Jeffrey Katzenberg
Jeffrey Katezenberg was the chairman of The Walt Disney Studios (a major division of The Walt Disney Company) from 1984 to 1994.
Katzenberg was in the meeting when Greg Weisman pitched Gargoyles to Michael Eisner for the second time in 1992. While Eisner rejected the pitch, Katzenberg told Weisman the next day to keep on working on it. Weisman reminded Katzenberg that Eisner killed it as both a comedy and an action-adventure, but Katzenberg assured him that Eisner liked it – he just thought it needed 'work'. Given his experience as Director of Series Development, Weisman knew when a show wasn't greenlit and has postulated in the years since that Katzenberg must have liked the pitch. Weisman ended up not changing the show, but changing the pitch and cutting it down considerably.
Six months later, when Weisman pitched Gargoyles again, Eisner greenlit it. After the meeting, Katzenberg pulled Weisman aside and said, "you added a lot to that, didn't you?". Weisman responded, "Yes, I did."
Tensions between Eisner and Katzenberg led to Katzenberg's resignation in August 1994, beginning a string a corporate restructurings that proved detrimental to the future of Gargoyles. He would later be a cofounder of Dreamworks SKG, with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen.
See Also
- Jeffrey Katzenberg at Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia
- Jeffrey Katzenberg at the Internet Movie Database