I n 2002, when Graham Hopper was tapped to head Disney 's videogame operations, his bosses gave him a choice: Come up with a dramatic plan to reinvigorate the flailing unit or downsize and focus exclusively on licensing to other companies. It was far from an obvious choice. At the time, many Hollywood studios were getting out of the games game—Universal Studios, 20th Century Fox, and DreamWorks dumped the divisions they had launched during the digital boom of the 1990s, having learned the hard way that the ability to make successful films and television shows didn't mean squat in the interactive world. Producing quality videogames required hundreds of millions of dollars and years of patience. Hopper convinced his bosses to hang on—with a small footprint, making cheap games based on Disney Channel fare like Hannah Montana and Kim Possible . Just five years later, that decision has put it ahead of the pack, as Hollywood goes hurtling back into videogames. Paramount and Universal are spending tens of millions of dollars to create a new slate of products, and MTV and Warner Bros. have invested hundreds of millions to build themselves into major publishers. When Hollywood exited videogames five years ago, it was riding high on revenues from DVDs. Today, home entertainment is shrinking, box office is flat, the TV audience is increasingly splintered, and significant internet money remains hypothetical. Why executives are nervous about us ...
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