Publishers originally planned on releasing the book on March 7, 2005,[2] only to accelerate the launch date to February 9 after vendor demand, and Disney executives had acknowledged recently acquiring a leaked edition of the manuscript.[3] By coincidence, the revised publication coincided with Disney's annual shareholders meeting, which kicked-off the following morning at the Minneapolis Convention Center.[4]
In his 2006 afterword, author James B. Stewart acknowledged the last conversation he had with his subject (just before the book's initial launch, over the phone):
'Eisner vowed that he’d never speak to me again.'[3]
Eisner's tension with Michael Ovitz during Ovitz's short-lived presidency.
Sold off both foreign and domestic rights to The Sixth Sense (1999) (while still in production; Eisner also forced out the studio executive responsible for acquiring the property), only for it to become the live-action studio's biggest box-office success.
The purchase of the ABC Family channel and content, and the fallout resulting from Disney's inability to revive it.
The 2004 shareholders' meeting that led to Eisner's resignation as chairman.[5]
Michael Eisner was still CEO of Disney when DisneyWar went to press. He finally agreed to step down in March 2005, eventually abdicating executive oversight to Bob Iger, less than a month after DisneyWar debuted.
Reviews
A USA Today article by journalist David Lieberman stated that the story "may not sound like a page turner, but DisneyWar is." He referred to Stewart as an "accomplished storyteller who had the luck or foresight to stake out a company filled with colorful executives in a glamorous business—at the moment investors decided they had had enough".[6]
^ abStewart, James B. (March 7, 2006). DisneyWar (First Paperback ed.). New York City, New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 535–536. ISBN9780743267090.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link)
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