Jan 9, 2019

Breaking: 9 days after leaving Disney, John Lasseter was named head of Sky Dance Animation

Just nine days after his job at the Walt Disney Company officially ended, the disgraced former head of Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios John Lasseter has been hired by Skydance Animation as the head of their animation studio.

John Lasseter will report to Skydance Media's CEO David Ellison, and will start the job in Los Angeles later this month.

UPDATE: The industry reaction to Lasseter's hiring has been harshly negative. Women's organization Time's Up says that Lasseter's hiring is “condoning abuse” and “endorses and perpetuates a broken system that allows powerful men to act without consequence.”

In his new role, Lasseter will be responsible for setting the overall strategy and creative direction for Skydance Animation. He will drive the division's artistic growth, overseeing production and operations across an animation slate for all media.

Among Skydance's announced projects: Luck, directed by Alessandro Carloni and written by Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, and an Untitled Action Fantasy, directed by Vicky Jenson and written by Linda Woolverton. Skydance also recently snagged Tangled director Nathan Greno from Disney; Greno will direct the original feature Powerless. Skydance has a partnership with Madrid's Ilion Animation Studios (Planet 51, Paramount's upcoming Wonder Park), where its films are being animated.

Lasseter said in a statement:

Skydance has a long-term deal with Paramount Pictures, and their new animation division will output some of its films through Paramount Animation.

Skydance also recently acquired live-action film and television rights to the French superhero-romance animated show Miraculous – Tales of Ladybug & Cat Noir. If you'll remember a post we did a few months ago, we suggested that Lasseter could be working with the show's creators. It's not clear if he'll be working with them through this new job, but both Zag and Lasseter are now connected to different divisions of the same company.

The news of Lasseter's hire will be disappointing to many, but it shouldn't be surprising. At the time of the meeting with Zag, we wrote, “[This] is a reminder of Lasseter's status in Hollywood: Disney may not be able to work with Lasseter, but there's plenty of Disney competitors that would be thrilled to have him on their team.”

Ellison, who is the son of billionaire Larry Ellison and brother of Annapurna Pictures' Megan Ellison, tried to address Lasseter's many reports of sexual harassment in a letter that he wrote for the hiring. Here is the full note from Ellison about their decision-making process to hire Lasseter:

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