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Pixar Drops Disney To Find a New Studio Partner
da_anarchist writes "After much speculation, Pixar has announced that it will end its distribution agreement with Disney. This comes after much bitterness at Pixar over the terms of their current deal with Disney, where Disney took a sizable (and some would say unfair) portion of the $2.5 billion in revenue generated by Pixar's films. Pixar is best known as the studio behind the Toy Story series and the more recent movie Finding Nemo."
Roy is Walt's nephew. Walt didn't have any sons.
They are better off without Disney. My wife is a film buff, and I have it on her good authority that Disney is in touble, all over the board. Movies, animation, parks, everything is tanking.
But as good as Pixar is at making great movies, financial success doesn't come from that. You need good marketing and distribution. I hope Pixar finds a good partner that won't take the lion's share of the profits. They will also need to scramble a little bit more to find funding, but with their reputation, capital should be no problem.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Disney's 2D is still open, they just closed all their traditional pen & paper animation houses
You know in Soviet Russia... (no jokes here) the cartoons had to be the most free expression of the artist's spirit since the party paid little to no attention to their messages. But the films came out with better moral message than the average tom and jerry. In fact NO ONE almost got hurt there
http://www.russiananimation.com
That's unture. While Gates is a partial owner, the G in SKG stands for Geffin. SKG stands for Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg and David Geffin.
Pixar is a public company. PIXR on NASDAQ.
Nah, he'd just subcontract the inbetween work to cheaper studios in Korea and China. That's what most of the Japanese studios have been doing for the past 10 years or so. Just take a look at the credits for any recent theatrical Anime and you'll see a lot of non-Japanese names and studios listed in the credits.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
It sounds like Disney-insiders blame the CEO of Disney.
From the article:
Roy Disney and ally Stanley Gold, who both resigned from the Disney board late last year and called for Chief Executive and Chairman Michael Eisner to step down, placed the blame on Eisner.
"More than a year ago, we warned the Disney board that we believed Michael Eisner was mismanaging the Pixar partnership and expressed our concern that the relationship was in jeopardy," they said.
why always when someone mentions Pixar they say that "Pixar is best known as the studio behind the Toy Story series and the more recent movie Finding Nemo"? Monster's Inc. anyone? and For the Birds? thats masterpieces!
Actually, Atlantis was pretty good. Haven't seen Emperor's New Groove" because I hate David Spade. Haven't seen Dinosaur, but the previews looked like great animation.
I did bring my kids to see Treasure Planet and Lilo & Stitch. L&S was great because it was supposed to be a low budget summer release that would tide us over until Treasure Planet, yet ended up being a really well done movie, whereas Treasure Planet was a butchered classic that they tried to soupe up with expensive CG. It wasn't *bad*, it just wasn't particularly notable.
Lilo and Stitch has become a Disney classic, at least to us, and must have been a pretty good success seeing as how it got a spin off series and a lot more merchandising than Treasure Planet.
And you missed another flop, though - Brother Bear, not to mention some of the stupid live action films they've done (like "Country Bear").
I don't know what the hell they're thinking with all the sequels, though, it really is pathetic.
Stupid sexy Flanders.
Not updated regularly for obvious reasons, but one of my favorite hidden gems on the web nevertheless.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
As I understand it Disney has certain licensing rights granted to them by their contract with Pixar but Pixar still owns the movies as well as all the rights to do what they want with the movies (except maybe some merchandising or other things that could have been granted exclusively to Disney).
This space for rent...
No, you can't copyright facts like that. It would be as if James Cameron had to get permission from the studios to say 'from the director of Titanic', on any films he did thereafter.
Further than that, even. Simba was originally white, and has been referred to at least once by Disney employees as Kimba. Furthermore, one of the Disney animators apparently wore a home-made Kimba/Leo costume to a Disney party and one of the voice actors originally thought that he was being cast in a remake of the Jungle Emperor/Kimba television series. There's quite a bit of evidence that they were fully familiar with Jungle Emperor. There's a good article about this on KimbaWLion.com.
Bít, zabít, jen proto, ze su liska!
I hate David Spade too, and yet to me, New Groove is one of the best things to come out of Disney in a looooooong time. Give it a shot, you might be surprised. It's not traditional Disney though; the characters don't randomly break into song, there's no romance, and way more slapstick humor. I dig it. :-)
The rest of the stuff they're putting out does seem pretty dumb though. Atlantis was OK. Treasure Planet blew.
Hi... I'm Larry... the shivering chipmunk... brrrrr!... I'm cold... I need a sweater...
Then they just need to say "from the makers of Toy Story(TM) and Finding Nemo(TM) *Toy Story and Finding Nemo are registered trademarks of the Walt Disney Corporation".
It's the title of a movie, you can't control how people refer to your products. George Lucas has a trademark on everything from Alderaan to wookie but he still can't sue Kevin Smith for having his characters talk about Star Wars.
If Kevin Smith isn't using Lucas' trademarks in commerce (i.e., to promote his own movies) that's true. But if Pixar were to use trademarks owned by Disney without a license to advertise other products, there could be trouble. Check the Lanham Act, 15 U.S.C. 1114. That said, I seem to recall a case recently regarding a former Playmate using the Playboy trademark on her homepage and the court said it was an acceptable and non-infringing use if she was accurately describing her status as a former Playmate.
There was Cowboy Neal at the wheel of a bus to never-ever land.
Which would you rather be responsible for, Brother Bear ($84m + $34m overseas) or Finding Nemo ($339m + overseas $504m)?
'nuff said.
D
Walt was known to "denounce" gays and communists..
I'm glad they employ people, but know what, 1000s of smaller shop, with higher value, could do just the same.
We've always been at war with Eurasia.
All animated shows you see on television in the U.S. (Simpsons, Futurama, Family Guy, etc.) have been farmed out to S. Korea or other countries for years. Principle animation is done stateside and the rest is "fleshed" out.
Animation is a tough career to pursue.
-- You see, there would be these conclusions that you could jump to
I can't believe this didn't make slashdot (oh, wait, I can) but here is a google news search.
Basically, the owner of the Pooh copyrights claims Disney is behind or didn't calculate royalties properly. Disney says that Pooh is their distinct thing now that they've had control for XX years. Oh, and it's not your copyright anyway, it belongs to the granddaughter of AA Milne. Well, AA Milne sued for the copyrights, but lost. The legal owner of the Pooh copyrights is the literary agent of AA Milne, who sold or bequeathed them decades ago.
The lawsuit is for at least US$700,000. Plus punitive (treble damages makes this big money;) Attorney for the plaintiff? Johnny Cochran. Sucks to root for him, but what are you gonna do? (My animus towards him is melting. If Ito and the OJ prosecution team weren't so incompetent, Cochrane et al. couldn't have gotten away with all the crap they did.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
> Disney is in a position that IBM found itself in years ago, and Coca-Cola found itself in when Pepsi came on the market.
Back in 1903, you mean? That's when the Pepsi-Cola name was trademarked.
Or are you referring to their big "Nickel Nickel" radio ad campaign of 1940?
Um, no, it's Abu. Apu is a quickie-mart clerk in the simpsons. Remember? The monkey? From Alladin?
but you don't let he watch a show that helps her learn.
Speaking as the parent of a three-year-old also, I'm not especially impressed with the "learning" they supposedly do on Barney.
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
THAT is precisely one of the primary reasons that Roy Disney left. I heard he was growing quite frustrated with the CEO and was bewildered as to why the company had not renegotiated its contract with Pixar back when it first realized the companies full potential. I have also seen a survey where the executives at Disney where voted as one of the worst management teams in our country
I find it very hard to hear or read anything about Disney without getting frustrated with their copyright practises. That name has become the definition of evil copyright abuse.
Disney and Pixar share (as in 50/50) profits after Disney takes a 12.5% cut for distributing the movie.
That's a LOT of coin. Disney has been raping Pixar for years, and Eisner's real burning over the Toy Story 2 fiasco (Pixar did the feature movie thinking it would count as a feature, Eisner let them think that while holding them to the original terms of the contract -- sequals don't count toward fulilling the contract) has left a lot of animosity at Pixar.
So, I'm sure that Pixar put Eisner in a real bad situation. Disney simply can't afford to let Pixar (and it's BILLIONS in super-reliable profit) go, and yet Pixar has made a big enough name for themselves and is pissed off enough at Disney that they will make an offer that Disney simply can't afford. At the same time, they can't bury the movies, as they add too much risk-free profit to the bottom line.
In essence, in this deal, Disney is screwed.
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