Animation Whiz John Lasseter May Just Be the New Walt Disney

Who’s the hottest director in the movie business today with a so-far flawless track record? Not Steven Spielberg.

It’s John Lasseter, the unpretentious 42-year-old animation whiz who directed the huge hit “Toy Story 2,” just released by Walt Disney Co. With three blockbusters in three tries, Lasseter is in the unheard-of position of batting 1,000 in the movie business.

Despite his success, Lasseter is relatively invisible in Hollywood. He doesn’t live in Bel-Air or the Palisades, but rather in Sonoma in Northern California’s wine country, commuting to an industrial park near a refinery in Point Richmond that houses his toy-filled office at Pixar Animation Studios.

Many see him as the emerging Walt Disney of the computer animation generation.

That seemingly would make him the target of every Hollywood studio to throw a blank check his way for his services. But Lasseter is financially, contractually and, most important, creatively joined at the hip to Pixar, its majority owner Steve Jobs and the team of animators he’s assembled. What’s more, by all accounts, he’s content where he is, enjoying a rich package of stock options and the kind of creative freedom awarded very few.

“He’s created a universe in which he is very, very happy,” Disney animation chief Tom Schumacher said.

With the “Toy Story 2” sequel already a box office behemoth, based on its $80-million-plus Thanksgiving debut, Lasseter is now 3-for-3 with last year’s holiday hit “A Bug’s Life” and the original “Toy Story” in 1995.

As Disney Studios Chairman Joe Roth likes to say about Lasseter: “Everything he touches turns to gold, both on an artistic and financial level.”

If Lasseter lived in Hollywood, notes Roth, “we’d think of him like we think of Steven Spielberg and George Lucas.”

Not unlike “Star Wars” creator Lucas, Lasseter, who has five sons, lives a relatively quiet life in Northern California.

He also is well rewarded financially. Pixar, unlike Hollywood studios that lavish big paychecks and perks on executives, is modeled more on Silicon Valley technology companies. High-level employees such as Lasseter, whose official title at Pixar is executive vice president of creative development, hit the jackpot through stock options.

Executive pay expert Graef Crystal estimates that Lasseter has earned about $60 million in pay, bonuses and gains on stock options since Pixar went public in late 1995. It would be more, but Pixar’s stock has been erratic lately, in part because of concerns that the company’s production schedule doesn’t call for another movie until 2001.

Lasseter also gets bonuses based on the domestic performance of each film, so “Toy Story 2” will no doubt fatten his wallet further. Although he’s not in Spielberg’s financial league, what Lasseter makes is still a lot more than any director in the animation genre ever has.

So valuable is Lasseter to both Disney and Pixar that a favorable deal Pixar renegotiated with Disney in 1997, in which the two split both the costs and profits of the animated Pixar movies Disney releases, hinged on Lasseter’s signing a new seven-year contract.

Not only that, Disney covers 50% of Lasseter’s annual salary, now at $816,480 with 8% annual increases, according to documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Lasseter also got a $250,000 bonus from Pixar in 1998.

Disney also split with Pixar the cost of paying a $1.25-million signing bonus to Lasseter in 1997, according to the SEC documents, which also show that Pixar cannot fire Lasseter without Disney’s approval. In addition to distributing and marketing Pixar’s films, Disney owns 5.2% of Pixar’s stock.

Lasseter, who has a staff of more than 400 working under him, also gets a few less valuable perks, according to his contract. He’s entitled to one video and one DVD copy of any movie he directs; gets invited to the premiere of any film he directs, with first-class travel to the event; and his office must be within 30 miles of Pixar’s current headquarters (the contract says he’s approved the location of the new headquarters Pixar is building in nearby Emeryville).

Although Lasseter, who owns about 2% of Pixar’s stock, is contractually committed to Pixar until 2004 and appears to be very comfortable there, his great success raises questions about his future prospects.

Lasseter was unavailable for comment, as he is in Buenos Aires promoting “Toy Story 2.” But people around him insist that he’s content.

“Any company would kill to have John Lasseter working for them because he’s so immensely talented,” said Lasseter’s Los Angeles attorney, Nancy Newhouse Porter. “But he’s got a situation he’s really happy with. It’s so hard for me to imagine him working somewhere else.”

Lasseter won’t be directing the next film Pixar will produce, tentatively titled “Monsters Inc.” and to be released in 2001, but he will oversee the production creatively as executive producer. He has, however, decided on a new film to direct, but that information is being kept secret for now. One reason: Lasseter is still smarting from DreamWorks SKG’s decision to make the computer-animated film “Antz” and release it just ahead of “A Bug’s Life.” Lasseter publicly accused DreamWorks and company principal Jeffrey Katzenberg, Disney’s former studio chief, of ripping off Pixar’s idea. DreamWorks has denied the allegation.

It’s certainly plausible that Lasseter could someday start his own business. There’s no doubt he could find ready backing in Hollywood. But people close to Lasseter note it’s not as simple as that. Assembling the critical team, as well as the technology Pixar has pioneered, would take years and cost huge sums of money.

In February 1997, after the success of “Toy Story,” which grossed $360 million worldwide, both Lasseter and Pixar renegotiated the more lucrative deals. In addition to the signing bonus, Lasseter received stock options to buy 125,000 shares of Pixar’s common stock at about $14 a share. During the last two years, the stock has mostly traded between $30 and $50 a share. In Nasdaq trading on Thursday, Pixar closed at $42.38, off 31 cents.

Jobs, the personal-computer pioneer who is head of Apple Computer, is the chairman and chief executive of Pixar and owns nearly two-thirds of the stock, having bought Pixar in a spinoff by Lucas in 1986. But as Walt Disney Studios President Peter Schneider puts it: “Artistically, it’s John Lasseter’s company. It’s rare for an artist to have the resources, and the control of those resources, to do what you want to do.”

As an animation director, Lasseter oversees all creative aspects of a film, but he often shares directing credit with one or two others. Lasseter’s admirers say that what sets him apart is his writing and storytelling, not his technical skills. He was nominated for a best original screenplay Oscar for “Toy Story,” won a special Oscar for the film, and he also has won an Oscar for best achievement in an animated short film, for 1988’s “Tin Toy.”

Pixar owes Disney four more original movies--of which “Monsters” is one-- and Lasseter must direct at least one of the four.

Lasseter, who was born in Hollywood and grew up in Whittier, first approached Disney about his interest in animation with a letter he sent while still in high school.

He became the second student accepted into Disney’s then-newly sponsored animation program at California Institute for the Arts in Valencia.

After apprenticing at Disney during summer breaks, Lasseter was hired by the studio’s feature animation division after graduating from CalArts in 1979. He worked on such films as 1981’s “The Fox and the Hound” and 1984’s “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.”

After three years there, Lasseter--who in his youth had operated the jungle cruise ride at Disneyland--became fascinated with computer animation, a passion Disney didn’t share at the time.

He left the studio in 1984 for Lucasfilm, where he stayed for a month before joining the computer animation group of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic and working on the feature “Young Sherlock Holmes.” He joined Pixar after Jobs bought the computer animation division from Lucas.

The success of “Toy Story”--the first full-length computer animated movie and Lasseter’s feature directorial debut--gave him the kind of instant credibility that he’s clearly had no problem sustaining.