Disney in a cartoon coup

When he addressed Disney's first ever fan convention just over a week ago, Dick Cook could have been forgiven for basking in the warm glow that accompanies being master of all you survey.

The 59-year-old chairman of Walt Disney Studios was doing what he does best: getting chums such as Johnny Depp, Nicholas Cage and Miley Cyrus to appear on stage, slap his back, and publicly declare allegiance to cinema's most storied franchise.

Today, as he sits at home mulling his sudden, unexpected removal from office, Mr Cook could be forgiven for wondering if he's about to wake up from one of those bad dreams on which many Hollywood films are premised.

It's four days now since he called around 90 of Disney's most senior executives to a meeting at the company HQ in Burbank, and abruptly announced that he was quitting after roughly seven years in the studio's top job.

Having helped, at various points in his Disney career, to bring some of the firm's biggest cash cows to market - including The Lion King, Toy Story, and Pirates of the Caribbean - Mr Cook felt his position had in recent months become untenable.

With three years remaining on a multi-million dollar contract, Cook announced that disagreements with Disney's CEO, Bob Iger, had left him feeling like "a square peg in a round hole".

The news, delivered in an emotional teatime address on Friday evening, announced a classic film industry coup: it was messy, unexpected, and heralded a radical change for the most famous of Hollywood's "big six".

To the concern of shareholders and cinema audiences, it also leaves uncertainty hanging over some of Disney's most eagerly-awaited, and lucrative, future projects.

Though relatively-unknown outside professional circles, Mr Cook was one of Hollywood's most accomplished power-brokers. His close personal rapport with superstar directors such as Jerry Bruckheimer and Tim Burton, as well as a generation of A-list actors, brought an unparalleled array of talent into what called the "Disney Family".

The impact of his departure was best laid bare by the reaction of Johnny Depp, who decided to immediately telephone the LA Times in the middle of the night, from London, and announce that he was "shocked and very saddened" at the demise of "the sweetest man alive."

The actor said he was now reconsidering his commitment to the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean film, threatening the billion-dollar centrepiece of Disney's plans for the next two years. "There's a issure, a crack in my enthusiasm at the moment," he said.

Depp's concerns are mirrored among thousands of Disney staff who had come to regard the genial and unassuming Cook -who despite his lofty status was still prepared to wear Mickey Mouse ties – as one of their own.

Officially no reason has been given for Mr Cook's sudden departure, which brought a sudden end to the 38 years he'd spent rising through company ranks, after starting out as a Disneyland monorail operator in the 1970s.

In a statement, he would say only: "it's the right time for me to move on to new adventures... and in the words of one of my baseball heroes, Yogi Berra: 'If you come to a fork in the road, take it'."

Unofficially, though, it revolves around a clash of personalities with Bob Iger, a more cerebral figure who started out as a TV weatherman before rising through the ranks of the TV network ABC, and being appointed to the helm of the vast Walt Disney group in 2005.

Where Mr Cook is an impresario of the old-school, steeped in Disney's culture, Mr Iger is an outsider convinced that the firm needs to undergo a dramatic creative realignment to maintain any semblance of a stranglehold on a fragmented youth market.

Where Mr Cook likes to play cards close to his chest, making films in near-total secrecy before dramatically unveiling them, Mr Iger believes in a "team Disney" approach where all the company's divisions – from theme parks to TV stations and merchandise stores – work together.

Crucially, for those looking to pedict what will now appear in their cinemas in coming years, Mr Iger is anxious to steer Disney away from smaller, quirkier projects towards vast "tentpole" hits whose success will help drive trade towards the group's other consumer products.

He has been quick to criticise recent executive decisions that led to the release of disappointing Disney films that perhaps did notplay to the firm's historic strengths, including Confessions of a Shopaholic, Bedtime Stories, G-Force and Race to Witch Mountain.

Speaking to financial analysts in May, he hinted that Mr Cook was to blame for drop in earnings that had seen the studio post a loss. "It's about choice of films and the execution of films chosen for production," he said "We've had a rough year... It's not the marketplace. It's our slate."

He's further embarrassed by keeping him blind-sided to aggressive recent corporate moves. Earlier this year, for example, Mr Iger negotiated a cloak-and-dagger distribution deal with Steven Spielberg's Dreamworks, poaching them from rival Universal.

Last month, meanwhile, Mr Iger suddenly announced a $4 billion acquisition of comic company Marvel, whose line-up of superhero characters are to be foisted upon Disney as the centrepieces of a string of block-busting film adaptations.

No-one will dispute that the moves makde sound creative sense, and may allow Disney to exploit a young male demographic it has struggled to woo. But thay laso signifies a desire to shake things up in a company that some believe has been guilty of dwelling on its laurels.

There is, fior example, no obvious successor to Pirates of the Caribbean, whose three previous instalments have underpinned the studio's finances for the past decade.

Highlights of the Studio's upcoming slate, which was devised by Mr Cook, include Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland and an adaptation of A Christmas Carol by Robert Zemeckis - quirky one-offs, rather than the start potential blockbuster franchises.

The nearest thing they have to a sure-fire revenue driver is the digital animation studio Pixar, which the firm brought in 2006, and will next year release Toy Story 3.

Ironically, front-runners to succeed Mr Cook include Pixar's John Lasseter, alongside Spielberg's business partner Stacey Snider. There is, however, a big problem with both potential appointments: like almost everyone else close to Disney, the pair count themselves loyal friends of the man they may now be called upon to replace.