Disney Animation is Better Off Because Jennifer Lee ‘Stepped Down’

Why Disney Animation is Better Off Without Jennifer Lee and what her successor, Jared Bush, can learn from her tenure.

Almost exactly one year ago, I wrote a piece for this site and its accompanying newsletter entitled “The Magic of ‘Wish’: A Deep-Dive into Disney's Centennial Film” after attending a press junket in Hollywood promoting the aforementioned movie. The junket was spectacular, and I was completely enamored, as you can tell from the article. Perhaps it was my relative newness, but I was completely shocked when I set down to watch the movie over Thanksgiving. It was immediately clear that they picked and chose what clips of footage we previewed that day in LA very carefully in order to make the movie seem to be far better than it actually was.

Our host at that junket was Jennifer Lee, then the Chief Creative Officer of Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS), who also wrote the movie. Ms. Lee is a cheerful and charismatic speaker, and it was obvious that she loves Disney Animation and was ecstatic about her upcoming movie. After all, it was Disney’s centennial film, the culmination of one hundred years of storytelling greatness; and she wrote it.

And then the movie came out. It landed not with a bang but with a whimper. Only making $255 million against an estimated budget of $ 100-200 million [Side note: the industry rule of thumb is that a movie needs to make double its stated budget to break even, in large part due to marketing costs]. Now, in the age of streaming, occasionally a movie can do poorly at the box office but recover by gaining momentum on streaming. At Disney, it’s even possible for a movie to do poorly in theaters, gain momentum on streaming, and in turn sell oodles of merchandise and grow into a true franchise (think Encanto).

However, the honest truth was that Wish just wasn’t all that good and therefore didn’t resonate with audiences, so there was no hope of a merchandise-fueled rebound.

That brings us to the news that Ms. Lee would be stepping down from her role as Chief Creative Officer effective immediately to focus on writing and directing the third and fourth installments in the mega-blockbuster ‘Frozen’ franchise. Ms. Lee says that this is necessary in part because the third and fourth ‘Frozen’ movies are being made at once, as two parts of a single whole, something WDAS has never done before.

Make no mistake: That is not why Ms. Lee stepped down. In fact, I’d wager that she didn’t step down at all; she was removed from her position and graciously given an ‘out’ by Disney Studio Chief Alan Bergman.

After all, Ms. Lee’s tenure wasn’t exactly a success. Take a look at all the movies WDAS released during her tenure:

• Ralph Breaks the Internet

• Frozen 2

• Raya and the Last Dragon

• Encanto

• Strange World

• Wish

That’s not exactly a list of winners.

Yes, Frozen 2 and Encanto were huge hits, the latter financially and the former culturally, but literally every other movie on the list was either a disappointment or a flop both culturally and financially. One (Strange World) was so bad, per the New York Times, that a member of Disney’s board of directors promised to fire then-CEO Bob Chapek if it was released (Mr. Chapek was fired for unrelated reasons prior to the movie’s eventual debut).

How could this happen? Before Ms. Lee took the reins from former studio head John Lasseter, WDAS was releasing hit after hit that not only performed well financially but were actually good movies that both parents and children enjoyed together!

The answer: Ms. Lee was thrown into a role she was not prepared for to ease investors’ fears and to gain brownie points from members of the #MeToo movement who were frustrated following the ouster of Mr. Lasseter.

I truly believe that Ms. Lee was done a disservice by being placed into the CCO role. She should have been allowed to write and direct more movies at WDAS before being tapped for a leadership role. Think about how rare it is for a studio head to have only had three writing credits, one co-director credit, and zero executive producer credits under their belt before being catapulted into a role that requires you to combine elements of all three roles for literally every short and feature film coming out of the studio. That’s crazy!

Her successor, Jared Bush, has much of the same problems on his résumé, and only time will tell if he’ll be more successful in the role. His next movie, Moana 2, will certainly be interesting with it having originally been developed as a series for Disney+ without the creative talent of acclaimed songwriter Lin-Manuel Miranda. But the real test is yet to come, and Ms. Lee’s influence will be felt for years to come due to the studio’s long production pipeline.

I’m rooting hard for Ms. Lee, Mr. Bush, and the entire WDAS staff.