Popular opinion and maybe Disney themselves determine that the esteemed Disney Renaissance progressed a certain way: The Little Mermaid happened in late 1989, and then Beauty and the Beast happened in late 1991, rest is history, right?
But what was going on in 1990? Thirty years ago?
It’s easy to name one significant event, and that was the completion and release of the feature that succeeded The Little Mermaid and preceded Beauty and the Beast: 1990’s The Rescuers Down Under.
We all know that The Rescuers Down Under was a box office disappointment, and was the lone “loss” of that whole period of hits. Now, The Rescuers Down Under was a significant development as a feature film. Technically, it advanced the animation studio. The film was the first animated feature to be done entirely in the CAPS process, it furthered the use of computer animation in hand-drawn films, and gave the young budding artists and animators yet another vehicle to really strut their stuff. Critical reception back in the day may have been mixed, but many a Disney lover (myself included) hold the film in high regard. One could go on and on about an alternate Disney Animation history where that film completely succeeded at the box office… But in reality, it was a miss.
I think in 1990, something else helped accelerate Disney’s Renaissance…
I often talk about how home video is an overlooked part of not only Disney’s resurgence, but also of theatrical animation in general. By 1988, the year Disney released Oliver & Company theatrically, videocassette releases of Disney animated films were starting to break sales records. Pinocchio had moved 3/4 of a million units before vaulting in spring 1987, Sleeping Beauty moved over 1.3 million units by 1988. That same year, Lady and the Tramp briefly held the record as the best-selling video release ever with over 3 million units sold.
This wasn’t normal family-friendly video sales going on here. There were plenty of kid-friendly videos around back in those days, but the Disney animated films? Those were different. The sales of these animated classics on VHS, Betamax, LaserDisc, what have you, proved that respect for the older Disney animated classics was still strong in a day and age where a *new* Disney animated feature was greeted with more of an indifferent reaction. Certainly, films like The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound made good money and were profitable, but they weren’t among the blockbusters of their respective days. At least, in the United States. Many an animation historian knows that The Rescuers outgrossed Star Wars in both Germany and France, but in the US, it made a paltry amount compared to the George Lucas epic that captured the imaginations of the public like no other. In the ways a much older Disney film did, decades ago. The Fox and the Hound performed similarly to The Rescuers. Good-sized success, but it was no Raiders of the Lost Ark. If anything, it was family counter-programming to a Steven Spielberg movie that was too harsh and too violent for kids under the age of, say, 8.
Audience tastes are a strange and ever-changing thing… I’d imagine that Disney’s G-rated animated features did good enough at the box office throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s because of the brand alone, and the strength Disney’s animation inherently has. It seemed like they had a faithful base there almost each and every time, some films even took home the “highest-grossing” trophy. (Highest-grossing, in this case, means “made the most money.” Attendance-wise, these films weren’t anywhere near as big as perennial favorites like Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and Bambi.) The theatrical re-releases of the Walt-era films continued to do very well too, and in some cases might’ve outperformed the enterprise’s contemporary films – both animated and live-action. This subtly showed during the so-called “dark age” of animation (more like a “rollercoaster age”, plenty of ups and downs) that there was still respect for the medium bubbling somewhere. Maybe most adult audiences accustomed to a post-MPAA rating system movie world just didn’t see new Disney animated films as something to get excited about, stuff that was more fit for a matinee with the kids. They didn’t seem to reflect a contemporary world and worldview. As such, Disney’s then-recent animated features made good, but not great coin domestically, and have curiously held up… Possibly because of their time-capsule nature. Internationally, it was a different story. It was sometimes claimed that the Disney animated features made roughly double their grosses overseas during this period, and that’s probably what helped keep the prospect of making new features safe. Keep in mind, this was well after Roy O. Disney tried to coax Walt into abandoning making new animated features in the early 1960s. Each new film, even after Roy O.’s passing in 1971, had to prove to the heads that making animated features was still a viable thing and more than worth the company’s money. Most of which was being funneled into two, soon to be three theme parks. So while the new films did good, re-releases of classics also did very well, and sometimes better…
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, for example, collected $30 million on its 1983 re-release. That wasn’t too far behind what The Fox and the Hound took in two years prior. The 1987 re-release, a celebration of the film’s 50th Anniversary, took in an excellent $46 million. This was right in line with competitor Don Bluth and Steven Spielberg’s An American Tail, which finished its theatrical run in early-to-mid 1987 and at the time held the record for highest-grossing animated feature on its initial release. By contrast, The Great Mouse Detective, which came out in the summer of 1986 (mere months before American Tail), collected a modest $25 million domestically.
Disney opted to not release The Great Mouse Detective on videocassette shortly after its theatrical release. Perhaps the thinking was, “We can theatrically re-release it several years later, and maybe still make some money off of it.” After all, a lot of the old-timers were still at the studio and often didn’t see eye to eye with the new guard (Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg, etc.) when it came to home video. Chief among them, surprisingly, was Roy E. Disney. According to DisneyWar by James P. Stewart, Roy E. didn’t want certain animated gems to be released on video. While Roy E. looked to the future, he was still hesitant about having his uncle’s greatest works available inside small black-shelled cassettes. Other traditionalists probably felt, “But if Great Mouse Detective comes to video in 1987, then there will be no re-release down the line that will make it more money.”
It was a little understandable. By summer 1986, home video still had a bit to prove, it was still something of a nascent, niche, and not-very-cheap market. Disney saw solid sales with Robin Hood in late 1984/early 1985, it was priced at $79.95. Pinocchio was also priced at $79.95; this high pricing was commonplace back then, but Disney specifically priced these two films quite high so they could placate the old-timers who didn’t want a film like Pinocchio to be released on video. That made it available, but not “too available.” Pinocchio moved around 250,000 units, mostly selling to rental shops and those who were willing to shell out eighty beans to buy it. Then, during the holiday season of 1985, Disney then took a risk and re-priced Pinocchio – along with Robin Hood and Dumbo as well – to $29.95. Another 250,000 units were moved, making for a successful release. In gross revenue, Pinocchio‘s initial sales roughly equaled the total made during its 1984 theatrical re-release. Pinocchio briefly went on moratorium in early 1986.
The Sword in the Stone presumably did well enough in early 1986, along with Alice in Wonderland (returning from a quiet disappearance in roughly 1983/1984)… It would be the release of Sleeping Beauty in 1986, bolstered by a record-breaking multi-title holiday promotion that accompanied it. Instead of pricing Sleeping Beauty way too high, it retailed for $29.95. Over a million units were sold. Pinocchio was brought back from the vault for this promotion, and it topped out at around 750,000 units. Still, this apparently did not coax the team into giving Mouse Detective a release in spring 1987, though that would’ve been a logical step forward.
Perhaps this “wait it out” strategy was true of The Black Cauldron as well, which collected *$24 million* domestically in the summer of 1985, but that was deemed a big miss by the new brigade because that film cost twice as much as Mouse Detective did, and apparently had a stigma or two attached to it. The two of those films never came out on video back in the day.
So in 1988, you had two formative films… The hybrid Who Framed Roger Rabbit, and Disney Feature Animation’s thoroughly modern musical comedy Oliver & Company. Directed by Robert Zemeckis, produced by Steven Spielberg, with loads of exquisite, still jaw-dropping animation directed by Richard Williams, Who Framed Roger Rabbit smashed the domestic and worldwide box office, won a number of Oscars, and perhaps made it “cool” for many “adults” to go and watch animated works again. To say it was a watershed moment in animation history is an understatement… Oliver & Company, by contrast, garnered a more mixed reaction from critics. It was certainly a very hip, up-to-date movie that appealed to contemporary audiences, but did it hold much beyond its pop soundtrack and ’80s attitude? What mattered in fall 1988 and early 1989 was that it was making good money… So much so that it reclaimed, domestically, the record for highest-grossing animated film from Bluth’s mouse movie… All the while facing off Bluth’s dinosaur movie. (Released the same weekend, Land Before Time finished up with $84 million at the worldwide box office, Oliver & Co.‘s worldwide total is – for some strange reason – unknown. It has always been assumed that Bluth/Spielberg won internationally…)
Did Disney release Oliver & Co. on video in the spring of 1989? No.
Why not?
A bunch of folks who saw the movie in theaters, especially kids, were probably saddened to eventually learn that the snazzy new Disney animated movie wasn’t going to be on video anytime soon, and that they wouldn’t be able to see the movie, period. You could only view the trailer for it, on your Cinderella VHS (featured above). This was the same deal with The Black Cauldron and The Great Mouse Detective. Only through a theatrical re-release many years later, could people see it again… Your best bet was… Well… Merchandise.
Sounds almost unthinkable in the mid-1980s. Then again, you had to wait for some live-action blockbuster movies, too. E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial didn’t come to home video until 1988, which was six years after the film debuted theatrically, and a few years after a re-release. Because it was E.T., then one of the highest-grossing films ever made, it also became the best-selling video release of all time. The record was taken right out of Lady and the Tramp‘s paws…
Back to Oliver & Company. Oliver & Company was still not really a blockbuster. $53 million was indeed impressive for a new animated feature at the time, but it wasn’t Roger Rabbit‘s $156 million domestic haul, to say nothing of that film’s $329 million worldwide haul. Roger Rabbit, unlike the recent Disney animated features, came to video after theaters. No matter how huge Roger Rabbit was, I guess Disney didn’t reserve such rules for a feature that didn’t involve Walt Disney Feature Animation. All Touchstone films all went right to video after coming to theaters, ditto mainline live-action Disney movies.
What Disney Feature Animation needed was a blockbuster like Roger Rabbit or a Touchstone release like Three Men and a Baby. Something that would make a monster amount of money… and soon, they would get it…
If you’re thinking it’s The Little Mermaid, well… Surprisingly, not quite!
The Little Mermaid was yet another big moment for Disney and for theatrical animation in the late 1980s. The film was critically acclaimed, for starters. The film opened decently, but it was never really in the Top 2 at the weekend box office… But over time, it stayed in the Top 10. Clung to it. Then the film won two Oscars, for Best Original Score and Best Original Song (‘Under the Sea’), in late March of 1990. Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg proudly stated in an interview at the time that, “I want to go out and compete with Harlem Nights and Back to the Future II. Maybe that’s a foolish ambition and I’ll walk home with my tail between my legs but that’s who I really think we are competing with. If you go back to the first group of animated movies that came out of this company, they were competitive with the whole movie universe. They were not isolated into the ghetto of parent/children movies.” A night and day difference from what he was saying in interviews a year earlier, his attitude was that animation was only for children and that these heads were going to be okay with the films making not-blockbuster numbers… I guess the work of Howard Ashman, Alan Menken, directors Ron Clements and John Musker, and a whole crew of animators really changed his mind.
The Little Mermaid indeed outgrossed Harlem Nights, and it didn’t fall too far behind Back to the Future Part II. Finishing up with $84 million domestically, and over $180 million worldwide, it set new records for an all-animated movie… But still, if you look at the biggest movies of 1989, The Little Mermaid still didn’t compare. It was no Batman, it was no Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, it wasn’t even as big as Disney’s live-action summer adventure Honey, I Shrunk the Kids… Nowadays, which movie would come to your mind first? Would it be the Indy sequel? The movie where kids are bug-sized? Michael Keaton Batman? Maybe the caped crusader, yes, but I’m pretty sure The Little Mermaid would be the first movie you’d think of out of these four… Time really makes a big difference.
But in early-to-mid 1990, the momentum had to be kept. By the time The Little Mermaid was out of theaters, the hype for the film was at its height… It was a sleeper hit, through and through. Opened small and low-key, but then got more and more popular as time went by. Add in the Oscar wins and word-of-mouth… Something had to be done to keep the momentum going.
Disney was going to take a risk… They weren’t going to withhold the movie. They weren’t going to do what they did with Oliver & Company and Mouse Detective…
Exit-polling was done in the early quarters of 1990. Disney representatives asked audiences leaving the theaters showing The Little Mermaid if they were willing to buy the film on videocassette as early as spring/summer of that year. When the response was positive, Walt Disney Home Video readied The Little Mermaid for a mid-May release. Not even two months after winning two Oscars, right around the time the film was screening out of competition at the Cannes Film Festival… The Little Mermaid was released on video on May 17, 1990… Six months after its general release debut in theaters…
The video release was hasty. Unusual for a Disney video release of an animated feature at the time, the tape contains no previews whatsoever. Around this time, Disney was putting at least one trailer or sneak peek on the VHS releases of the animated classics. Early pressings of the 1985 Pinocchio video release contained a trailer for The Black Cauldron. Cinderella‘s 1988 video release contained a trailer for Oliver & Company, and Bambi‘s 1989 video release had a trailer for this movie… Surely the videocassette of The Little Mermaid could’ve contained a sneak peek of The Rescuers Down Under, or an ad for Peter Pan‘s forthcoming video release… But no. There are minuscule details, stuff that *I* specifically spot, that suggest this release was rushed. Typically, on the cover artwork and videotape labels for these releases (in the “Classics” line), the heading above the film’s title would be “Walt Disney’s Classic” or “A Walt Disney Classic”. That was certainly the case with the videocassette cover jacket artwork… But not the printed labels on the videocassettes…
… which bore the “Walt Disney Pictures presents” headings… Little details like that imply that the release was quickly belted out, if the video release date’s closeness to the theatrical bow already didn’t.
(I lost you there, didn’t I?)
Rushed or not rushed, the video release of The Little Mermaid sold 10 million units in North America before Disney put the title in the vault in April 1991. (Contrary to popular belief, this release was NEVER banned over perceived-inappropriate cover artwork.) Roughly ten million units times the original list price ($26.99) gives you somewhere around $270 million in sales, well eclipsing the worldwide box office total of the movie. Everyone who might’ve missed the movie in theaters had their second chance: Buy the video before it was gone. Consumers already learned that hard cold lesson with previous Disney animated features, and the new animated film on the block was going to be no different:
The Little Mermaid‘s video sales were the upside of 1990 for Disney, animation-wise. The Rescuers Down Under was released around the Thanksgiving frame, much like how The Little Mermaid was, but Disney’s higher-ups had made up their minds about that movie well before it was even completed. The Rescuers Down Under took in a relatively embarrassing $27 million domestically, and didn’t stand a chance against competition like Home Alone, as all the marketing had been pulled (a move personally supervised by Katzenberg) after opening weekend. The Rescuers Down Under was now treated as a mere footnote, not even. (My breakdown on why they lost confidence in the Rescuers sequel so early on, right here.) By early 1991, it was out of the upward climb narrative altogether, as evidenced on the Jungle Book VHS preview reel from 1991. A retrospective of the company leading up to a Beauty and the Beast sneak peek has zero mention of The Rescuers Down Under, but it sure took the time to highlight *both* Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid as the stepping stones to the spectacular present.
Disney’s biggest theatrical hit in 1990 was a Touchstone film, as expected: Pretty Woman. Also on the animation front was DuckTales: The Movie – Treasure of the Lost Lamp, which only did so-so at best. The Black Cauldron got a super-brief “test” re-release in early 1990 under the title Taran and the Magic Cauldron, but that went nowhere. It was the video successes of The Little Mermaid and Peter Pan (first time on video, hot off of the 1989 theatrical re-release) that gave Disney some good news in animation-land, along with successful theatrical re-releases of The Jungle Book and Fantasia.
As we all know, Beauty and the Beast debuted in fall 1991. In addition to critical acclaim, the film became the first all-animated feature to cross $100 million at the domestic box office, it climbed past $300 million worldwide, it was nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, and it was overall something of a phenomenon…
However, I think The Little Mermaid‘s video release really played a good-sized part in that film’s success and the larger Disney Renaissance period. I think The Little Mermaid being available on video formats for nearly a whole year allowed a lot of people to catch up on the movie, this was not the case with Oliver & Company; that was not on home video, and a re-release was many years away. Ditto The Great Mouse Detective. Outside of The Little Mermaid, the most recent Disney animated movie on home video was Robin Hood. A film that came out in 1973. Or if you count Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977), then, that as well.
And what ended up happening with Great Mouse Detective and Oliver & Company, anyways? The Great Mouse Detective was re-released theatrically in February 1992 under a slightly different title, the re-release flat-out bombed with a super-low $13 million domestic take. The video release followed immediately afterwards, and presumably performed better. Oliver & Company re-appeared theatrically in the spring of 1996, by that time a lot of the film’s ’80s elements were beyond dated… That re-release also tanked, and apparently, so did the subsequent video release months later. It has become a more obscure film in that library. Disney could’ve gotten one last whirl out of Oliver & Company had it debuted on video right after its theatrical release. Universal wasn’t afraid to withhold An American Tail and The Land Before Time, and as a result, they struck when the iron was hot. Those two films sold very well on video. MGM/United Artists released All Dogs Go to Heaven on video right after its bummer theatrical release (it opened the same weekend as Little Mermaid, and it didn’t even make half of what Mermaid made), the film lived a good second life on home media formats. (For a funny aside, an episode of Garfield & Friends made fun of how All Dogs did on video vs. how it did in theaters.) The other two ’80s Disney animated movies had to wait, too. Despite getting a theatrical re-release in early 1988, The Fox and the Hound didn’t come to video until 1994. While its re-release did okay at best, the video release managed to be among the top-selling videos of 1994. The Black Cauldron debuted on video in North America in 1998, thirteen years after the film first came out, and eight years after that very limited re-issue. Even The Rescuers had to wait! The first video release of the film in North America was in fall 1992, nearly a full year after The Rescuers Down Under came out on video… Some of the marketing materials and even the in-store “demo” tape that I have in my collection sorta-kinda advertise this film as a “second” Rescuers movie of sorts!
The Little Mermaid‘s video release set the precedent. There wouldn’t be anymore waiting for the hot new Disney animated feature. Now, The Little Mermaid was still theatrically re-released. That was during the holiday season of 1997. It was put up, I guess for old time’s sake, against Don Bluth’s then-newest feature, Anastasia. Unlike the battle of 1989 where Ariel surpassed Charlie at the box office, the Mermaid re-release did so-so while Anastasia won. Last laugh had? A second video release of The Little Mermaid came right after the theatrical re-issue, in spring 1998.
Soon, a lot of the establishment at Disney would come to realize that video was now the new second life for an animated film, as well as airings on television. Few Disney theatrical re-releases occurred throughout the 1990s. Pinocchio, which vaulted in 1987, was re-released theatrically in 1992 touting a brand new restoration… But despite Pinocchio being among the studio’s greatest achievements and a beloved film, it wasn’t enough to get audiences to come and see it on a big screen. Either they had the videocassette at home, or their local Blockbuster had it. The re-release of Pinocchio in 1992 missed the $20 million mark domestically, the following video release in 1993 performed better. By contrast, Snow White collected $41 million on its 1993 re-release. Difference was, Snow White was *still* not on video. A re-release of Beauty and the Beast was once planned for fall 1998, but it didn’t come to fruition. (For a sidenote, that planned re-release would’ve factored into the infamous Disney vs. DreamWorks war of 1998. You know, the scuffle with A Bug’s Life, Antz, and The Prince of Egypt‘s release dates?) Beauty and the Beast later saw an IMAX-only re-release in 2002, with additional footage, dubbed the “Special Edition”. The Lion King got that same treatment later that year. What if those particular re-issues had been playing in theaters everywhere? How would they have done? That’s another story for another day, ditto Disney’s botched 3D re-release plans from earlier in the decade.
It makes one wonder what could’ve happened if The Little Mermaid *didn’t* come to home video in the early 1990s… What if Disney was still stingy at that time and waited years to re-release the film theatrically? Would a move like that have significantly impacted Beauty and the Beast and the whole Renaissance going forward? Or would there have been no consequences whatsoever? Maybe Beauty and the Beast would have been just as successful without that component? Whatever the answer may be, home video still played a big role in the 2nd Golden Age of Animation…