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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."
Disney may have been good, long ago, but after the success of Toy Story I don't think Pixar needed Disney for distribution. Worse, I've felt, is a Disney influence on characters in the films, certain attitudes and stereotypes which are pretty tired and one reason Disney's animated offerings don't impress.
Sadly, this will also mean any sequels to the Disney-associated films will be done by Disney, which as I've said, employs some pretty tired ideas about character development. Hopefully the well at Pixar is far from dry and fresh new ideas continue to emerge.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Pixar hooked up with Disney in 'ancient times.' When Toy Story was still just an idea, nobody had *ever* made a 3D animated feature. Pixar knew they could do it, but they didn't have the marketing muscle. So, They signed a contract with disney to deliver, IIRC, five features. Disney had a sweet ride, but Pixar was never really very happy with the contract. Watch, for example, Brother Bear. Now, go watch any Pixar film. You will notice that there is a lot more interesting, grown up humor in the Pixar movies. This isn't to say that Pixer will strike out and target adult audiences with violent-anime-esque features from now on, or anything, but Pixar is going to have a lot of room to flex its creative muscles, and basically do whatever it wants. Huzzah! I simply can't wait to see what they come up with over the next five years. It ought to be grand.
Disney, meanwhile, decided to scrap all 2D animation recently. They did this because, apparently, they think Pixar's success is because they work in 3D. While this may have had a lot to do with the buzz behind TS1, it just ain't the case. The reason Pixar movies make mad money is because they are good movies. Finding Nemo could have been made with a dull pencil on notebook paper, and those guys still would have made something worth seeing!
The only good things Disney has done lately were the Pixar movies and Fantasia 2000, which was driven mainly by Roy Disney. Now both these creative sources are gone, they are running out of out-of-copyright stories to rip off, and everybody thinks Eisner is an ass. The only think they can do now is churn out cheap marketing-driven shlock; the age of considering Disney as "art" is over. (Incidentally, I've always maintained that Disney and Microsoft had simular business models: "steal other peoples ideas, then jealously guard them as your own.")
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
With _Nemo_, the bar got raised too high for Disney again (although you could argue that Disney didn't do much in the way of making it.) Now that Disney isn't hooked up with Pixar, I hope that the bar is set appropriately for future Disney animation.
Not that I didn't like _Nemo_, I thought it was great, wonderful, funny, my kids loved it and I loved it too. But that's a once-in-a-generation thing; it's great it happened, but we shouldn't let _Nemo_'s success stop us from appreciating good work. If Disney had stuck with Pixar, they'd be afraid to release anything that wasn't going to gross more than _Nemo_; now that they've broken up I hope we can look forward to seeing three or four good animated features a year, with some of them being really original.
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Roy keeps the Disney flame alive once again. He quit over the liquidation of feature animation in Florida. He told it like it is. Disney has fallen so far away from it's core values (making excellent animated features, and then marketing them in it's parks) that he felt Eisner should leave.
Eisner and the other souless robots on the board countered by justifying Pixar and digital animation shopped out to other studios as the future.
Guess what? Pixar is gone, at best, Disney can only do cheesy straight-to-video sequels from now on. They have no decent feature animation left to speak of. It's all regurtitation of old ideas from here on out.
Roy will be back in about a year, when Disney's stock drops by $5. That should be enough to bring Roy back just like last time he did this. Eisner is a dead man walking. Perhaps Disney will be able to right the ship after he's gone. No more Mighty Ducks, Haunted Mansion, or Miracle movies unless they actually release actual animated flicks.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
"All of the latest block-buster releases that have held the Disney name were made by Pixar."
:P
Pirates of the Caribbean was made by Pixar? huh. Learn something new every day.
I think people tend to forget Disney has it's fingers in a helluva lot more than animation. Pixar is a great asset, but they won't be dead without it (unfortunately).
Here's a question to ponder though... Everybody know's who directed Kill Bill. Everybody and their freaking dog knows who directed the LOTR trilogy. How many of you honestly know who directed "Finding Nemo" and don't have to look it up on IMDB? Be honest now!
I admit I had no idea (the answer is Andrew Stanton(story) & Lee Unkrich but I had to look it up)-- but poll a crowd of people and the answer will be 'Pixar'... not the director but that answer will still win.
How many people know (and care) who the distributor for Kill Bill is?
The names Pixar and Tarantino respectively draw the audiences and get the pay dirt - so they hold the power - the rest are all become negotiable contracts.
Being the undisputed cartoon motion picture producers have certainly bloated their ego, but done nothing for their movies. Take any 5 Disney movies of the last 10 years and I guarantee they each have the mandatory criteria/characters:
1. The comedic relief
2. The love interest
3. The complacent good natured affable hero
4. The easily-identifiable bad guy (always in black and smoking something)
4. The up-beat music song
5. The slow-dance music song
6. The Billboard song
7. The humorous evil sidekicks.
Put 'em all in a bag, add some celebrity voices, and presto-chango, we've got ourselves another cliche by-the-book Disney flick.
Now take a Pixar movie, not quite such an easy formula? AND NO STUPID SONGS. I hope they mop the flour with Disney.
PS. I must say though The Gummi Bears cartoon series was awesome.
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