Sam

"The impact of all these contractual provisions was crushing: until Pixar could release a film outside of the Disney contract, the most we could expect to earn from our first three films would be a few million dollars a year—and even then, only if those films ranked with Disney’s most profitable films ever. No one would invest in a company that had to perform at those levels in order to eke out a small profit. “Sam, did no one at Pixar understand these calculations?” “I’m quite sure Steve did,” Sam told me. “We walked him through all the terms and what they meant.”"

"Sam’s firm sent up the numbers. It was our first glimpse at the way films made money. At last, we could see how much studios kept from the box office revenues; what were reasonable assumptions for film marketing costs; when films were released in video, TV, and other markets; how much they made; the impact on profits of film production budgets and profit-sharing arrangements; as well as other details without which we’d never fully understand the business. To tailor the model to animation, we took up Disney’s offer to answer our questions about how the business of animated feature films worked. Before long we cobbled together our first model of how an animated feature film performed financially. It was rough and crude, at best. But it was ours. Over time we would learn how to perfect it. Right now, it was good enough to give us a start."