Author: Brooks Barnes / Source: New York Times
LOS ANGELES — Very little is known about Disneyflix, as some people in Hollywood are calling the Netflix-style streaming service that Disney plans to introduce late next year.
How much will subscriptions cost? Disney has given hints but no specifics. The name, rollout strategy, precise menu of movies and television shows — all still a mystery.
But one aspect is becoming clear: The service’s initial success or failure will depend a great deal on an ascendant Disney executive named Ricky Strauss, who was recently given — to the surprise of many in Hollywood — creative oversight of the service’s programming. He has the power to “greenlight” new episodic series and movies and will develop, according to Disney, the service’s “strategic content vision.”
Mr. Strauss, 51, is a respected promoter. Over the past six years, as president of marketing for Walt Disney Studios, he helped turn movies like “Black Panther,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Inside Out” into box office behemoths. He started his career in the advertising department of TriStar Pictures in 1988, eventually becoming a senior marketer at Columbia Pictures.
But standout success on the production side of the film business has been more elusive for Mr. Strauss.
In the late 1990s, as a production executive at Columbia, he shepherded films like “Go,” a crime comedy that received strong reviews but fizzled at the box office.
He had his own production company for a time in the early 2000s, delivering “The Sweetest Thing,” a moderately popular Cameron Diaz vehicle. He then became president of Participant Media, where, in collaboration with more established studios, he oversaw the production of hits like “The Help” and misses like “Fair Game.”Disney is building the streaming service as part of a make-or-break plan to address threats to its vast television business. What matters is that Mr. Strauss has a unique mix of skills. He has content and marketing experience — along with “an astute awareness of how audiences connect with the Disney brand,” as Kevin Mayer, chairman of Walt Disney Direct-to-Consumer and International, put it in a news release announcing Mr. Strauss’s promotion.
Known for his personal stylishness and diplomatic manner, Mr. Strauss also understands how to navigate Disney’s disparate kingdoms, which include Pixar, Lucasfilm and Marvel, all of which are already making content for the service. “He is hugely supportive of storytellers,” said Kevin Feige, president of Marvel Studios. He added that Mr. Strauss had exhibited strong “creative instincts and expertise.”
In his new job as president of content and marketing for Disney’s streaming service, Mr. Strauss will be responsible for steering hundreds of millions of dollars in production. As he put it in a brief phone interview, “Quality is going to be critical.”
A live-action “Star Wars” series coming to the platform from Jon Favreau, the director of films like “Iron Man” and “The Jungle Book,” is expected to cost roughly $100 million for 10 episodes. “‘Star Wars’ is a big world, and Disney’s new streaming service affords a wonderful opportunity to tell stories that stretch out over multiple chapters,” Mr. Favreau said in an email. He added of Mr. Strauss: “Marketing is about…
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