The box-office failure of Disney's Treasure Planet may cause the studio to rethink its role as the industry's leader in animated features, some analysts are indicating. In an interview with today's (Thursday) Los Angeles Times, Dave Davis, an analyst for Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin, said. "Maybe it's time for them to rest a bit in animation, pull back and wait for the next wave." On the other hand Jill Krutick of Salomon Smith Barney told the Times, "Animation is clearly the heart and soul of Disney. ... Treasure Planet was a disappointment. But it doesn't mean the machine is broken by any means." Said Disney studio chairman Richard Cook: "All it says is that, for this particular Thanksgiving weekend, this movie didn't perform as well as we'd anticipated. For whatever reason, we did not make it look appealing enough." And Exhibitor Relations chief Paul Dergarabedian told the Times: "There are two reasons that Treasure Planet did as poorly as it did. One is called Harry Potter and the other is called Santa Clause. There was just too much competition for the family audience."