Welcome To Planet Pixar

gambit3 writes "Wired Magazine has an in-depth article on the growth of Pixar examining how it compares to, and how it became the new Disney: 'Pixar hasn't just turned into the new Disney. It has out-Disneyed Disney, becoming the apprentice that schooled the sorcerer.' Its films have grossed $2.5 billion, making it the most successful film studio, picture for picture, of all time."

Comments

It has become the best studio because...

[suyashs]

it puts the creative minds first and in control, not the big wigs...I mean when Roy Disney gets kicked out of Disney itself, you know you have a problem.

Re:It has become the best studio because...

[general_re]

One of those three has got to be Satan himself. I just can't decide which one it is.

They're all Satan. Try to think of it as a sort of unholy trinity - The Bastard, The Scum, and The Holy Shit. You can figure out which is which. ;)

Re:It has become the best studio because...

[toolio]

Don't be too harsh. Eisner turned Disney around in the eighties by turning its focus on movies and new characters.

Remember Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Lion King?

Although I do agree some decisions have been less than beneficial as of late.

Re:It has become the best studio because...

[ericspinder]

Eisner turned Disney around in the eighties...

This is the same guy who...

...authored an internal memo at Paramount in 1982 that read: "We have no obligation to make history. We have no obligation to make art. We have no obligation to make a statement. To make money is our only objective." -- (eonline)

The trouble with that kind of attitude is that eventually you will bleed a creative company dry of any morals, and once the morals are gone profits tend to dry up shortly afterwards as sensitive creative people need a "good home". A big part of Disney's growth in the 90's was fueled by purchases funded by stock market growth, which is far more artifical than the "organic" growth for which Disney was perviously known.

obligatory

[Anonymous Custard]

I, for one, welcome our new 3D rendered...cuddly...uh... oh forget it.

*Disney* came out ahead when they dumped Pixar

[buddydawgofdavis]

Not many people believe this, but I think *Disney* got the better end of the deal when DISNEY dumped PIXAR. (Not the other way around, as the Steve Jobs faithful believe.) Here's why:

1. Under the current deal, Disney has the copyrights to the existing movies and can continue to make revenue off of them, licence merchandise, etc.
2. Pixar is still committed to making two more movies
3. Movies are a "hits" business. You can't predict if future movies will be successful. Steve Jobs wouldn't deal unless he could get the rights back to the existing movies. Disney would have been CRAZY to do this--those movies can bring in a few BILLION over the next decade.
4. To trade away the Toy Story/Nemo/Monsters franchise in order to bet that Pixar will continue to make hit movies is a bad bet. Nobody stays on top forever in this business.

Re:*Disney* came out ahead when they dumped Pixar

[DunbarTheInept]

It's a matter of if you prefer high-risk with high-yeilds or low-risk with low-yeilds. If Pixar continued its Disney deal, that would have meant Pixar wouldn't take the risk (as Disney would be doing the funding) but also Pixar would only see a tiny portion of the profits (as Disney would take most of that.)

So it's guaranteed minimal funding or risky gigantic profits. They chose the risky route. I believe the future will prove them right, as evidenced by the fact that all the talent in writing and animating these movies has been Pixar's work, not Disney's.

These days computer animations are everywhere. Pixar started it but they are no longer the only player in that market. But what they do have is better writing, and better in-jokes. They have been very successful at making movies that BOTH children and adults find entertaining (as opposed to typical Disney crap, where the adults are only bothering to go because their kids want to see it.) When Disney says "family movie" they really mean "children's movie." When Pixar says "family movie", they mean it.

Pixar will outlast Disney, precisely *because* they aren't afraid to take a risk when it's necessary (like this move was), while Disney is too conservative - preferring to follow established trends instead of starting them.

No, I'm not a Steve Jobs fan. I'm a Pixar fan, and have been since before I knew who the hell Jobs even was. I've been a fan since their animated short days, when I was using their Renderman(tm) software (a little bit) and going to animated film festivals and going ga-ga over seeing what they were doing with it. That's how I can tell they are where the creative talent was coming from, not Disney. Shorts like "Gerry's Game" and the mother-and-child desk lamps show all the same style of creative scripting as can be seen in Toy Story and Monsters Inc.

Re:*Disney* came out ahead when they dumped Pixar

[badasscat]

By letting Pixar go, Disney doesn't GAIN anything they weren't already entitled to under the old contract. But, as you point out, they're not losing anything either.

Well, not technically. But they "lost" all of the future revenue they would have had from future Pixar films. They lost the *potential* for revenue from future films, which is what companies are based on after all - revenue potential, not current revenue. A company with no future is not a company for very long, pretty much by definition.

So Disney did give up a lot, quite a lot. I really doubt Pixar will keep up this run of massive hits forever, but assuming they even put up half the gross over the next five movies, that's still $1.25 billion in gross Disney just threw away.

Was Disney put in an impossible position by Pixar's demands? I don't think so. Pixar had become Disney's animation business and they knew it. Disney's in-house animation has stunk up the business for years and it's only getting worse - that's of Disney's own doing. It was Disney's mis-management that put Pixar in the position they were in, where they could make such demands, and in my opinion Disney was in no position to refuse them, even as unreasonable as they sounded.

If you run an ice cream stand, it's not you or your stand that people are coming for, it's the ice cream you're selling. And you need to get that ice cream from somewhere, whether it's by making it yourself or by buying it from someone else. Without ice cream people want to buy, you may as well not have an ice cream stand, right?

The question is, does Disney want to be in the animation business or not? Letting Pixar go suggests to me that they don't - otherwise, there's really no price that would have been too high to pay. This was their source of ice cream. Without Pixar, there is no animation business at Disney anymore, and they need to rely even more on their theme parks (which are nothing without their animation business) and ABC. Eventually, the theme parks cannot really survive without the animation, as it's all based on Disney's "branding".

I don't usually like to sound too dramatic about these things, as most companies can survive events like this, but I really think Disney threw away their core business here, first by letting their own animation division fall apart, then by throwing away their only remaining source of reliable animation revenue. They no longer have anything they can really market as Disney animation with a straight face. (Personally, I think their Studio Ghibli contract has left them with some films better than either their own *or* anything Pixar has ever done, but they'll never use them to their potential - they're too hung-up on 3D right now). Without that animation, their theme parks decline, and then the whole company crumbles. Disney cannot survive just as ABC.

This was not a win for Disney. The deal Pixar wanted was not a very good one for Disney, but it was the lesser of two evils.

You gotta love english

[Roland Piquepaille]

It has out-Disneyed Disney

What I love with English is the ability to turn nouns into verbs and vice-versa without shocking anybody (and without even needing to be in Soviet Russia).

Finding Nemo tops Lion King in the box office.

[adept256]

The Lion King has been toppled by Finding Nemo as the highest grossing animation ever. Links go to box office statistics.

The Lion King was lauded for it's return to traditional hand-drawn animation techniques. In the past Disney has created some of the most stunning and timeless visual effects without the use of computers, and it's use of CGI was critised as they tentatively tried this new technology (most notably the flying carpet in Alladin). It seemed Disney was turning back to it's roots.

But they weren't. Instead, they turned 180 degrees, and their next movie would be 100% CGI.

Disney's early attempts at CGI belied the problems inherent in training their artists to drop the pencil and grab the mouse. The decision to hire Pixar Studios to take over their CGI efforts was made, and will go down in history as a Damn Good Move.

Toy Story was a groundbreaking film. Nothing like it had ever been tried before. Pixar were the pioneers of feature length 3d animated films. Toy Story set a precedent that would be surpassed by each subsequent film from Pixar Studios, and a precedent for others to aspire to.

Almost ten years since Toy Story, Pixar are now in direct competition with Disney. Disney's The Lion King, praised for it's hand-drawn animations, has been knocked off the box-office podium by Pixar's Finding Nemo, 100% computer-generated.

Both companies now make CGI films exclusively.

Shield Guardian

[Graymalkin]

Pixar is doing extremely well thus far because they've released hits, some of these were hits due in no small part to the Disney marketing machine. While I don't think Pixar's exactly on the losing end of the breakup a lot of their success has been tied to their partnership with Disney.

Disney's power comes from its ability to milk their franchises dry. They've got the Disney channel, their retail chain, third party retailers, and their theme parks to generate cash. They can start a media and retail blitz to hype their movies. A movie that doesn't do well at the box office might end up being a DVD darling or have a successful line of toys or collectibles. They've also got the media channel to do animated series or sequels based on their feature films.

Aladdin is an excellent example of their franchise machine. The movie was very successful in the box office and probably one of the better movies they had done in a long time. The movie was supported by a blitz of toys, video games, and collectibles. Following the success of the movie they made a rather popular television series based on the first film. The series was capped with two straight to video sequels, one featuring the return of Robin Williams as the voice of the Genie. Their one movie that might have made a few hundred million in the box office worldwide ended up making them tons more money as a franchise.

Toy Story has turned into the same sort of franchise. There's an animated series based around Buzz Lightyear, a huge line of toys and collectibles, and then a second movie that was more popular even than the first. Pixar sees only a small fraction of the TS franchise revenue.

Because Disney designs all their films to be franchise darlings is not necessarily a good thing. Pixar's strength lies in its ability to make good movies. Disney's films are just shiny enough to sucker little kids into building Disney themed Christmas lists. Pixar's films are entertaining to people of various ages and rarely give you the feeling you're being hypnotized into buying licensed products at your earliest convenience.

I think Pixar and the other non-Disney studios stand a pretty good chance of ending Disney's media reign in the near (10 yrs) future. Dreamwrosk in particular has been honing their art of sniping away at Disney's core audience. Shrek is friendly enough for the Disney core audience yet enticing enough to keep their parents interested. I don't have any doubt Pixar will be able to pull the same stunt once they're out from the Disney mantle. Neither has the marketing machine of Disney but they are both giving the artistic aspects of their companies more creative control than the suited bean counters. There's a huge market of people yearning for some entertainment that isn't the watered down uncreative crapfest that Disney's films have become.

It's the story stupid!

[theRG]

I keep hearing and reading all these news stories about how traditional 2D animation is dead, about how Disney is only doing CG animation from now on. I'm amazed at how ignorant these bean counters and suits are: it's not about the technique that produces these films, it's all about the story and the characters.

The animation in "The Lion King" isn't too different than what we saw in "Snow White" almost 60 years earlier. It was the story and the characters that made the movie (and the other Disney classics from the early 1990s) such a great hit and instant classic.

I think that Pixar should surprise everyone and come out with a traditional 2D cell movie and show just how brilliant their storytelling really is. That way the public and media will get over how computer animation alone will make blockbusters.

Re:New Disney?

[Psycizo]

From what I've heard before, Home on the Range was Disney's last Hand Drawn 2D film. They will still have 2D films, but they will be developed digitally.