Dawn Steel Lands Deal With Disney Co.

Dawn Steel, the tough-as-iron former Columbia Pictures movie chief, has signed a deal to produce movies and TV exclusively for Walt Disney Co.

Steel’s move to Disney as an independent producer had been rumored since Sony Corp. bought Columbia for $3.4 billion last September. Sony immediately brought in producers Peter Guber and Jon Peters (“Batman,” “Rain Man”) to head Columbia, and Steel quit in January.

“There just wasn’t room for all three big egos over there,” said Alex Ben Block, the editor of the Hollywood newsletter Show Biz News.

Before joining Columbia, Steel was president of production for Paramount Pictures, where she was involved with hits such as “Flashdance,” “Top Gun,” “Beverly Hills Cop II,” “The Accused” and “Fatal Attraction.”

In November, 1987, she was hired as Columbia’s president, the highest position ever held by a woman in Hollywood. She replaced David Puttnam, a British filmmaker who alienated many powerful people in Hollywood with his attempts to buck the star system of inflated egos and salaries.

Steel is generally regarded as having stayed at Columbia for too short a time to prove herself as a studio chief.

A Disney release said that in addition to movies and TV, she will “develop other projects for the company” but provided no details.

Terms of her contract were not revealed, but David Hoberman, president of Disney’s Touchstone Pictures, said, “I think it is about as strong a producing deal as is out there, with one or two exceptions.”

The comment referred to deals such as the one Paramount has made with producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson, allowing them to make movies without approval from the studio’s head of production. Steel apparently will have to get such approval.