You know, we were all sitting around the AtAT offices the other day discussing possible plot developments when someone raised the issue of Disney buyout rumors. While the "Mickey Mouse Takeover" is third on our list of most-overused plot devices (right behind alien abductions and the Columbus set-top box-- oh, the mileage we got out of that one), it's a long-standing classic and a favorite among Apple soap opera connoisseurs. After all, it's got all the necessary elements for a melodramatic tour de force: board room intrigue, enough cold hard cash to make Tex-Averyesque dollar signs pop into anyone's eyes with a satisfying "ka-ching," and a sinister round-eared cartoon rodent pulling all the strings. Mix in the mercurial Mr. Jobs and his inscrutable agenda, add a dash of speculation about the cryogenically frozen head of Walt Disney and the rumor that his favorite iMac color is Strawberry, and voilà! A soap opera subplot that's guaranteed to deliver days of material.

So, masters of subtlety that we are (stop laughing), we had been trying to concoct a suitably artful way of slipping the old Disney buyout plot into the mix without generating too much "you guys are really out of ideas" feedback-- when suddenly we were the beneficiaries of a virtual windfall. None other than Apple Insider broached the subject for us, reporting that sources were claiming that a Disney takeover of both Pixar and Apple was imminent. The basic premise here is that Steve Jobs was in the process of negotiating an extension of Pixar's five-film deal with Disney when he floated the idea of an outright buyout of Pixar-- and then decided to throw Apple into the bargain as well. Disney CEO Michael Eisner was reportedly receptive to this idea, and the plan was to make Pixar and Apple "independent divisions within Disney," with Jobs being CEO of Disney itself. To fan the flames of speculation, Apple Recon (the Home of the Disney Takeover Rumor™) first posted a notice amounting to the age-old classic "no comment" until after the markets closed.

Of course, as soon as trading stopped, Recon went public with their feelings that the Apple Insider rumor was "a joke," noting not just that the motives behind such a mega-merger were absurd, but the sheer logistics of the deal were well-nigh impossible. Given that Apple's stock barely budged after the rumors broke, Recon's assertion that no one on Wall Street could possibly take such a thing seriously seems correct. And apparently Apple Insider has been receiving ridicule on several fronts about this, since the disclaimer about the rumor being "only a rumor" seems to keep getting longer. Oh, well-- we guess a plot twist that cool couldn't hold up under scrutiny. But Uncle Steve's keynote address at Macworld Expo Tokyo is in less than twenty-four hours-- suppose he'll walk out onstage in Mickey ears to drop a bombshell? To dream the impossible dream...