I mean, can I really blame packaged goods executives for attempting to use packaged goods marketing techniques to sell films that ultimately show up on store shelves as – packaged goods? And VeggieTales success itself had become a huge challenge. So the members of that first executive team are the villains! You could probably come to that conclusion, but I don’t think so. And what led to the over-hiring? The wild enthusiasm of 19, inspired partly by exponential sales growth up to that point, partly by the general “irrational exuberance” of that era in business history (think “dot-com”), and partly by the misreading of the VeggieTales business as a packaged goods business, rather than an entertainment business. The rest of the money was needed to cover our gross over-hiring in areas like marketing, human resources and design.

But what if we’d had the production management in place to produce the film for my $7 million goal, and the discipline to see that it was marketed for $7 million as well? And remember, as of April of 2000, the company needed $20 million to survive through the Jonah production even though Jonah was at that point only a $7 million film. True, if Jonah hadn’t been put into production the cash need would have been less. So Jonah is to blame! Well, maybe a little – but certainly not entirely. The Lyrick lawsuit certainly sealed the deal, but it’s unlikely that lawsuit would have happened if our dire cash need hadn’t forced us to switch distributors in search of new advances. If you’ve read this entire account, it’s probably clear that multiple factors brought down Big Idea Productions. Whose fault was it? Who should I be mad at, because I really want to be mad at someone! So it was with Big Idea. When we lose something, be it a job, a relationship, or a dream, we want to know why. Big Idea had become his dream, too, and now that his dream was failing, he was angry.

This fellow, like many others, was so excited about my dream of a “Christian Disney” that my failure to deliver on that dream struck him much more deeply than you would expect. Not just the artists, designers and business people who had moved their families across the country to actively join the effort, but also the fans. Letters like his made me realize just how much emotion people had invested in my dream.

He closed with the interesting statement that if I didn’t respond to his criticism, he would send his letter to major Christian magazines and “expose” our creative shortcomings to the entire Christian world.Ī dream is a powerful thing. While some of his points were certainly well taken, what struck me more about the letter was the emotion behind it. He went on to explain Jonah’s flaws at great length. It hadn’t done as well as it could have, he explained, because of serious flaws in its story structure. Shortly after Jonah hit theaters, I got a letter from a fan in the Midwest with a two-page critique of the film. And little more heartbreaking than watching it die. There is little more thrilling than seeing a dream come to life. Whenever you speak, you should apologize.” I sat in my car for a few minutes, mulling over his words.Ī dream is a powerful thing. “I heard you speak last night,” he continued, “You didn’t apologize for what happened. “They’re still really mad at you.” I fumbled vainly for an appropriate response. As he walked with me towards my rental car, he said, “I know some guys who used to work at Big Idea.” Long pause. Afterwards, a young man said he needed to talk to me. I gave my thoughts on the state of Christian media and the exciting opportunities I saw for them in the future. I told them stories of Big Idea’s rise and fall, and the lessons I had learned from the experience. A year or so after the bankruptcy I was speaking to a group of students at a Christian university.

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