Better To Not Know

Summer 2013... Much like what I do now, I was clawing in the dirt for animation news and the word on the street. Walt Disney Animation Studios seemed to be on some kind of cusp, this was months before the release of Frozen. The Burbank studio only had two legitimate box office hits under their …

‘Mulan’ and the Wasted Potential of Disney’s Remakes

A few days back, Disney announced the release date for one of their many live-action remakes in development: Mulan. It is currently set to open on November 2, 2018. If Mulan is to be a near-exact remake of the 1998 Disney animated film, then I will have problems. Yet again. It'll also show, I think, …

Disney’s Marketing Problem…

Back in April of 2013, Disney had excitedly announced at the annual CinemaCon expo that their plan was to release at least *eight* tentpole films every calendar year. This was when movie division chairman Alan Horn - pictured above - was relatively new to the studio. A veteran from Warner Bros.' heyday, Horn was the …

A Better Beast?

The 2017, Disney-made live-action Beauty and the Beast remake is only happening for one reason, and it rhymes with honey. Disney's animated adaptation of Beauty and the Beast is still loved 25 years after its 1991 theatrical debut, and is often called one of the greatest animated films. Of course Disney wants to mine from …

2016’s Animated Oscars… Hard to Predict?

The Oscars... The Best Animated Feature category... Who is in the running? I think this year, we don't have too many definite answers. This is a bit premature, because four more major animated features are left, one of which comes from the on-a-roll Walt Disney Animation Studios. The features are Warner Animation Group's high-flying comedy …

Cake Icing: Custom Logos

Logos... Custom variants of well-known logos... The Walt Disney studio has a long history of doing this. Disney had signed with RKO Radio Pictures in 1937, who would distribute all of their features and shorts for roughly fifteen years. Before each film (with the exception of the first, Snow White), the RKO logo would precede …

Breaking Down Disney’s “Dark Age”: Part 2

In the last part, I took a look at the first films that entered production after Walt Disney's passing in 1966, The Aristocats and Robin Hood. These were two very compromised films, the filmmakers behind them had to be very budget-conscious all the while delivering fun films that would get The Jungle Book's success, and …

Breaking Down Disney’s “Dark Age”: Part 1

It is often stated that Walt Disney Animation Studios went through a prolonged "Dark Age" after the death of Walt Disney and the posthumous release of The Jungle Book. A dark age that would end with The Little Mermaid in 1989, often called the start of Disney's Renaissance... What is true is that the studio …

The Current State of Disney Live-Action

A year ago, it seemed like the message was clear: Stay the course... Walt Disney Studios, the live-action end of Disney's whole movie monolith, has seen a lot of success in the recent years, but a lot of crushing flops as well. As a result, they seem to want to specialize in one kind of …

Mainstream American Animation Today and Tomorrow…

2016 is arguably a watershed year right now for the mainstream feature-length animated film... Zootopia, Walt Disney Animation Studios' wonderful new animated original, not only exceeded expectations, but also became one of the highest-grossing animated films and one of the few original, not-based-on-any-source-material films to cross $1 billion at the worldwide box office. It is …