Disney Animated Sequels

[lrodk]

I've posted a link to an article that discusses Disney's rationale in pursuing and developing sequels to classic animated films, whether they be direct-to-video or theatrical releases. I found the economics of these releases to be very interesting. To the discerning Disney buff these films are less than appealing. On the other hand, I can't say I blame them for exploiting the film library, especially in light of all of the weakneses in other areas of the company. It really is a two edged sword.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020213/ap_en_mo/wkd_disney_sequels_2

 

[travisimo]

Very interesting article. Definitely gives reason Disney puts out these less-than-par movies. Still don't care for them much though!

 

[raidermatt]

Clearly it makes economic sense. I definitely don't have a problem with them going straight to video. As for the theaters, I'm fine as long as they are not a substitute for new features. This year, we get Lilo & Stitch and Treasure Planet, so it hasn't bitten into features yet. (Of course, I have no idea if these films will be any good, but that's another story, though it is certainly a related topic).

 

[Buzz2001]

Disney to Bring More Sequels to Big Screen
02-13-2002

(by digitalmediafx.com) Disney has big plans for its animated sequels well beyond Peter Pan: Return to Neverland. Disney is planning on bringing a sequel - or special from its TV animation division - to the big screen every February. This isn't new as Disney has been using February for spinoffs and TV specials on the big screen for several years (Doug's First Movie, Disney's Recess: School's Out, and The Tigger Movie). What is new is that sequels will also begin to occupy the February slot. This year it's Peter Pan: Return to Neverland and next year it's Jungle Book 2. Beyond that it's unclear which sequels or TV specials will hit the big screen, but Disney isn't ruling out Dumbo 2 or Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2.

The sequels cost about 1/6th of the cost of the original and are done by a different team than Disney Feature Animation. Disney seems set on continuing to churn out sequels as long as the public continues to fork out money for the sequels. At least one Disney representative is already prepping people for Snow White 2.

Disney's President of TV Animation, David Stainton, was quoted by the AP as saying, "I would personally love to make a sequel to Snow White. But the company is protective of these great pieces of art from the past. The decision isn't just mine to make."

Someone apparently forgot to tell Disney that Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, and Dumbo were "great pieces of art from the past."

 

[Captain Crook]

scoop, I have had the same worry, but my kids (again, with the kids) are anxiously awaiting 'Return To Neverland' so who am I to grouse about messing with a classic. After all, the original (classic) wasn't aimed at my parents either and I know neither of them (my parents) consider any of these cartoon features 'classic'...If it makes good business sense and people (even if they're small people) love them, then bring 'em on...

 

[Another Voice]

Yes, the sequels make economic sense. And yes children will watch pretty much anything you put in front of them. And yes this way we get animated features with the same frequency (and quality) that we get on Saturday morning television.

But it just shows how utterly bankrupt the creative side of Disney is at this point. A company that prides itself on “magic” and “imagination” is unable to develop an original concept or even bother trying something new. The only ambition they seem to have these days is the occasional struggle to raise themselves up to “mediocre”.

Strip mining a brand produces some very short term profits, but it craves the guts out of a company in short order.

 

[kenjean]

I disagree about kids watching anything. We have obligingly bought the sequels, but Lady and the Tramp II and Little Mermaid II get very little playtime at our house. My daughters are 5 and 18months, and they already can spot shoddy product. As a result of wasting our money on the first two, we will not buy Cinderella II. We don't take the disney name on a movie granted for quality anymore.

 

[Captain Crook]

I agree with most of your post Kenjean, my kids while liking some sequels & not liking others still have a taste. They did not like Shrek, loved Harry P & Atlantis, as well. My oldest daughter still loves Mulan (and why shouldn't she) & my youngest liked the Rugrats on tv but didn't care for the feature...It is patently unfair to lump children into this mold, IMO...

Now, I disagree with the implications that parents or consumers should ever have blindly accepted a Disney product as quality just because it says 'Disney' on the label. I have always believed the intention of Disney with their product was positive (and I still do) but it doesn't mean quality or acceptability is always achieved. In this day and age of profitability as king, I do understand and accept AV's premis that a product, say Pearl Harbor, no matter how good or bad it turned out to be, probably could have been better without the 'tinkering' for commercialism, but that doesn't mean Disney's intent was to produce an inferior product...They just got greedy (as in bad business decision)...

 

[raidermatt]

Another parent with a child that has discerning tastes here...

One of my 3-year olds favorite movies is "A Goofy Movie". Has been for the last year. So a couple of months ago, I bought the sequel, and he stopped paying attention after 20 minutes or so. I had big problems with it based on the cross-promotional ESPN thing, and the lack of original music. Not sure what his problems were, but he never has seen the whole thing.

On the other hand, he liked the Mermaid sequal, though he prefers the original.

Also, its only been recently that Disney began putting out new features every year. If the sequels don't cannibalize the market for the features, I just don't see a problem. The quality of the feature group does not have to be impacted by this process.

As somebody pointed out in another thread, most of the Disney classics are retellings of somebody else's stories, so while the animation and some characters were original, they hardly started from scratch.

Scoop- It was a fumble.....

 

[HBK]

But it just shows how utterly bankrupt the creative side of Disney is at this point. A company that prides itself on “magic” and “imagination” is unable to develop an original concept or even bother trying something new.

Well said. Really hits to the point of the problem.

"I would personally love to make a sequel to Snow White. But the company is protective of these great pieces of art from the past. The decision isn't just mine to make."

This guy must be related to Ei$ner or he's found the path up the corperate ladder. The fact that the current management feels a need to mooch off of the past is scarry. Why isn't he talking up the new, creating programming? Oh yeah, they don't have any.

Here's another idea....how about instead of creating all of the sequels at once, if they are going to do them, spread them out more and use this "fluff" month to test some new, creative, low risk concepts? Not everything needs to be a artfull masterpiece, but I'd rather see the company try to devlop some more characters and do new things with the fluff month than use it as a blatant profit month.

The other scary thing about all of the sequels....something that can't be found on a spreadsheet, somthing that the Disney company aparantly doesn't care about...the Brand name value. The sequels & other corners cut may be profitable now, but what about the long term health of the brand? With the rate that sequels are coming out vs the re-relase of the originals, my son has seen some of the sequels before he's seen the actual movie...which doesn't exactly put the company's best foot forward to the point that when the original comes out I'm not totally sure he would want to see them on his own without my prodding him. Will he take his children to see Disney's product? Maybe....maybe not.

It was a fumble

No it was an incomplete pass. And hey we're usually on the other end of those calls. It's about time one went our way! GO PATS!

 

[Another Voice]

"We have obligingly bought the sequels"…"I bought the sequel"

That’s the ENTIRE marketing strategy that’s going on here. There is an assumption that because the movie is based on a classic and has the “Disney” label – people will give the company the benefit of the doubt and buy it. There isn't much thought at all about the movie, it just has to be "good enough".

The actual quality of the movie doesn’t show up in the financial statements, but eventually people will get wise to the scheme. I don’t think Eisner has thought that far ahead yet. What we’ll see is a quick spiral downward: lower costs to worse movies to poorer sales to lower budgets and so on.

Does anyone want to see ‘Snow White’ and ‘Dumbo’ follow that same path that ‘Rocky’ went down?

There is a big difference in “commercializing” a product to make it appeal to a wide audience verses commercializing to pander to the audience. Walt Disney “commercialized” a lot of the Grimm Brothers’ tales by reworking the stories, updating the stories themes and concepts and by sweating out thousands and thousands of details. Eisner commercialized ‘Pearl Harbor’ by pandering to the audiences’ perceived whims (“it’s like ‘Titanic’ but with explosions!”), by cutting out any element that, no matter how true, that might cause a drop in box office take, and by spending all their energy on creating a marketing campaign instead of producing a product.

The results are that over 60 years after ‘Snow White’ hit the theaters; it did a huge business on video and still continues to entertain people today. How many people are going to be watching ‘Pearl Harbor’ in 2061? Or even closer to the topic – is anyone expecting an IMAX release of ‘Peter Pan 2’ ten years from now? Short term thinking equals short term profits.

And Disney has all but stopped in house development of feature animation. Long gone are the directors, the writers, the key animators that would spend the time to develop a project. Also, the French animation group (‘Tarzan’ and many aspects of other films) has been sold and the Orlando group (‘Mulan’, ‘Lilo’ and others) will be closing shortly according to the rumors (and will close done ‘Brother Bear’ with it). The only people left are in TV Animation.

 

[Buzz2001]

I din't know they had Disney animation in Australia.
“I can not emphasize enough the contributions of Walt Disney Animation Australia,” says Morrill. “With each production, Australia has reached new heights in artistry, and ‘Return to Never Land’ has truly raised the bar of excellence.”

Full Article

My family and I saw RTN in an advanced screening here in Hartford through Radio Disney. I think this movie is going to surprise a lot of folks.

 

[raidermatt]

That’s the ENTIRE marketing strategy that’s going on here. There is an assumption that because the movie is based on a classic and has the “Disney” label – people will give the company the benefit of the doubt and buy it. There isn't much thought at all about the movie, it just has to be "good enough".

The key is, again, the story. The sequels have been a mixed bag. But again, so what? Producing a high quantity of mediocre films surrounding the good ones is nothing new to Disney. Just think of all the Apple Dumbling, Herbie, and other fluff movies that have been produced, many of them sequels. "The Strongest Man in the World"? "That Darn Cat"?

Disney is not a creative niche company. If the people want to purchase the films from the televition animation department, who is Disney to say they can't? Making these films is not, in and of itself, a problem for feature animation. After all, if no more original features are produced, the sequel well will run dry, and faster than some may think. There is NO reason why feature animation cannot go humming along.

Now, as Scoop said, IF feature animation is stopped, and replaced with tv animation, that is a different story. So I would second Scoop's question to AV, in the hopes that as much info as appropriate will be shared. For instance, will feature animation halt completely? Will it merely become a project-by-project thing, the way AV says Imangineering will be run?



PS- I am not pre-judging Neverland. I will most likely trot the family down to the local cineplex at some point over the next couple of weeks and check it out. Hopefully, it will be worth the trek. There just aren't too many movies out their we can take a 3-year old to. If it turns out to not be worth our money, so be it. We probably won't go see next year's sequel. But if they are accepted by a large enough segement of the public, Disney can keep churning them out...

 

[Captain Crook]

Correct raidermatt & scoop's question to AV is thirded. I too, would hate to see the total demise of feature animation as we know it, but with whats being offered into the future why is this a concern?

 

[HBK]

Isn't the demise of Feature Animation old news? I'm too lazy to try to hunt down the topic, but I was under the assumption that feature animation was being phased out after the current projects were finished. I knew about Orlando shutting down and I also knew about Anahiem cutting itself in at least half. What AV is saying isn't exactly a suprise.

All of the movies you know about I would imagine have been in the works for years...and invested in for the same amount of time....which I'm sure they're too far along to simply give up on em (promotional contracts with Coke, McDonalds, etc).

What's in development other than the movies we know about for the next two years? Is there any type of R&D going on?

 

[Another Voice]

First off, there is no difference between “Feature” and “TV” animation any more – ‘Peter Pan 2’ was created as a direct-to-video release that’s being released in theaters. The same thing will happen with other direct-to-video releases if the marketing department believes enough money can be made from the box office to justify the extra ad cost. The “secret and official” line is that the box office returns no longer justify the cost to develop and produce “traditional” Disney animated films. Remember that Robert Iger himself said that the string of hits from ‘Beauty’ to ‘Mulan’ was an “aberration” and could not be repeated.

As I understand it (take it for what that’s worth), all animated projects will be developed through one “pipeline”. Whether they end up theatrical or video won't matter in terms of budget or resources. It will likely be more of a marketing call than anything else. Instead of in-house development of the films, they will be developed along more traditional “Hollywood” lines: Disney will bid and contract out for its feature animation. A producer will pitch a project to Disney or some executive will hire an outside writer to create a script. The actual animation will be contracted to outside companies with some supervision by individuals contracted to Disney (to keep costs down). In short – all animation will be done on a project-by-project business in exactly the same way the "Televsion Animation" group has been working.

This will save the company a lot of money because there won’t really be any full time staff beyond the suits. But anyone who knows even the slightest bit of Disney history will understand the tremendous loss that has occurred. There won’t be anymore “Nine Old Men”; there won’t be any Disney animators who could develop their skill over years, if not decades; there won’t be an opportunity for someone to hire a pair of kids who did a neat little short for a theme park just to see what else they can do (which is how the preshow for “Cranium Command’ resulted in ‘Beauty and the Beast’).

Instead of having a group of artists living and breathing life into a project for five years, you have a group of contract-temp employees assigned to oversee a bunch of off shore animators. Once the film’s done, they’ll be off to see what Dreamworks, Warners or Universal has got going.

This is way most movies (live action and animated) are produced in Hollywood. There will be people from the front of the carpool who say this is merely just another way Disney is keeping up with the times, it’s just a business decision. My answer is simple – look at the ratio of really good movies that come out of Hollywood verses the number of really bad movies that come out of Hollywood. Do you really want THAT system to produce Disney animated films?

Films like ‘That Darn Cat’, ‘The Apple Dumpling Gang’ and ‘The Computer That Wore Tennis Shoes’ (currently being remade by Disney by the way) – those “high quantity of mediocre films surrounding the good ones” nearly killed Disney as our Captain points out whenever he talks about the Ron Miller days. They made the Disney Studio a joke both within the industry and to the public at large. If the public perception becomes that Disney animation is nothing but ‘Jungle Book 7 – Baloo and Mulan visit Atlantis’, exactly the same thing will happen to Disney all over again.

I have a colleague that has a saying: there’s a reason that wallpaper is cheap and that a Van Gough painting is expensive. You can churn out wall paper cheap and people will buy it. But they won’t pay much for it and the only time people usually talk about wall paper is to comment about how awful it looks. The next person that comes along will rip it right off and toss it away. Good art, however, is hard to produce and painfully slow – but its value lasts generations. Good art is treasured and given a place of honor. Which do you want to be associated with – wall paper or art?

 

[Buzz2001]

There is only one way to go when your on the top. Maybe Disney needs yo hit bottom to realize what you are taking about. but as long as parents continue to bring their kids to see these movies and buy the videos, I don't think it will change. Why should it. Everything revolves around the almighty dollar

 

[raidermatt]

AV- As Scoop said, thank you.

Contract vs. in-House-

I know In-house is how Disney did things, but that system also produced some definite droughts, like the 70's and most fo the 80's. Wasn't the early practice in Hollywood to get actors and other creative talent under contract? That system encouraged studios to try to get their money's worth out of the talent, and one could argue, therefore produced even more bad films than today (relatively speaking).

That's not to say I am against in-house, but rather that I don't believe its the system itself that causes the problem.

Hopefully, answering Scoops questions won't require you sticking your neck out TOO much further...

 

[hopemax]

Well, I don't have to worry about my neck...I don't have much info though.

A friend of the family is the daughter of a former long-time Disney animator (25 years). About a month ago my Mom got an email that "Dad is now working for Dreamworks. He figured it would be better to get a new job now than when everyone will be looking in a few months."

Another film Disney was working on is "Sweating Bullets." Our friend's Dad had been working on SB, but about 6 months ago was pulled off to work on Treasure Planet because of that film's problems.

 

[Another Voice]

Trying to figure out what’s happening inside that Animation building (home to the original BAH) reminds me of the days when people watched who to stood next to whom on top of Lenin’s Tomb. There are so few people left and most of the survivors (who everyone in the industry is now calling “enablers”), they’re simply too afraid to talk to anyone. The general feeling (and the one that’s been shown to happen) is that once you’re project is finished, you’re booted out of the door.

The “new” and “television” way doing things is that a creative executive will oversee a couple of designers and a director. The designers (the term “animator” really isn’t applicable) create the look of the characters and the director comes up the action. The notes, instructions, storyboards and sketches are sent, scene by scene, off to outside companies that produce the actual animation (drawing the characters). For ‘PP2’ according to the buzz, Burbank did the initial story work, the designs were handed to Disney Australia (soon to be sold per rumor) and they oversaw the actual animation done in Korea and Taiwan.

After ‘Lilo’ and ‘Treasure’, the only two films with any kind of progress are ‘Brother Bear’ and ‘Sweating Bullets’. And word on them isn’t happy. ‘Bear’ is being done in Florida and rumors are that it will be a victim of that facility’s closure. There are also rumors that Burbank doesn’t like the movie and has told the directors to scrap what they have and come up with an entirely new story. The whispers are that the directors kept the story line as close as possible to the original Native American mythology. It lacks the happy perky animals and happy perky girls that Burbank can turn into plush toys and many, many video sequels. Rule One is that you can’t make a movie without a happy meal.

‘Sweating Bullets’ is supposed to have some sound already recorded, but it has the biggest problem of all: Michael Eisner. He HATES country, HATES, HATES, HATES, HATES it, especially if it’s considered from the “deep south” (i.e., New Jersey). With ‘Spirit’ coming from Dreamworks in just a couple months, this one was in trouble anyway. Whispers are that no one is really working on this one due to the lack of staff and the mega problems over on ‘Treasure Planet’ (I have yet to hear a single good comment about that movie).

Beyond that, things get even murkier. There was are rumors about another Grimm’s Fairy Tale, but that seems to have been shut down. There’s another rumor about a ‘Shrek-like’ “hip-and-edgy” Bambi take-off (cute animals that fart, that kind of thing) that has Einser’s interest. All resources are going to video sequels, there’s no one left to work on those “big bloated features”. It’s also whispered that when one of Disney’s top animators went to Universal, he took a large number of staff and the best projects with him. The Mouse’s cupboard is bare.

The Company simply doesn’t believe the returns are there to justify feature length animation. Instead of creating a good movie that will generate good box office, The Company has decided to make cheap movies that will produce returns on mediocre box office and home video sales. It’s the exact same thinking that goes into Saturday morning animation.