all, nor was the box office potential. Eisner simply didnt want to spend the money on something as risky as fantasy and preferred to spend it on the guaranteed success of Pearl Harbor.
The same situation with Black Hawk Down Disney knew exactly what it was getting when it killed the project. In fact, the script had been rewritten many times to satisfy Eisners concerns about the movie. Basically, he was concerned that the film would be seen as being critical of the Clinton Administration and of glorifying the military. Even after all of the backstory was removed from the script (like why all the soldiers were without any kind of support) and added scenes that basically hinted the Americans were the reason why the Somalia was starving, Eisner still thought the film was too political. So the producer took to script to the former head of Disney Studios (recently fired by Eisner) and the movie was made over at Sony (who got rich instead of Eisner).
Eisner passed on the rights to Harry Potter because he thought it would be nothing but a bidding war (and he was somewhat correct). I think this may have actually been a good decision on his part; I dont see how Disneys infamous micro-management could ever have gotten along with the authors protectiveness of the Potter characters. They would never have gotten along.
I havent heard all that much about Disneys involvement with Ice Age other than to hear that Blue Sky was looking for a Pixar-like deal with Disney. I dont know why they were turned down, but Fox is definitely the winner there.
Eisner has also passed on television hits like CSI and Scrubs (both co-produced with some Disney money) because he didnt think they would be successful. Like most series, they are being produced at a loss right now with the hopes that Disney can make a profit by selling the shows into syndication later. But whatever money they get it will be fraction of the amount they would have received had the shows been shown on ABC.
And yes Eisner is the one making all of these decisions himself. His reputation is well earned and he really does decide ABCs schedule, decides which movies to make and (like the up coming The Hot Chick) and even makes changes in the script. Hes even known to rewrite jokes and change single words of dialogue. Just one more reason why no one in Hollywood works with Disney anymore.
* - I think the reporter in this story is one of those being sued over the Pooh case. The rumors claim that Disney is suing several reporters who have covered the lawsuit; Disney is saying its trying to recover notes and documents from the reporters, the reporters are claiming it is harassment and intimidation. As it stands right now, the reporters are protected under California law from having to turn over any notes or from disclosing sources.
