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Pixar Drops Disney To Find a New Studio Partner

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the parting-ways dept.

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."

6 of 581 comments (clear)

  1. Adios, Disney by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful
    I've always felt rather 'ugh' about Pixar's association with Disney and feel this is a good move.

    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
    1. Re:Adios, Disney by furiousgeorge · · Score: 5, Insightful

      "Having the Disney name on it means it automatically becomes a must see for a lot of kids(people)."

      You mean like "Atlantis" or "Emperors New Groove" or "Dinosaur" or "Treasure Planet" (biggest flop of the last 10 years). Lilo & Stitch was a moderate success, and the first real one they've had in 10 years.

      Disney was must-see 50 years ago (their hayday) or 15 years ago (Lion King, Beauty & The Beast etc). Now they are only producing steaming piles of shite and don't have a new idea among them.

      I mean - Cinderella2? PeterPan2 LionKing2 Aladdin2&3.

      For christs sakes.

    2. Re:Adios, Disney by edsel · · Score: 5, Insightful

      One thing that distinguishes Pixar from Disney is the originality of Pixar's story-lines. John Lassiter is at least as creative as ol' Walt was in his hay-day.
      I find it sadly ironic that Disney was one of the studios pushing congress to extend copyright protection ("The Mickey Mouse Protection Act") while nearly all of their films used material plundered from the public domain. Hans Christian Anderson, Bros. Grimm., Dafoe, etc....
      Toy Story and Finding Nemo are among the very few Disney offerings that aren't blatant rip-offs of off-copyright "classics". And Disney didn't produce them.

    3. Re:Adios, Disney by chez69 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah isn't it funny how all of the "great" Disney movies were nothing more than remakes of old stories, legends, etc that are in the public domain, and yet they are fighting tooth and nail to prevent their own works from ever going into the public domain?

      But thats a whole nother' thread...

      Anyways, I'm sure one could easily argue that sometimes people benafit from pirating. I'm sure if college kids didn't rampantly pirate MS Office and Windows, Microsoft wouldn't have the market share that it currently does, and these same kids wouldn't be "locked" into Office and other such software as adults.

      Heck, in college I had a cracked version of Warcraft II that I played all the time. I loved that game so much what did I do later on? I bought StarCraft and WarCraft III.

      --
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  2. Been Waitin' Fer This! by forkazoo · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

  3. Disney needs the competition by Killswitch1968 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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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