Peter Rice, Unflashy Fox Boss, Takes Disney Power Job

Hollywood executives are not so different from the stars they employ. They want to be seen in the right booths at the right restaurants. They work the room at the after-parties on awards nights. And they would rather die than drop a spot on The Hollywood Reporter’s annual power list.

Peter Rice, who was named the chairman of Walt Disney Television on Monday, avoids that kind of showboating.

Associates described him as “even-tempered,” “affable” and “cryptic.” During work meetings, he favors the Socratic method, and he is not afraid of silence, often allowing long pauses that some lieutenants describe as intimidating and intentional.

He seems most at ease when he is marking up the erasable whiteboard walls that line his office or spending time with his wife and children at their home in Hidden Hills, a gated suburb in the far reaches of the San Fernando Valley.

Rice, 51, became the president of 21st Century Fox a little more than a year ago, after working at various Fox divisions for nearly three decades. He might have stayed indefinitely, if it were not for the Walt Disney Company’s surprise acquisition of the majority of the Rupert Murdoch-owned company, a deal that shareholders approved over the summer.

When regulators sign off on the $71.3 billion transaction, expected in the next few months, Rice will assume one of the biggest jobs in television, overseeing the combined broadcast and cable assets of two companies that were immense even before they merged.

Disney’s announcement of Rice’s new job specified that he will report directly to Robert Iger, Disney’s chief executive. For the first time in his career, Rice’s boss will be someone other than a Murdoch.

The appointment also means his name is likely to be bandied about in one of Hollywood’s favorite parlor games: Who will run the Magic Kingdom when Iger’s contract comes to an end in three years?

If that kind of talk is to gain any traction, though, Rice would have to distinguish himself at a company that usually promotes from within. He would also have to prove himself superior to a pair of longtime Disney executives in their fifties: Kevin Mayer, who runs the company’s portfolio of streaming services and international media operations, and Bob Chapek, the chairman of its theme parks and consumer products.

The job won’t be easy. Rice will be responsible for the countless hours of television content filling the schedules of the broadcast and cable networks that have long been in the Disney family, as well as the various Fox channels that were already part of his purview.

That means ABC, Freeform, Disney Channel, Disney Junior, Disney XD, Freeform, the National Geographic Channel and FX, not to mention the two companies’ combined TV studios, leaving Rice in charge of an exceedingly wide range of fare — everything from “Atlanta” to “Puppy Dog Pals.”

His brief will include fixing ABC, which has consistently finished in last place among the four broadcast networks, and improving the fortunes of the sagging Disney Channel.

Disney is also counting on Rice and his team to find shows that will attract subscribers to Hulu — Disney will be the majority owner when the deal is official — and a new streaming service scheduled to go live next year. While Disney has signaled that it will welcome the programs it is to inherit as part of its purchase of Fox, something like the FX series “American Horror Story” — which marketed its new season with a grotesque image of a devil’s hand reaching for a baby — may be a tricky fit for the family-friendly empire. This is a company, after all, that uses songs like “Under the Sea” from “The Little Mermaid” as the hold music on its telephone system.

Tom Rothman, a former Fox executive who runs Sony’s Motion Picture Group, said he believes Rice is up for the challenge.

“Peter can do that nearly impossible thing, which is to mix genuine creative vision with business acumen,” Rothman said. “Every significant decision in these senior jobs involves both of those skills, and that kind of integrated intelligence is really rare.”

Rice, who has seldom granted interviews, declined to comment for this article.

He grew up in South London and went to work for Murdoch in 1987, when he was a summer intern at 20th Century Fox. “When I left to return to college at the end of the summer,” he wrote in Variety in 2014, “I never wanted to work anywhere else.”

After graduating from the University of Nottingham in 1989 with a degree in American Studies, Rice joined the 20th Century Fox marketing department and later worked as an executive on blockbusters like “Independence Day” and the first “X-Men” film.

Many of his colleagues have noted his easy rapport with the Murdochs. And a family connection is what led to him to Fox.

“The boss had a huge admiration for Peter’s dad,” said David Hill, a former top Fox Sports executive. He added that Rupert Murdoch “loves thoroughbreds, and obviously understands blood lines.”

Rice’s father, Tom Rice, was an official with the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications and Plumbing Union, which cooperated with Murdoch in 1986 as he defied organized labor during his ultimately successful efforts to move the printing and publishing operations of his News International company from Fleet Street to London’s Wapping district.

A searing event in British press and labor history, the move set off violent protests. Afterward, Tom Rice entered the Murdoch corporate fold, eventually becoming the managing director of News International in Ireland. He died in 2009.

While his father worked for Murdoch in Dublin, Rice was on the rise in the mogul’s Los Angeles operation, helping to reel in talented up-and-comers like the director Baz Luhrmann. In 2000, Fox named Rice the president of its specialty film division, Fox Searchlight.

He turned the unit into an Oscar and box-office superpower, delivering one idiosyncratic hit after another, most made for budgets of under $15 million — an achievement that remains his biggest. The movies released during his Fox Searchlight tenure included “Little Miss Sunshine,” “Napoleon Dynamite,” “Sideways,” “28 Days Later,” “The Last King of Scotland,” “Slumdog Millionaire” and “Juno.”

“His support can feel like prevailing winds in your sails,” said Jason Reitman, who directed “Juno,” which took in $231 million worldwide in 2007 and was nominated for four Academy Awards, winning one for Diablo Cody’s screenplay. “I’ve never had an unthoughtful conversation with him.”

For much of the last decade, Rice has been in charge of the company’s TV assets, not including Fox News. He increased the budget for FX, and it attracted top creators like Donald Glover (“Atlanta”). At the same time, the Fox TV studio created hits for Fox channels and other networks, including “The Americans” (FX), “Empire” (Fox), “This Is Us” (NBC), “Modern Family” (ABC) and “Homeland” (Showtime).

“He starts off at 20th Century Fox as a cadet and he just gets bigger and bigger,” said Hill, the former Fox executive, who credited Rice for having a deft touch with actors, producers and directors, as well as a “total understanding of the underpinning revenue.”

His résumé is not without blemishes, however. In 2006, while running Fox Searchlight, he created a film subdivision geared for young adults, Fox Atomic. Its few successes, like the horror sequel “28 Weeks Later,” were eclipsed by a parade of duds: “The Rocker,” “Miss March,” “12 Rounds.” Fox Atomic went up in a mushroom cloud in 2009.

Another mark against him is that the Fox broadcast network has had trouble finding sustainable hits in recent years.

Rice remained at Fox even as other companies sought him out. After the Sony Corp. talked to him last year as part of its search for a new head of Sony Pictures Entertainment, Fox gave Rice a five-year contract extension and promoted him to president of 21st Century Fox, a job that did not include oversight of Fox’s film companies.

What Rice did not know at the time was that Murdoch and his sons, Lachlan and James, had already entered into talks with Disney. Taking his overall record into account, his next employer is betting that Rice’s approach to television has a better chance at success than the plan Disney had in place before it agreed to buy Fox.

Rice will not be going it alone on his journey from Fox to Disney: Accompanying him will be John Landgraf, the head of FX; Dana Walden, the co-chief executive of the Fox television group; and Gary E. Knell, the head of National Geographic Partners.

Disney is counting on Team Rice to deliver hits at a time when the competition has never been greater, particularly in children’s television, now that Netflix has become a major draw for young viewers.

Navigating Disney’s buttoned-up culture may be a challenge for some Fox alumni, who will leave behind the less-structured working environment fostered by Murdoch. But Rice’s general bearing — keep your head down and your ego in check — is probably a good fit for an organization that values executives who do not carry themselves as if they are bigger than the company they work for.