That's not some new cartoon creature. It's the ill will purportedly held by Disney Chairman Michael Eisner towards ex-Mouse executive Jeffrey Katzenberg.
The two mega-moguls are fighting over $250 million. That's the amount Katzenberg, cofounder of DreamWorks SKG, believes Disney owes him under the terms of what his lawyer Bert Fields calls a "success-based contract."
A partial settlement of the dispute was reached in November 1997, but the valuation phase of the lawsuit began today in Los Angeles in front of a judicial referee, retired Judge Paul G. Breckenridge Jr., with Fields making the case that his client had been treated harshly because of the "personal animus of one man," Eisner.
Fields contends that during Katzenberg's 10 years as head of Walt Disney Studios, the film company surged from last place to first place with operating income growing from $2.3 million in 1984 to $186.3 million in 1988. Katzenberg says he's entitled to 2 percent profit from the more than 700 projects he helped develop, including the animated hits The Lion King, The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast.
All those movies continue to rack up huge profits in merchandise spinoffs and music rights--which Disney contends were not included in Katzenberg's deal. Disney also alleges that when Katzenberg's contract was renegotiated in 1988 he agreed to forfeit the 2 percent bonus if he terminated his contract. Katzenberg left Disney in 1994 when Eisner failed to promote him to the No. 2 slot, vacant following company president Frank Wells' death in a helicopter crash. (In his 1998 book Work in Progress, Eisner accused Katzenberg of secretly pursuing his own agenda, telling him, "I don't trust you in the same way I did Frank.")
Eisner's version of the contract negotiations will be aired in court tomorrow, but don't look for a report on Disney-owned ABC. "It's not the kind of story we would cover on a daily basis," said an ABC News spokesperson. Disney had tried to bar all press from covering the lawsuit on the grounds that its trade secrets might be exposed.