Six years ago, they paid $7B for Pixar.[1]
Pixar used to be a subsidiary of Lucasfilm.
This means that John Lasseter is now going to have control of all of the assets that allowed him to get into making movies in the first place.
Edit: Thought of better terms than "creative force".
These companies appear, at least to me, as the pinnacle of "career as a creative artist in film" employers - I doubt the personality of a board member / part-owner, even one with as much going for him as Jobs did, was ever the deciding factor in their ability to lure talent.
Jobs was the main driver of the creation of the innovative-layout of the Pixar HQ building. Lassater himself said that he truly believed that the way the building was structured led to better collaboration and creativity -- ie. a better environment, which would drive more people.
It's not that people think, "Jobs is involved -- yay!" Rather it's the culture that Jobs helped create and helped nurture that people would find attractive. Many, many other leaders with different priorities would likely end up inadvertently squashing the open collaboration and creativity that made Pixar successful to begin with, rather than nurture it, preventing success and preventing new talent from choosing Pixar.
He was the one who saw Pixar as being a brand (i.e. a modern day Disney) rather than just an anonymous studio. Kids are buying and trusting the Pixar brand not the Disney brand. So to be able to set that all up (e.g. equal billing) required a vision for what the company could be.
Steve was responsible for Pixar. John was responsible for Pixar's movies.
Steve Jobs invested in Pixar because of the hardware. When that didn't fly, the shorts and commercials being done by Lasseter (that paid the bills) turned into a gamble to make a full-length movie. This whole "branding" thing didn't come until the first movie was a success.
Pixar was the success coming from the genius and hard work of three people:
- Ed Catmull for all the tech
- Steve Jobs for the money, the vision through a dark maze and negotiating the first deal with Disney (Toy Story). Yes, he had second guesses, yes, Pixar almost became a division of Philips, etc
- John Lasseter. CalArts. Kicked out of Disney for believing computers were the future, 'hanged in there' at Pixar, as an 'Interface Designer', responsible for giving the human touch to Pixar movies, even the first ones (Luxo Jr, Adventures of Andre and Wally B - pre Pixar) probably helped Steve Jobs 'see the light' on Pixar
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20121018/01054720744/hollyw...
1.1B should be about it. But on paper for the tax man it's mostly like 500Mi loss
On top of that, you get extra bonuses such as Indiana Jones and all its associated merchandising.
Disney just bought itself a nice constant revenue stream that will keep generating golden eggs so long as Star Wars remains a core part of American culture.