Is Disney Marketing Going a New Route?

Earlier, I had complained about how Disney mishandled a few of their 2015 and 2016 releases. To me, it seemed like their marketing department couldn't handle so many big, tentpole, "event" pictures at once. For every Avengers: Age of Ultron and Inside Out, there would be a Tomorrowland and a Good Dinosaur. The Good Dinosaur …

‘The Jungle Book’, ‘The Lion King’ and the Future of Animation

Updates made to this article on September 28, 2016 following the announcement of a remake of 'The Lion King'... Original article follows, then the updated thoughts... The other day, I finally got around to watching Jon Favreau's The Jungle Book, which was made by Walt Disney Pictures and released earlier this year to unanimous critical …

The Animation Box Office Crown

This summer's Finding Dory, interestingly enough, broke the record for highest grossing animated film in the domestic market. For 12 years, the crown was held by DreamWorks' Shrek 2, which was actually one of those rare sequels that outgrossed its predecessor by a wide margin. Finding Dory of course got to that point due to …

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 …

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 …

Ranking the ‘Mad Max’ Tetralogy

Mad Max... What a lovely saga! One of the greatest, most iconic, most influential science fiction film series of all time. One that all started with a little, microbudget movie no less, that was released during the beginning of one of sci-fi cinema's golden ages. The first film was released in the spring of 1979, …

DreamWorks’ Future

DreamWorks has a complicated history, and can be a complicated studio to talk about. Being over 20 years old, they've seen their ups and downs. Jeffrey Katzenberg formed DreamWorks SKG with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, after storming out of The Walt Disney Company in the autumn of 1994. Naturally, given his success with Disney's …

Flop Talk: The Inconsistent Reporting on Box Office Failures

Box office flops... One thing they are good at: Making the press race to do autopsies. "What went wrong?" they bellow, "here are the reasons!" they declare. Let's look at two box office flops: The Good Dinosaur and The Legend of Tarzan. Let's look at a film that performed similarly to them, but broke even …