Pocahontas (1995 film) character flowered into the idea of a grandmotherly spiritual adviser to Pocahontas. Because of Katzenberg's opposition to having Grandmother Willow in the story, Joe Grant assisted fellow veteran story artist Burny Mattinson with coming up tree puns such as "My bark is worse than my bite", "The roots of all problems", and "They're barking up the wrong tree." Mattinson reluctantly added them to his pitch for the next morning, and during the story meeting, he exclaimed, "Everybody loved it! All of a sudden: 'Oh, I want her in!' 'Let's build her part bigger!'" In September 1992, Disney began casting actors
Disney Consumer Products and Interactive Media the best sellers of the second set of Pook-A-Looz over the expected “Nightmare Before Christmas” characters. In 2009, Disney acquired Marvel Entertainment for $4.24 billion. Josh Silverman, a senior executive at Marvel, was appointed Executive Vice President of Global Licensing for Disney Consumer Products and helped facilitate the Disney-Marvel integration. In 2011, Disney fired Marvel Studios' marketing department, taking over marketing of their films beginning with the 2012 film "The Avengers". The Cars sequel was approved for a 2011 debut despite the original being panned by the critics and one of the lowest grossing Pixar films as its licensed products