Holy cats-- if you think the back-room deals and political intrigue in the computer industry are out of control, steer well clear of Hollywood, because things over there just seem nuts. See, generally we're pretty sheltered from the seamier side of the entertainment biz, but when faithful viewer Pellaeon tipped us off to some dirt regarding Steve Jobs's other guise as Big Important Movie Guy™ for Pixar, we figured it was worth taking a peek. So we sauntered over to BusinessWeek to get the skinny on why that Episode II teaser trailer wound up attached to Monsters, Inc. instead of to some, er, less Disney flick.

If the scuttlebutt is true, the reason is sort of convoluted. It apparently all started when George Lucas, Captain Star Wars himself, was preparing to make another one of those "The Audience Is Listening" ads for THX sound. (Lucas owns THX, you see.) If you've seen a movie in an actual theater sometime in the past decade or two, the odds are good that you saw a THX spot before the previews; they're shown in a ton of theaters in the U.S. Now, George's friend Steven Spielberg (you may have heard of him) is a partner in a little company called Dreamworks, which produced the hit computer-animated feature Shrek. Well, it seems that THX mastered the sound for Shrek, and Spielberg called up his buddy George and asked him if he'd consider putting Shrek in his upcoming THX ads. George said yes. With us so far? Hang on, because this is where it gets a little wacky.

Cue Steve Jobs, another friend of Lucas, whose Pixar company was just about to release its fourth computer-animated feature film, Monsters, Inc. Allegedly Steve got wind of George's plan to include Shrek in the THX ads and was none too pleased; Pixarians are already a little down on Dreamworks, due to that company rushing Antz (a computer-generated feature about, um, ants) into theaters just before Pixar was slated to release A Bug's Life (a computer-generated feature about... well, you get the picture). Worse yet, the Shrekian THX ads were scheduled to start on November 2nd-- the opening date for Monsters, Inc. So the first thing Monsters, Inc. audiences would see onscreen after those cheesy ad slides is... Shrek. You can see where Steve might be a little miffed.

To make a long story slightly less long, apparently Steve called up George and made his displeasure known; the rumor mill claims that threats of no more Disney/Pixar work for THX may have figured heavily in the mix. Disney and Pixar deny that, but just before the November 2nd launch date, THX announced that it was "canceling plans" to Shrekify its ads, claiming that they decided it "wasn't right to link their sound system to any one movie." Very interesting. And even more interesting is how Monsters, Inc. received a nice little boost in ticket sales from Star Wars fans desperate to catch the Episode II teaser trailer, which suddenly and mysteriously found itself shown exclusively before screenings of Pixar's latest CGI romp. Was it George making amends for having offended his friend Steve? We may never know, but we know this much: this Hollywood stuff sure makes us dizzy.