The Walt Disney Company
From Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia written in simple English for easy reading.
The Walt Disney Company, commonly nicknamed Disney, is one of the largest entertainment and media companies in the world. It was started in 1923 by Walt Disney and his brother, Roy Oliver Disney, as the Disney Brothers Cartoon Studio. It had the name of Walt Disney Productions from the 1930s to early 1986.
Disney Enterprises Inc. is a subsidiary of the company; the name is found in many of its franchises.
Contents |
[edit] Divisions
The company's main units are Studio Entertainment, Parks and Resorts, Media Networks and Consumer Products.
[edit] Studio Entertainment
This unit, also called the Walt Disney Studios, is headed by Chairman Dick Cook. It consists of:
- The Buena Vista Motion Pictures Group — movie studios Walt Disney Pictures, Touchstone Pictures and Hollywood Pictures. Also in the group are Miramax Films and Dimension Films, which are yet self-operated in New York City.
- The Buena Vista Music Group — Walt Disney Records, Mammoth Records, Lyric Street Records and Hollywood Records.
- Distribution companies: Buena Vista International and Buena Vista Home Entertainment.
One of the Studios' largest assets lies in Walt Disney Feature Animation, which has made a successful string of animated movies for almost seven decades. Because of failures with most of their recent additions, it has changed its focus from traditional hand-drawn to CGI movies. Pixar, its biggest rival, dominates the latter industry.
[edit] Parks and Resorts
Worldwide, Disney has eleven theme parks (as of December 2006):
- Disneyland Park in California
- Disney's California Adventure in California
- Magic Kingdom in Florida
- Epcot in Florida
- Disney-MGM Studios in Florida
- Disney's Animal Kingdom in Florida
- Disneyland Paris in France
- Walt Disney Studios in France
- Tokyo Disneyland in Japan
- Tokyo DisneySea in Japan
- Hong Kong Disneyland Resort
Disney once owned the sports teams, the Angels (baseball) and the Mighty Ducks (ice hockey), both based in Anaheim, California. They are now the property of lone businessmen.
[edit] Media Networks
The ABC television network, which Disney bought in 1996, serves as the centre of this unit. Cable television channels within it include Disney Channel, Toon Disney, ABC Family, ESPN and SOAPnet. It also partly owns Lifetime, A&E and E!.
Buena Vista Television, responsible for the syndication of many Disney series, produces some of its own as well: Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Live with Regis and Kelly, and Ebert & Roeper.
[edit] Consumer Products
Merchandising and licensing within the company are overseen in this division. Disney Publishing Worldwide, part of this unit, has Disney Press, Disney Editions and Hyperion Books as its brands.
It once owned the Disney Store shopping chain until 2004. Jim Henson's Muppets have taken its place since then.
[edit] History
- 1928: First Mickey Mouse cartoons, Plane Crazy and Steamboat Willie
- 1929: Start of the Silly Symphonies: The Skeleton Dance
- 1932: First full-colour cartoon, Flowers and Trees
- 1934: First Donald Duck cartoon, The Wise Little Hen
- 1937: First full-length animated movie, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
- 1940: Studio moves to Burbank, California
- 1946: Much argued-over Song of the South debuts
- 1954: Walt Disney anthology series starts
- 1955: Disneyland opens in Anaheim, California
- 1955: First widescreen cartoon, Lady and the Tramp
- 1966: Walt Disney dies; his brother Roy takes over
- 1967: Last animated movie from producer Disney, The Jungle Book
- 1971: Walt Disney World opens in Orlando, Florida
- 1979: Don Bluth and friends leave the studio
- 1979: The Black Hole, Disney's first PG movie, is a failure with critics
- 1980: First home video: Dumbo
- 1983: Disney Channel is launched
- 1984: Touchstone Pictures starts with Splash
- 1989: The Little Mermaid brings new life in the animation division as well as the genre; studio gets its first Oscar in eighteen years for this movie
- 1990: Hollywood Pictures starts with Arachnophobia
- 1991: Beauty and the Beast is nominated for a Best Picture Oscar
- 1994: The Lion King becomes highest-grossing animated movie of all time
- 1995: Disney and Pixar's first movie, the CGI Toy Story
- 2003: Pirates of the Caribbean becomes studio's first family movie with a rating of PG-13
- 2004: Home on the Range ends official hand-drawn animated movie series
- 2005: Disneyland celebrates fiftieth birthday
- 2005: First self-made CGI movie, Chicken Little
[edit] See also
- Walt Disney Pictures
- List of Disney animated movies
- List of Disney characters
