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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."
Either way, go Pixar!
"1984" was ment to be a warning, not a guidebook. You hear that Kim Jong-il!? BushCo?!
I don't believe they will have a hard time finding a new partner, I think that what they did was the best stuff disney has done in a long time. So What does disney have up its sleves now? I seems that the upper management are making poor decisions(something had to prompt Walt's son to leave), marketing is making poor decisions(disposable dvd's), they are shutting down animation studios left and right. What is thier current future focus?
They have to do something to pay for Eisners new Bel Air Home thats just down the street from his current one.
moo.
Help Save Disney from Eisner, who has turned the company from setting trends to following the current trend of the time. He fires the animators who have made the company great simply because it will increase their short term profit. They have completely abandoned the principles Walt Disney used in running the company. If you own Disney shares, support Roy Disney, the surviving member of the Disney family.
I'm a father of two great kids and a part-time Linux geek to boot. Pixar's films have given myself and both of my children hours of enjoyment - the youngest (2 3/4) is in love with Woody and Buzz, found Bruce the shark a frightening (and probably life changing!) image at the cinema, thought Mike and Sully were as cute as teddy bears, and literally danced on the spot when A Bugs Life kicked into life on our DVD player... all I have to say to the guys at Pixar is a huge THANK YOU for making my childrens lives so the much happier for the hours they have enjoyed your films :)
...and fsck Disney!
I've noticed that everyone who is for abortion has already been born - Ronald Reagan
I know, I know...too flaky, mod away. =)
"You know why you do not see me styling wit my homies? Because I have no homies!!" -Mojo Jojo
Disney is with Nike on the list of companies that I won't have anything to do with. But now I'll be able to watch Pixar's new movies. http://www.google.com/search?q=disney+sweatshops
bits and peace
Nicholas Daley
But will they be able to say From the makers of Toy Story and Finding Nemo or does Disney have a clause stating they don't have the rights to those title?
What, me worry?
I'm sorry, but I side on Eisner on this one. People on /. love to hit on Disney but, frankly I've been pretty happy with what disney has done:
1. Sat morning-esque cartoons - Much better IMO than the competition (FOX, etc). Kim Possible (I hate to admit it, although the art looks a lot like penny arcade), Proud Family, etc are actually funny while kid centered.
2. Feature films. Like Pirates of the C. and Freaky Friday (surprisingly good as well). A few other flops, but they are trying.
3. They distributed pixar. I realize it was the creative genious of someone else, but that is the way *all* big studios work. Pixar was theirs to keep and they shouldn't have let them go.
4. Anime. Say what you will about burying studio ghibli films. They bought them and brought them to the US and played a big part in popularizing anime to the general public.
5. Other things. Like Broadway musicals. Bringing back sunday night disney movies. etc
That is a lot better in my opinion than Disney has been since its golden age. There are few things disney puts out that are *worse* than watching another episode of pokemon.
-Sean
A number of people have criticized Atlantis as a swipe from Nadia, which was directed by Hideaki Anno (later famous for Evangelion) and based on an original concept by Miyazaki. I'm not sure if the criticism is entirely fair- I've seen Nadia but not Atlantis- but it has been made. In both cases, Disney has claimed with a straight face not to have been familiar with the Japanese work they were alleged to have been stealing from. That seems especially hard to believe in the case of Jungle Emperor Leo, since the first animated version was partially US financed and shown on American TV as Kimba the White Lion.
There's no point in questioning authority if you aren't going to listen to the answers.
Except that Disney has a trademark on Toy Story as it relates to " prerecorded audio cassettes, compact discs, and laser video discs featuring music, stories, activities and other such educational and entertainment topics for children; prerecorded video cassettes featuring animated entertainment; computer software featuring music, stories, activities and other such educational and entertainment topics for children; motion picture films featuring animated entertainment."
They also hold it for lunch boxes, toys, etc.
They have around 20 trademarks for Finding Nemo.
Pixar knew they could do it, but they didn't have the marketing muscle.
This is BS. The Toy story porject was floundering after three years in production and not getting any closer to a decent product. The problem was that pixar focused on the animation and ignored the script.
Disney sent a bunch of professionals who threw away well over half of the rendered images and rewrote the script.
This was something of a bastard stepchild at the Disney studios. It started out following the standard Disney formula but took a different turn somewhere along the road and became something extremely enjoyable. I think it flopped because Disney plumb didn't know what to do with it, and they were already pouring all their resources into promoting Treasure Planet (ugh) which came out around the same time.
Think an hour-and-a-half of classic Loony Toons, and that's pretty much The Emperor's New Groove.
And the brethren went away edified.
When Pixar started off, they had no experience with distributing their work and marketing. So that's when they decided to collobarate with Disney. Disney being the giant that it was then, obviously had the better cut of the deal. The deal was to make 6 films. Pixar has done Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monster's Inc., Finding Nemo. That's 5 movies they've done for Disney and by rightly, it would've been 1 more film and the contract would've been over. But why is Pixar making 2 more films for Disney (The Incredibles & Cars)? Well, Disney argued back that Toy Story 2 is a sequel. They twisted Pixar's arm on that, and that's why Pixar isn't doing anymore sequels, they've practically done Toy Story 2 for free! Frankly, I'd say good riddance to Disney! Pixar's build a name for themselves and they are well loved by audiences of all ages. I don't think anyone else could have pulled off a story about fishes in the way Pixar has done. The originality and creativity of Pixar is seemingly boundless. Good job to Pixar for ditching Disney and I wish them all the best!
In the article it clearly states that Pixar was always responsible for the content and Disney the marketing and distribution. If you've ever seen any news stories about Pixar (like the 60 Minutes II piece last fall) you would know Pixar has firm control over the creativity of its movies.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
The idea that Pixar would crank out five consecutive blockbusters was simply not on the table in 1995. Pixar's output up to that date consisted of a couple of award-winning animated shorts; suggesting that Pixar would outshine Disney Animation by 2000 (with Disney releasing The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and Lion King in the five years prior) would have gotten you laughed out of the studio.
But then Jeff Katzenberg decided he'd had enough of Michael Eisner, and went off to Dreamworks to make Antz (and Shrek). Lion King turned out to be the high-water mark for Disney's 2D animation unit; their best effort since was Tarzan, which grossed $435 million worldwide -- a little more than half of Finding Nemo's leviathan take, which is currently at $844 million.
So, Pixar has ended up paying Disney about 10-20 times what Disney's contribution to the process is worth. Eisner was probably using these lucrative terms as the starting point in his negotiations, while Steve Jobs (who already has Sony and Warner on speed-dial) was starting from the idea that Pixar could snap its fingers and have five studios vying for the honor.
Eisner is unquestionably an idiot for failing to recognize this, because he desperately needs Pixar to feed quality product into the gaping maw of his marketing, distribution and merchandising empire -- he's not going to make as healthy of a living selling Brother Bear plush toys and video sequels, that's for sure. Pixar just needs a distributor, though, and they're big enough now that they can get one for the asking.
I wouldn't be surprised if kids knew the name Pixar anyway
I'm (reasonably) sure he doesn't know the name, but my three-year-old certainly recognizes Luxor Jr. hopping out during the credits, and has made the connection between Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo as a result. So yeah, I'd expect kids old enough to read probably know the name.
(Then again, my son's the offspring of two geeks, so he may have gotten the reading-the-credits gene a little stronger than the average...)
Slashdot's token middle-aged housewife
Anyone hear about how Disney dropped out of Peter Pan because they didn't want to donate any money to a London children's hospital? The author of Peter Pan left the copyright to the hospital in his will. When the most recent movie was made, Disney believed it should be exempt from making any payment to the hospital from the sale of spin-off books, board games, soft toys and computer games, which are expected to generate tens of millions of dollars in their own right.
Read the full story here
So FUCK YOU Disney! Guess how much 50% of 0 is you bozos!
One of these days I'm moving to Theory - everything works there
Possibly we'd have seen the dead parents in "Empire of the Sun", which is what the project was originally called. By the time it had metamorphosed into "The Emperor's New Groove" they'd been pushed offstage. Kuzco is 18 and the reigning emperor. No visible mother or father, and his advisor Yzma mentions at one point that she "practically raised him." So yeah, mommy and daddy are dead, but we don't see them croak here. The one happily married couple we do see survives unscathed.
I meant that it wasn't a mucical; there was no romantic storyline; no comic-relief sidekick like the monkey in Aladdin, that stupid dragon in Mulan or the gargoyles in Hunchback; no hopeless climactic fight against impossible odds that were overcome by courage/innate goodness/magic/semi-divine intervention; and nothing notable in the way of marketing tie-ins. They decided to do characterization and plot instead.
And it turned out to be a good movie! Who knew?
And the brethren went away edified.