Tentpole movies aren't about story, says Disney exec

They're all about the spectacle, says Andy Hendrickson, chief technical officer for Disney Animation, who is obviously not ingratiating himself over at the WGA. Hendrickson, who spoke at a technical conference earlier this month, cited the 12 highest-grossing box office films, of which every one falls into that spectacle category. Of Disney's "Alice in Wonderland," which is on the list, he said: "The story isn't very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn't hurt." From Variety:

"A tentpole film is one where you can seed the desire to see the film to everyone in every distribution channel. It's the only kind of film you can spend $100 million marketing," he said. Hendrickson's talk was mainly focused on solving problems in digital production on tentpoles, but he began with an "Econ 101" presentation on the movie business. "People say 'It's all about the story,'" Hendrickson said. "When you're making tentpole films, bullshit."

Ouch. Of course, consider the source. Check out Hendrickson's decidedly nonliterary career summary at LinkedIn:

-Create technology teams to build advanced image processing tools for making computer graphics.

·Broad technology background with proven senior management, teambuilding and operations skills specializing in entertainment

-Engineer organizational change, create and execute transformation strategies