Bob Iger Praises Keira Nightly [sic], Proud Of All His Cast Members
An amused operative from within the Disney corporate family shared with us this company-wide e-mail in which Head Mouse in Charge Bob Iger pats his underlings on their collective back for Pirates of the Caribbean 2's record-shattering™ performance. But in his exuberance to reach out and personally touch the inboxes of his cast members, Iger may have neglected proofreading his missive, tragically misspelling the name of one of his stars and redundantly referring to the Pirates franchise as "something that will be enjoyed by generations of people for generations." Ever the perfectionist, Iger eventually corrected his mistake. Says our operative: "Two hours later he sent out the exact same memo with the spelling corrected. No mention that he had gotten it wrong the first time. At Disney, we don't acknowledge mistakes." An excerpt from the memo [boldface ours]:
From: Iger, Robert [mailto:Robert.Iger@disney.com] Sent: Mon 7/10/2006 9:06 AM To: Subject: 7/10/2006 - Pirates
I try to send these when we have legitimate news to convey, or when I feel it's important to communicate something special or important, and this is one of those occasions. Actually, it's about as perfect an occasion as I can think of.
This past weekend, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" broke the U.S. box office record for a non-holiday opening weekend, bringing in an incredible $135.7 million over its three-day opening.
This is a great achievement for the Studio and a wonderful moment for the company, which we should all savor. I want to congratulate Dick Cook and everyone at The Walt Disney Studios. They put their hearts, souls and creative guts into this, and the results are simply fantastic. Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinski, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Nightly all deserve our thanks and praise too. Everyone involved in this project has created a valuable and enduring franchise for the company, something that will be enjoyed by generations of people for generations.
Should the idea of reading Iger's entire memo make you feel like Tinkerbell is trapped in your pants and occasionally brushing up against your naughty parts, the full text follows after the jump:
From: Iger, Robert [mailto: xxx@disney.com] Sent: Mon 7/10/2006 9:06 AM To: Subject: 7/10/2006 - Pirates
I try to send these when we have legitimate news to convey, or when I feel it's important to communicate something special or important, and this is one of those occasions. Actually, it's about as perfect an occasion as I can think of.
This past weekend, "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest" broke the U.S. box office record for a non-holiday opening weekend, bringing in an incredible $135.7 million over its three-day opening.
This is a great achievement for the Studio and a wonderful moment for the company, which we should all savor. I want to congratulate Dick Cook and everyone at The Walt Disney Studios. They put their hearts, souls and creative guts into this, and the results are simply fantastic. Jerry Bruckheimer, Gore Verbinski, Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Nightly all deserve our thanks and praise too. Everyone involved in this project has created a valuable and enduring franchise for the company, something that will be enjoyed by generations of people for generations.
Consider these statistics:
· Highest three-day opening in U.S. box office history (passing "Spider-Man's" $114.8 million back in May of 2002).
· First film in box office history to pass $100 million in only two days.
· Friday's U.S. opening gross of $55.5 million is the highest single day gross in box office history (passing "Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of Sith's" $50.0 million last year).
· Internationally, "Pirates" opened in seven territories, which represent 24% of all overseas markets, grossing $46.6 million, which is an all-time record in those combined regions (passing the previous record of $45.6 million by "Harry Potter 4," which went on to earn more than a half-billion dollar overseas).
· "Pirates" is the 51st film in Buena Vista history to pass $100 million at the U.S. box office, the most of any studio.
I also want to point out we reached another milestone this weekend, with Disney/Pixar's "Cars" passing the $200 million mark. This will be the 12th film in our company's history to reach this remarkable level of success and will tie Disney with Fox at 12 as co-industry leaders (at least until "Pirates" gets there!).
The success of these films speaks to our company's fervent commitment to creating universally appealing entertainment for consumers to enjoy around the world.
All of this is quite an achievement thanks to a truly global effort, in which we can all take great pride.
Bob