A look inside Hollywood and the movies : DISNEY’S WORLD : Dollars for Dialing

It isn’t being called mad money--or even Mad Hatter money--but the news has people at Hollywood Pictures excited.

Creative executives at the Disney subsidiary in Burbank are being given $150,000 apiece--no strings attached--to come up with any projects that could lead to a movie.

At Disney, where ideas have traditionally trickled down from Jeffrey Katzenberg and his top lieutenants, the possibility of lower-level executives having the money and freedom to pursue their own projects is seen as an attempt to shake up creative minds at the studio.

The idea came to Katzenberg the week before last when he took creative executives from Hollywood Pictures on an annual retreat to Park City, Utah.

“It was a total spur-of-the-moment thing,” said a studio source. “Jeffrey was listening to the discussions. He didn’t bother to talk to (Disney’s) legal (department).”

Katzenberg was in Park City this past week holding another retreat with the creative executives of Disney’s other studio, Touchstone Pictures. It was not clear whether a similar plan would be offered to those executives.

Hollywood Pictures President Ricardo Mestres said the move at his studio is intended to bring new types of Disney movies to the screen. In the past, many Disney films have been criticized as low-budget, “high-concept” films that seek profitability but receive little critical praise.

In the past year, Hollywood Pictures has put out a string of films on relatively low budgets including the box-office hit “The Hand That Rocks the Cradle,” as well as such less successful films as “Consenting Adults,” “Encino Man,” “Medicine Man” and “A Stranger Among Us.”

“Once a year, we get together and have a general discussion about our business,” Mestres said of the Utah retreat. “I think the push these days is to get out of the routines and strike out and try and find different avenues.”

The money will be distributed to between 10 and 12 creative executives at the studio.

“They can do anything they want,” said one studio source. “The charge is to develop anything that could become a movie project. Someone could commission a novel. Someone could commission a play. Someone could give a new director an opportunity to do a short film or they could commission a screenplay.”

Under the plan, neither Katzenberg or Mestres will have a say in how the creative executives spend the money, but the two executives will assess at a later date how well their people used it. The only strings attached are how well they are judged at a later date to have spent the money.

“They can’t go shopping,” one source quipped. “The idea is to buy a project or to get a writer. It’s not to go to buy sweaters.”

“This is not mad money,” Mestres said. “This is an opportunity for people to explore areas they are genuinely passionate about and that also have the potential to be successful movies.”