2 More Executives Leave Walt Disney’s R&D; Arm

Two more top executives said Tuesday that they have left Walt Disney Imagineering, the company’s research and development arm, to join a high-tech start-up company.

Bob Weis, who supervised the creative design of Disney MGM Studios in Orlando, Fla., and the renovation of Tomorrowland at Disneyland, and Marshall Monroe, who helped design numerous attractions at Disney theme parks, said they have joined Z.com, an Internet entertainment company formed by Idealab, the Pasadena high-tech incubator firm.

The announcement of their departures follows by days that of two other top executives, research and development director Bran Ferren and Danny Hillis, vice president of research and development, who are leaving Imagineering to start their own firm.

Like Ferren and Hillis, Weis and Monroe said they were leaving Imagineering to pursue broader opportunities in entertainment and technology.

They noted that entertainment on the Web is still in its infancy, with no clear indication of what format or style will be artistically successful or attract a mass audience.

“Imagineering’s core business is in theme park design and the hard facts of new properties,” Weis said. “The Web is fast and furious.”

The two said they were leaving on amicable terms. “We both had really positive experiences and great colleagues at Imagineering,” Weis said.

But they also indicated that the kind of experimentation in Internet-based entertainment they hope to conduct is better suited to a start-up than a traditional media conglomerate such as Disney.

“One of the most interesting things about the Internet to me is that it’s a fusion of lots of different media,” Monroe said. “That’s something we’re going to pioneer. A start-up’s an ideal format to do so because it’s going to blur a lot of boundaries.”