OMG can this be true? This was posted on doom buggies.com.
I feel like I've just had my guts kicked out.
It's been rumored that Disney would abandon it's traditional cel drawn animated features. Well, it looks like we have confirmation on that.
TechTV had a segment on Treasure Planet which included the line, "Disney has announced that Treasure Planet will probably be the last of Disney's big budget animated films".
This is what a friend from corporate had to say on the matter...
Quote
isney is out of the traditional feature animation business. A lot of people have been fired, the rest are waiting. The era is over – until someone can rebuild the Company again.
The only traditional animation feature in the works is ‘Brother Bear’ (title subject to change) that’s limping along in Florida. I read over at Jim Hill’s site that the film’s release date has been moved up to next holiday season, but some of my sources say there’s still an internal debate about simply abandoning the film altogether. Whatever happens, the rumor remains strong that Florida Feature Animation will be closed when the film stops production.
The other films in the works are CGI movies, the first of which was supposed to be ‘My Peoples’. But that one's in so much trouble that it was pushed back a year (in a swap very similar to the ‘Lilo’ and ‘Treasure Planet’ fiasco). Eisner is convinced that traditional animation is dead and only CGI has a future. Rumors are that all pen-and-ink people in Burbank will be gone by Spring and the few that are left had better learn how to use a mouse.
The “animation” you will be seeing from Disney is typified by films like ‘Peter Pan 2’ and ‘Jungle Book 2’. These are really non-Disney made direct-to-video creations that are being given a theatrical release as part of the marketing campaign. Or at least that was the plan. ‘PP2’ pretty much flopped at both the box office and on the store shelves. The entire strategy is being rethought. In typical fashion only the marketing is being blamed for the failure, not the low quality of the film involved.
The current drive is to lower the costs of the direct-to-video films even more. The hot new plan is to recycle existing material. Both the Cinderella and the Tarzan movies are nothing more than episodes of Saturday morning series stapled together into “movie”. The new ‘Stitch’ sequel will follow that same pattern.
Eisner has yet to grasp, and he may be incapable of ever grasping, is that technology doesn’t make the movie, the story does. Whether the films are ink-on-celluloid, computer graphics or crayons & construction paper – the film’s going to fail if the story is bad. ‘Treasure Planet’ would not have been any better if it was 100% CGI (despite today’s spin coming out of Team Disney Burbank). But making a good movie requires the hard work of talented people. Eisner is only interested in quick and cheap.
I also heard that with the flop of treasure planet and the subsequent drop in disney stocks that there is pressure building once again to oust Eisner.
I feel like I've just had my guts kicked out.
It's been rumored that Disney would abandon it's traditional cel drawn animated features. Well, it looks like we have confirmation on that.
TechTV had a segment on Treasure Planet which included the line, "Disney has announced that Treasure Planet will probably be the last of Disney's big budget animated films".
This is what a friend from corporate had to say on the matter...
Quote
isney is out of the traditional feature animation business. A lot of people have been fired, the rest are waiting. The era is over – until someone can rebuild the Company again.The only traditional animation feature in the works is ‘Brother Bear’ (title subject to change) that’s limping along in Florida. I read over at Jim Hill’s site that the film’s release date has been moved up to next holiday season, but some of my sources say there’s still an internal debate about simply abandoning the film altogether. Whatever happens, the rumor remains strong that Florida Feature Animation will be closed when the film stops production.
The other films in the works are CGI movies, the first of which was supposed to be ‘My Peoples’. But that one's in so much trouble that it was pushed back a year (in a swap very similar to the ‘Lilo’ and ‘Treasure Planet’ fiasco). Eisner is convinced that traditional animation is dead and only CGI has a future. Rumors are that all pen-and-ink people in Burbank will be gone by Spring and the few that are left had better learn how to use a mouse.
The “animation” you will be seeing from Disney is typified by films like ‘Peter Pan 2’ and ‘Jungle Book 2’. These are really non-Disney made direct-to-video creations that are being given a theatrical release as part of the marketing campaign. Or at least that was the plan. ‘PP2’ pretty much flopped at both the box office and on the store shelves. The entire strategy is being rethought. In typical fashion only the marketing is being blamed for the failure, not the low quality of the film involved.
The current drive is to lower the costs of the direct-to-video films even more. The hot new plan is to recycle existing material. Both the Cinderella and the Tarzan movies are nothing more than episodes of Saturday morning series stapled together into “movie”. The new ‘Stitch’ sequel will follow that same pattern.
Eisner has yet to grasp, and he may be incapable of ever grasping, is that technology doesn’t make the movie, the story does. Whether the films are ink-on-celluloid, computer graphics or crayons & construction paper – the film’s going to fail if the story is bad. ‘Treasure Planet’ would not have been any better if it was 100% CGI (despite today’s spin coming out of Team Disney Burbank). But making a good movie requires the hard work of talented people. Eisner is only interested in quick and cheap.
I also heard that with the flop of treasure planet and the subsequent drop in disney stocks that there is pressure building once again to oust Eisner.
