Bailey: 'Our job is to build worlds'

Disney's president of production Sean Bailey, above, speaks at Variety's Entertainment and Technology Summit on Monday.

A little more than a year after taking the role as president of production at Walt Disney Studios, Sean Bailey feels more at ease with the differences of his former role as producer to being a studio executive."You sure say 'no' a lot more," Bailey said during a keynote discussion with Variety group editor Tim Gray from Variety's Entertainment and Technology Summit at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Marina del Rey."The trick of this job is how be proactive and manage the agendas (of filmmakers) while advancing your own," Bailey said.Bailey certainly has a lot to manage, overseeing a slate of six to eight live action pics for the Mouse House whose 16-pic release schedule each year now also features four films from DreamWorks, and two from Walt Disney Animation and Pixar, as well as Marvel.What that's meant is focusing on the kind of films Disney will make moving forward under the leadership of studio chairman Rich Ross.The duo's first four titles, "Prom," "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides," "The Muppet Movie" and "Frankenweenie," have since been followed by "Oz, the Great and Powerful," "The Haunted Mansion" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" reboots and a potential greenlight for a bigscreen version of "The Lone Ranger," among others.While "Prom" didn't perform as well as the studio had hoped this weekend, pic fits in with Disney's plans to make smaller films that provide "lower risk and give you potential upside," Bailey said.Studio wants to make six to eight tentpoles with smaller films balancing out the rest of the schedule, including "The Odd Life of Timothy Green," which recently wrapped.In picking those tentpoles, however, Disney is being cautious and is choosing properties that can spinoff sequels but also boost the bottom lines of Disney's other divisions, from music to consumer products and the theme parks. Bailey and Ross are eying the potential for each tentpole to serve as the hub of a wheel, with spokes branching out that can serve as their own storytelling mediums."Our job now is to build worlds" and "build characters and mythologies that can live across platforms," he said.The reason is that "consumers are getting smarter" and "demanding" their entertainment across all platforms, Bailey said. "A cool movie is just as cool as a cool TV show or cool videogame."At the same time, the creative community is also developing ideas that can live as a film, videogames, TV shows and other content."They're thinking about storytelling across all platforms," Bailey said. "This is the storytelling capital of the world and it's a wonderful time to see what that means now."Bailey, who was a producer on "Tron: Legacy" before landing the prexy post at the Mouse, was upbeat on the pic's performance. Film has crossed the $400 million mark, but studio has yet to decide whether to greenlight a sequel.After a successful launch of consumer products, soundtrack release, theme park integration like its ElecTronica party and recent homevid launch, property still has an animated series to bow this fall on Disney XD."We are very happy with the result," Bailey said, adding that "Legacy" has earned more than the "Star Trek" reboot, first two Jason Bourne pics and first installments of "The Fast and the Furious" franchise.Whether to greenlight a third "Tron" all comes down to identifying whether "people understand the brand," Bailey said. "Do we have a footprint in people's consciousness?""With 'Tron' we got things right," Bailey said, including working with the videogame developers, the writers and designers of the animated series and consumer products arm to "achieve a consistency" in the overall world seen in "Tron: Legacy."That same strategy will likely be seen new takes on "Haunted Mansion" and "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea" that Bailey is developing with Guillermo del Toro and David Fincher.While those helmers are unusual choices to shepherd a Disney pic, "these folks want to make a great Disney movie and that's a great help for my job," Bailey said. "We want to be creatively ambitious and test the boundaries."Again, not every Disney film needs that kind of company wide effort built around it."For smaller movies it's a wonderful bonus if it's there, but it's not a must-have," Bailey said. "It's important to not let that definition constrain you."As for the rollout of premium VOD services and other digital delivery methods for movies, Bailey suggested that the biz try to refrain from attacking one another and instead "look at the opportunities and challenges" that each new technology offers."We must look at what is really going on rather than be fear-based," Bailey said.

Contact Marc Graser at marc.graser@variety.com

Source: http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118036265?categoryid=13&cs=1&cmpid=RSS%7CNews%7CLatestNews

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