Out Disney studio
head is fired

Nina Jacobson, out president of Buena Vista Motion Picture group, was let go this week as part of 650 job cuts scheduled for Disney. Jacobson, 40, was fired on Monday over the phone by studio chairman Dick Cook. According to the Los Angeles Times, she received the phone call while in the hospital, where her partner was delivering their third child.

She will be replaced by the studio's marketing chief, Oren Aviv. Disney offered her a production deal, but Jacobson declined, saying, "I would rather start fresh with something new. I feel very sad to be leaving a job that I have loved."

Despite the record box office receipts of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, the Los Angeles Times reports, Jacobson was hearing rumors her job wasn't safe. "There are two kinds of people in this job: the ones who think they'll have it forever and the ones who know they won't." Jacobson reports that she tried always "to treat the job as a privilege, not an entitlement." (The Advocate)