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Disney to Make Toy Story 3 Without Pixar
rdurell writes "CNN is reporting that Disney has begun the process of setting up a new CGI studio with the goal of making Toy Story 3. Pixar has balked at the idea of another sequel thus far though Disney does own the rights to the franchise. Does this truly spell the end of the Disney-Pixar relationship? Can both Disney and Pixar live without the other?" We covered the Disney/Pixar breakup in January.
Pixar's realized it doesn't need Disney (all they've done lately is act as distributers). Disney killed their golden goose in an effort to grab a little more profit for themselved.
and that it quickly becomes a direct to video failure. C'mon Disney, is mining existing properties all that you have left in you? What happened to creativity anyhow?
Lasers Controlled Games!
*Sigh*. Disney will ruin it--I don't think anything decent has come out of Disney in the past five or ten years, aside from the Pixar stuff. Does anyone know if Disney owns the rights to The Incredibles sequel? That would be really unfortunate...
Perhaps Pixar can buy the rights back.
With Eisner intending to step down, Disney may have a chance to get back to the role they played of wholesome fun. Right now they are cliched and trite. They went from inspiring imagination to the poster children of proving that trademarks don't spark innovation.
I don't recall Walt ever drawing Mickey Mouse as a dirty dirty whore, but that's what he's become, pimped out around the world.
Never confuse volume with power.
Pixar will go on to do great things. Disney should have stuck with them. Pixar was fresh blood for Disney and they just gave that up. What were they thinking.
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
Disney is in the process of setting up a digital animation facility in Glendale -- not far from the digs of its bitter rival DreamWorks Animation. Mickey Mouse wouldn't stoop so low as to try to hire talent away from his competitor, would he? Unfortunately, Eisner is not Mickey Mouse...
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
without having to keep their stuff as purely kid-friendly and cutesy as Disney requires. The Incredibles was a step in the more-adult direction, but without Disney, they could do whatever their creative minds come up with, even if it is far edgier than a Disney cartoon.
Of course, I speak as an adult fan of their work, not as a stockholder, nor as a 5 year old hoping for stuff my prudish parents will take me to.
Can Pixar survive without Disney? Absolutely, their movies pretty much market themselves these days. Can Disney movies survive without Pixar? Only if they get out of their post-95 crap slump.
If you have to ask, you'll never know.
Will Disney be getting back into 2D animation again? After the debacle with Treasure Planet it seems to me that they have decided to forgo the idea of continuing the 2D flms. If they are going to focus their efforts on 3D it does make sense to sever ties with Pixar. If their future is in 3D then they need to increase their in-house experience in this realm. It seems a shame to stop the 2D stuff, but kids obviously prefer the 3D stuff. Disney is not about making art, and they know it, they are an entertainment company that churns out the stuff that sells. I don't think the Toy Story 3 will be any less of a hit without Pixar. I, for one, do not understand why Pixar is given such a vaunted status. The origibal Toy Story was something new and they deserved praise, but ever since they have just been re-jigging the formula.
I am hoping that, with Disney out of the picture Pixar may create more mature movies. I love what they have done so far but, I feel Pixar has so much more potential.
UNIX/Linux Consulting
Pixar does NOT need Disney. Maybe they're not really equipped to distribute their own movies, but they could certainly either become equipped or find somebody else who is. They have enough name recognition of their own that they don't need Disney anymore.
Disney, on the other hand ... what's the last movie they did by themselves? Operation Dumbo Drop? Pocahantas II?
I wonder how much of Toy Story Disney owns. Do they own all of the software Pixar developed to make the movie? Can they insist that Pixar hand over all of their models, animations, etc.? Admittedly, even with all that it would be hard for a new team to develop, but I just wonder how far Disney's ownership of all things Toy Story-related extends.
Honor Among Slackers. A veri
Sure they're just different medium, but how long has it been since we've seen a 2-D blockbuster?
The Iron Giant is an awesome movie, and Lilo & Stitch was pretty good, but I don't think either of them has the status that Pixar's movies, or Shrek, or the upcoming one about robots hold.
I guess we just have to wait for Netcraft to confirm it, but I think that the days of blockbuster 2-D animation are over.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
(Sigh). Well, my one year old doesn't know or care how long Sleeping Beauty and The Little Mermaid have been out. It's all new to her. And I guess that's Disney's strategy.
Walt is spinning in his grave.
"Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival."
--Dr.W.Edwards Deming
Not on technical ground mind you. On writing, plot design, and general creativeness they failed. The very fact that their first movie is a sequel of a sequel should tell you where they are coming from. Disney, the mighty, seems to think the only way to put out a CGI movie of any credibility is to duplicate a previous effort.
Disney used to be a creative powerhouse, releasing great movies on a regular schedule. Even if they did steal and bastardize fairy tails and public domain works, they did an excellent job at it. Then Eisner came into power, the Disney family left, and the board of directors stopped thinking about pushing creative talent to be creative, but pushing them to make movies just expensive enough and just good enough to ride the name recognition wave and turn a good profit. They turned treasures such as the Lion King into cash cows. Lion King 2? Crap. 1.5? Crap. Most of the movies that stick out in my mind are all either sequels or based off theme park rids (Pirates of the Carribean was a good movie in its own right, however, thanks to one of the best producers of the past decade). Unfortunately, Disney's target audience lacks the life experience and cognitive ability to give a crap about plot, script writing, animation quality, etc.
Their name recognition is still so good that my wife questions "when," not "if," she will blow over $5,000 on a week-long family visit to Disneyworld. I told her how overpriced and stupid that is, and that she is free to do so but she better hope some rich, lost relative dies and leaves her a big pot o' gold in his will.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
"What happened to creativity anyhow"
The name's Eisner, Michael Eisner.
I used to work for Disney. I called it creative purgatory. The company is so inbred that there is little hope for change without a radical shake up. I think realistically the only way of fixing the company is for a hostile take over that would allow for changing most of the executive staff and eventually most of the surpervisers. The inbreding goes all the way from top to bottom. We used to call them second and third generation as in the family had worked for Disney that many generations. Even worse now is it's all Eisner's cronies and their friends. Most have no creative ability. Creative people are often seen as a threat and tend not to do well. Personally I quit and you couldn't pay me enough to go back. The joke is if Walt were alive I'd have stayed with the company for life. They're ruined the best company in Hollywood and the box office reflects the disaster it's become.
I've already seen quotes from Hanks saying he's not sure he'd sign up for a Toy Story 3 since it would no longer be the same creative team. He didn't say no, but it was a big wait-and-see depending on how Disney runs the show.
What I want to know is if Pixar would be contractually obligated to hand over the rendering-models and the like. Could they say "Sure, make a new version of the movie, but you don't get models and the like". I assume that's the most difficuylt thing to create from scratch.
That would leave Disney to cobble together their own models and animation. I can't see that being anywhere near as good as Pixar does it.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Actually, I remember an article shortly before Lilo and Stitch came out about how each Disney animated movie since The Lion King has cost more, and grossed less. Lilo and Stitch cut way back on animation costs, looking to reverse the trends.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
As far as a "bricks and mortar" studio, they've been down this road before...
Anybody remember this (pretty cool-looking) Disney flick?
Dinosaur
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/
No, it wasn't a Pixar film...
The Secret Lab was credited at the end... But that's not the whole story...
Disney has had a CG team at Feature Animation for some time.... But Disney proper has also farmed a lot of work out (around the world) for their various needs, and as such, has relationships with studios and individual artists, making an endeavor such as a divorce from Pixar a viable proposition.
I hate to cite AICN, but this is a pretty good read, and it jives with what I'd heard at the time:
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=12700
Dinosaur credits:
http://www.dinosaur.org/disneydinosaur.htm
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0130623/fullcredits
Anyone out there closer to the source care to shed more light?
There's an old saying in animation:
"Everyone works for Disney at least once."
You're right there...if we're going to have the movie playing over and over in the house, then we show a bit more discrimination. Pixar is a sure thing, but none of the crappy sequels have ever made it under the Christmas tree.
-aiabx
Just this guy, you know?
...and before Tezuka, the story was called Hamlet.
When will people learn that no story is 100% original?
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That story about Jeffrey Katzenberg isn't really true. The person who redesigned Woody was Bud Luckey, the animator who produced the "Boundin'" short that is showing with "The Incredibles". He's the oldest guy at Pixar and everyone jumps to work on his projects. I think the story is just Katzenberg blowing his own horn, which he seems to do quite often.
I'm not sure why no one likes the Cars trailer... But then, I thought Monsters, Inc, looked stupid and it turned out to be one of my favorite movies, and I'm not making that mistake again :P
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Pixar was in the middle of developing a shoddy direct-to-video Toy Story 2 when they realized such a thing would damage their reputation. John Lasseter specifically said, "We didn't want to be known as a studio that did great stuff and crap -- we want it all to be great."
They pushed to make Toy Story 2 a theatrical release, tossed out the stuff they had done so far, retooled the story from the beginning, worked themselves to deliver a quality product, and the rest is history.
Too bad any Disney-produced Toy Story 3 won't have half the love and care that Pixar gave to their movies.
--R.J.
Electric-Escape.net
In interviews they talk about the casting prossess.
They have hand drawn pictures of the characters and made the actors do a scene. When the static images jumped off the paper witht he voice that was their actor. Also worth noting is little if any effort goes into making the characters look like the actors. They do the characters and then get the voices.
Their attention to detail is pretty good too. For example Monsters inc has architecture based off of the 50's here because it is an industrial society in decline.
Last interesting tidbit is that they design a plot around the technology, but in a way that fits. For example for Toy Story they were only capable of doing plastic looking CGI, therefore they used toys. In Monsters Inc they were able to do natural looking fur. Originally the monsters were going to have more animal like fur, but bright colors was deamed to be more fun.
Wow, sent an e-mail as suggested when clicking on "use classic" banner, and got a fast response that addressed my msg
Actually, some people I talk to feel that the passing away of Frank Wells, former President of Walt Disney, was a major factor in Disney's turn to suckitude.
Supposedly, Frank Wells was holding Eisner's "leash", and kept a lot of his bad ideas and business methods from seeing the light of day.
When you consider that Frank Wells passed away in 1994, right when "The Lion King" was released, and that it's been downhill since then, this theory makes a lot of sense.
Poor guy, he died before his time. (helicopter crash)