Disney’s ex-CEO doesn’t remember why he greenlit Kingdom Hearts
Michael Eisner ran Disney for two decades and signed off on the Square Enix crossover that became a 24-year franchise. Asked recently why he said yes, he couldn’t recall. Neither, it turns out, can the man who directed it.
Somebody at Disney looked at a pitch for a game where an anime teenager with a key-shaped sword fights alongside Donald Duck, and said yes.
That somebody was Michael Eisner. He does not remember doing it.
The exchange
Reporter Stephen Totilo, writing at Game File, got Eisner at a press conference for Delphi Interactive, a games-industry talent firm the former Disney chief has invested in. Eisner ran Disney from 1984 to 2005, which puts Kingdom Hearts squarely on his watch.
Totilo asked whether he recalled approving a game called Kingdom Hearts.
No.
Totilo prompted him. He’d been pitched it in Tokyo. Final Fantasy plus Disney characters.
“Oh, I remember now,” Eisner said.
And did he remember why he said yes?
“I don’t.”
In fairness, the man greenlit an enormous number of things across two decades running a media empire, and this was 26 years ago. But it’s still a strange gap in the record, because that yes produced a franchise that’s been running for 24 years and is currently building toward Kingdom Hearts IV.
The elevator
The origin story is one of the most repeated legends in games.
Square and Disney’s Japanese operations shared an office building — Arco Towers, in Tokyo. Producer Shinji Hashimoto and Final Fantasy creator Hironobu Sakaguchi had been talking about wanting to make something in the vein of Super Mario 64, and concluded that the only characters on earth with the pull to rival Mario belonged to Disney.
Then Hashimoto ended up in an elevator with a Disney executive.
Development began in February 2000. The game shipped in 2002. Sora, Donald, and Goofy have been at it ever since.
Nomura can’t remember either
Here’s the part nobody’s put next to Eisner’s answer.
Tetsuya Nomura, who directed the thing, got involved because he overheard Hashimoto and Sakaguchi discussing the Disney idea and volunteered on the spot to lead it. He’s told the story many times.
He has also said this: “Now I can’t even remember why I was there when Sakaguchi-san and Hashimoto-san were talking in the first place.”
So the executive who approved Kingdom Hearts can’t remember why he approved it, and the director who created it can’t remember why he was in the room where it happened.
The legend is itself a bad memory
It gets better, because the famous version of the story has been quietly wrong for years, and Nomura keeps having to correct it.
He wasn’t in the elevator. That detail gets attached to him constantly, and he’s said plainly he wasn’t there.
And the elevator conversation wasn’t the pitch. Per Nomura, it ran closer to “it would be great to do something together some time” — not a formal proposal at all. The single most famous moment in this franchise’s history is a casual bit of small talk that got upgraded into a founding myth through two decades of retelling.
Which is, frankly, on brand
The second game in this series is Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, in which Sora climbs a castle and loses his memories one floor at a time while a girl in a white dress quietly rewrites what he thinks happened to him.
Twenty-two years later, the CEO who signed off can’t recall his reasoning, the director can’t recall why he was in the room, and the elevator everyone remembers wasn’t the meeting anyone thought it was.
In this place, to find is to lose, and to lose is to find. Castle Oblivion apparently extends to the executive floor.
Someone might still remember
There’s a chance of getting a straighter answer soon. Disney’s D23 event next month includes a Kingdom Hearts retrospective panel, which is exactly the venue for somebody to walk through how a Final Fantasy studio talked the most protective brand in entertainment into handing over Mickey Mouse.
Whether anyone up there remembers the reasoning is a separate question.
Article compiled with the help of the Pirates & Princesses newsroom.
Pirates and Princesses is your destination for Disney news, theme park updates, and the pop culture you love. From Disney cruises and travel tips to Disney fashion, food, collectibles, and movie news, PNP covers it all. Visit us at piratesandprincesses.net for daily coverage. Follow PNP on Facebook and Instagram, and listen to the Pirates & Princesses podcast on Apple Podcasts and YouTube.
Hat Tips:
Game File (Stephen Totilo) — the Delphi Interactive press conference and the full exchange with Michael Eisner about greenlighting Kingdom Hearts
Kotaku (Kenneth Shepard) — surfacing the Game File report and the D23 retrospective panel context
Famitsu (via TheGamer and Game Rant) — Tetsuya Nomura’s account of how he joined the project and his comment about not remembering why he was in the room
GamesRadar — Nomura’s correction that the elevator conversation was informal rather than a formal pitch
Den of Geek / Disney Wiki — the Arco Towers shared-office detail, Hashimoto and Sakaguchi’s Super Mario 64 conversation, and the February 2000 development start