Eisner Tapped for Villain Role in Upcoming Pixar Film

The Writers Guild of America has got it all wrong. The architect of its financial mistreatment in the entertainment industry isn’t the Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers. Nor is it that lousy DVD deal it agreed to 20 years ago, which gives writers, directors and actors a combined 20 cents for each DVD sale–30 cents less than the sum given to manufacturers of DVD packaging material. It’s that damned Steve Jobs who, with his iTunes and economies of digital distribution, has mucked up a perfectly good end-of-life business model.

At least according to former Disney CEO Michael Eisner who, in his keynote conversation at the Media and Money conference today, suggested that Apple is eating up the digital media profits the Writers Guild wants a larger share of. The studios “make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners,” Eisner said. “They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple. If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.”