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So it's reasonable to assume that Wasserman and Sheinberg wouldn't care to lose their franchise player to unrestricted free agency; they surely hope his new company will decide it's not worth setting up an elaborate distribution apparatus and will instead release its films through Universal. (Spielberg and Katzenberg say they would prefer that; Geffen says Warner Bros. would be a second choice.) But when Matsushita's bosses meet with Wasserman and Sheinberg this week, they may take the long Japanese view and decide they don't want to unload MCA -- least of all to Geffen and Spielberg. "I'm not sure Matsushita is a seller," says an entertainment analyst. "Besides, the Japanese might say, 'Don't two of these three guys work for us already?"'
Spielberg, ever loyal to Sheinberg, says that "as long as Sid is at MCA, our entire enterprise will be in some fashion aligned with MCA." Katzenberg is more circumspect: "We didn't get into this to be an equity owner-player- manager of MCA and its assets. I don't want to say there's no set of circumstances under which that can't happen. But it's not our purpose, and I don't like reading it that way."
Katzenberg fields other rumors and lobs them back. An alliance with Microsoft's Bill Gates? "Premature." How about an art-film division run by Bob and Harvey Weinstein, whose Miramax Films Katzenberg bought for Disney last year? "It would be wrong to speculate about that stuff, knowing they still have many years to go under the Disney contract." Will he raid Disney for animation talent? "I'm not in this to be a spoiler."
O.K., sure. But the new company wouldn't exist if Katzenberg hadn't been dumped at Disney -- a fact that must be provoking second thoughts on Dopey Drive. Now the besieged mouse factory faces serious competition in a business it dominates, feature-length cartoons, from Katzenberg, who helped perfect the modern Disney cartoon style. If Katzenberg has a mission other than to run a state-of-the-industry multimedia company, it is to duplicate the artistic and commercial success of recent Disney animation. In Hollywood, revenge is a dish , best eaten in public -- at the box office.
That's down the road. Even an established studio takes 18 months to get a movie from script to screen. And an animation unit takes three or four years to fine-tune a feature. Soon the Big Three will be obliged to step out of the p.r. spotlight and into the crucible of creation. But for them, and maybe even for consumers, the future rolls out like a red carpet. Spielberg, after all, redefined the role of movie director; Katzenberg helped redefine the animated film; and Geffen, in many media, kept redefining himself. If these guys don't make entertainment more entertaining, they'll have a lot to answer for.