Care to check in with what's shakin' in Walt's World? After all, it's been a while since the Jobs 'n' Eisner show came to a dramatic climax with 40-something percent of Disney shareholders expressing "no confidence" in Mr. Eisner's leadership and the guy being stripped of his Chairman of the Board title. Meanwhile, we're pretty sure that Steve was chortling merrily to himself at the time, since his highly-public decision to end negotiations with Eisner about renewing Disney's contract with Pixar did a lot to turn shareholder sentiment against the man. The thing is, though, Eisner's still CEO, and Roy Disney is still making noises about trying to get Steve Jobs to take over in his place.

That's right, faithful viewer bo tipped us off to a Studio Briefing at IMDb which reports that "Jobs is [Roy's] and Stanley Gold's favorite candidate to replace Michael Eisner as chairman of Disney." (Chairman? We'd heard CEO. Either way, it's pretty cool.) And as if to underscore Steve's possible stint running the House of Mouse, reportedly Premiere magazine has now ranked him (along with his Pixarian "creative sidekick" John Lasseter) number one on its list of "the 100 most influential people in Hollywood," knocking last year's top dog Steven Spielberg down to the second spot. Hear that? Premiere thinks Steve-o has more influence in Hollywood than Steven Freakin' Spielberg. How scary is that?

Now, Pixar's kicking mucho tail with the movies and all, fine-- but even so, we can't imagine Jobs supplanting Spielberg as Hollywood's ginchiest Power Baron just because of that. So either he finally got that orbiting death ray satellite up and running, or Premiere honestly thinks that Steve might be accepting a third CEOship in the near future. While that would certainly clinch him for next year's "CEO of the year" kudos, if Steve were to take over Disney, we imagine he'd more likely fold Pixar into the Magic Kingdom as its official computer animation department just so he could keep his list of CEO positions down to a modest two. (No, he wouldn't give up his post at Apple. Of course not. Stop crying.)

Of course, none of this is even remotely certain yet, and if you want an idea of just how far in the other direction this whole Disney coup may slide, apparently the New York Post "Page Six" gossip column just reported that "a 'consortium of mysterious European investors' is planning a takeover of Disney and wants Mel Gibson to head the company if it succeeds." Now, while the Post isn't exactly an unimpeachable source, whether it's true or not, somebody behind this story is on some serious drugs. Although, you know, we always felt The Passion of the Christ would have worked a lot better as an animated feature. Maybe starring Goofy. Toss in a few musical numbers and that's exactly the kind of family entertainment that good ol' Walt was all about.