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Toy Story 3 Scrapped
Snap E Tom writes "The Independent Online is reporting that Toy Story 3 has been scrapped. This is a strong clue that the Pixar guys are firmly in control at Disney. The ground-breaking films were being milked into almost as many movies as The Sims has expansion packs. John Lasseter, Pixar's creative head, was strongly against the idea of third and forth movies, while the old Disney regime pushed forward with it. Now with Pixar and Steve Jobs on the board, Lasseter has taken the necessary steps to prevent the franchise from being diluted."
We do not need another sequal factory. My recommendation? Disney should leave Pixar alone. They seem to be doing just fine managing their own assets and continued box office success stories. Something disney can't claim with their own movies. So let pixar do what pixar does best and let the money flow without interference. Let disney start claiming more of that success and have stock prices go up.
I fear if they start meddling with it we're going to start ending up with a lot of straight to DVD releases that no one will really want to see.
"If I were bound by all laws everywhere I'm sure I would have committed a capital crime somewhere."
It was too much, no film franchise could resist a fourth release without a big hit on quality. I hope this marks a trend on the industry.
I find also interesting the Cringely's take on the adquisition, as he says it's only a way for Jobs to diversify his income.
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At least someone in the entertainment industry knows when to say "its been agood run" and move along to new things. The problem with entertainment today is that the industry has gotten so big that they have forgotten the first rule of showbiz, always leve 'em wanting more.
Trying to do entertainment in the venture capital style has been the main reason for the flood of dreck we've been seeing from hollywood for decades. Sequels, repackaging of Shakespeare and the Bronte sisters, butchering great books, etc.. Disney's going to be making movies with decent story lines, and the rest of Hollywood is going to have to hire some writers. I can't wait.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Does this herald the rise of creativity in Disney's output? If so, it'll be a difficult one to sell to the accountants and the more conservative shareholders: re-runs are provably successful; improving the brand is more nebulous. Ultimately, you can never know the real cause for higher sales across the board.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I was in Futureshop here in Toronto the other day...came face to face with an advertisement for "Bambi 2"... BAMBI 2??!?!? They're making a sequel to a 50 year old movie for crying out loud...
We'll still see a Toy Story 3 one day, just not in the immediate future. Its as inevitable as the an american manufacturing job being outsourced to China...
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Disney pays 7 billion for Pixar. As a result, Pixar is calling the shots at Disney.
Who owns who?
I guess it never occurred to anyone at Disney that milking these franchises to the point of nearly destroying them not only ruins the value of the first few good ones for future generations (like what the Matrix sequels did to the first one) and the exploitation of old stories instead of creating new ones tends to make a company look washed up to its customers.
Toy Story 2 was something very unusual for Disney--a sequel that was actually good. Their usual practice is to follow up a great animated film with an utterly crappy direct-to-video release. Perhaps they fell into this habit as a result of their fairy tale films; there's not much chance of making a good sequel to "Beauty & the Beast" or "The Little Mermaid." But Edgar Rice Burroughs wrote dozens of sequels to Tarzan, all of them pretty good; there was no reason why Tarzan 2 had to be crap. Nor was there any reason why Casper the Friendly Ghost 2 had to be crap. Either one of these could have had a strong sequel. Running strong properties into the ground like this is simply bad business.
Ignoring all of the possible positive potential this might have on the creative process at Disney, this isn't the only effect the merger might have.
Keep in mind that until the Sony rootkit, Disney has historically been one of the worst offenders as far as pushing DRM. (If I recall correctly, they were one of the most solid backers of DIVX - no, not DivX, DIVX. There's a big difference. I'm also pretty sure they were also one of the only backers of DIVX that apparently intended not to ever allow customers to "silver" a disc - paying a one time flat fee for unlimited viewing, you would only ever be able to view your Disney DIVX discs as pay-per-view.)
Jobs, on the other hand (well, at least Apple with him at the helm), has had a much more lenient approach with DRM. Apple's DRM has typically been described as "the bare minimum to keep content providers happy", and Apple has actively resisted attempts to force increases in the restrictions of their DRM. Keep in mind that throughout this all, Jobs was also a content provider, since he also ran Pixar.
Could Jobs calling the shots at Disney mean a more consumer-friendly Disney? I hope so.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I was really worried about Disney ruining everything that makes Pixar great, and I was also worried about the Jobs reality distortion field making things worse.
I wonder what the minds at Pixar could do with the Muppet franchise.
I don't understand how these two statements go together. Its weird. The way I picture it, you've got one post making the first statement. Then, you've got some disney-fan-club-dude with a room full of memorobilia arguing with the second statement. I mean, you're welcome to feel nostalgic, but if Pixar is going to help Disney get back to where they used to be, it's going to be by carving a new niche. Where Disney used to be is on the leading edge of creativity. Creativity in terms of story and direction...and creativity in terms of what it means to be entertained as a family. I can't see them getting back to that by tapping old franchies and squeezing every last drop out of them...
Rest in peace Jim 'Ernest P. Worrell' Varney....
P.S. If they do the 3rd film, perhaps they'll have Slinky Dog in it
featured prominently (yet silently) in the background of various scenes.
Or maybe the other toys will mourn his passing in the film -- going to
that 'great junkheap in the sky'....
To get a 'soundalike' to do Slinky Dog for a 3rd film would be wrong and besmirch
Varney's memory and his memorable characterization of Slinky Dog.
This is somewhat similar to Steve Whitmire doing Kermit The Frog -- taking over for
the late, great James Maury Henson when he passed away back in 1991. Steve (now) does Kermit practically as good as Jim did but I know it is just not the same any more....
Food for thought.
I don't get why so many people seem to think that endless sequels are some phenomenon that Hollywood recently invented.
Lord of the Rings was a sequel that Tolkien was encouraged to write to cash in on the success of The Hobbit.
Ditto Huckleberry Finn as a sequel to Tom Sawyer.
Ditto Bride of Frankenstein as a sequel to Frankenstein.
All of these are pretty widely considered to be superior to their originals.
Then there are the endless Pink Panther series, the "Thin Man" movies, the multiple history plays by Shakespeare, various sequels built into the books of the Hebrew Bible, and even the Aeneid and the Odyssey, both of which are sequels to the Iliad.
Sure, most sequels don't approach the level of artistry of many of the above. But a sequel per se, even one motivated by the desire to cash in on the original, is not a priori a bad thing. The judgment cannot be made till after the sequel is made.
I refer you to Sturgeon's Law (more accurately called Sturgeon's Revelation).
How can a post be modded "overrated" or "underrated" when it hasn't been rated yet?
Originality:
Pixar has it.
Disney needs it.
Disney got it wether they wanted it or not or even know it.
When you wish upon a star be careful what you wish for; you might just get it.
Pixar has made a lot of Videogame spinoffs on their own. Toy Story 1 & 2, Nemo, you name it.
They are not affraid of cashing in their franchises. They just down want to make sequels for just the sake of it.
Generally, the only movies that ever have good sequels are based on a tv show, or a line of open-ended books. Such stories are designed for later "episodes." I wish I could elaborate more on why it seems this way to me; the same reasons that make normal movie sequels suck play the same integral part in making the "based on tv" sequel actually work.
Either way, John Q Public will eventually get bored with Star Trek as a concept, and move on to Sex and the City or something else. I suspect pretty much anybody on slashdot could point out numerous cases of Star Trek jumping the shark.
No... Brad is an accomplished 2D director (Iron Giant, for one) and an amazing artist.
... And pay him enough, he'll do the voice-acting as well!
I'm still amazed that he did the voice for Edna (the super-fashionable super-suit designer in the Incredibles) - her voice is absolutely perfect...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Initially I was worried about this buyout. Pixar is responsible for my personal favorite film (The Incredibles, narrowly edging out Serenity).
But I was talking with some people about this last night and I realized something. First, Steve Jobs has had a lot of experience with the media industry thank to iTunes and his experience at Apple. Granted, that's more music than movies but I think the same basic forces are in play. I think he has a clear view of how both industries are, and the quality problems that Disney has, and the inevitable financial consequences that will eventually follow.
Second, Steve Jobs is an excellent businessman. I don't think he would trade 50+% of Pixar for 7% of Disney, unless he had some good reason to believe that Disney was going to be able to grow more than Pixar. The only way that would be true is if the merger deal included a lot of control over Disney by the Pixar crew, because clearly Business As Usual at Disney wasn't going to get it done.
I haven't heard about the specifics of the deal; maybe it's been covered, but the only clue I have is basically TFA (which I saw earlier). But it gives me a lot of hope. Still not convinced, but "hopeful" is a major improvement from when I figured that Disney would just kill the golden goose.
The Pixar mantra has been "It's all about the story". If Lasseter says the "Disneyfied" TS3 is scrapped for now, then the developed story "stunk". It's not possible to start with crap and turn it into honey. More power to PIXAR-isney.
It's probably also why "Cars" was looking to be a piece of crap - since the movie was simply being done to fulfill a contractual obligation, Pixar would phoen it in, and Disney could choke on their contract. I wouldn't be surprised if "Cars" goes into turnaround now that there's a real reason to make it.
I can't believe nonsense like this gets to be modded to +5.
John Lasseter is directing this film, personally. Doing a bad job on a film just to fulfill a contractual obligation would do incredible damage to the Pixar brand. No one with any position of authority would tolerate any trash going out under the Pixar name at all, let alone deliberately out of spite for one's business partner. And it's not like ALL the profits from the 5 (or, rather 6) films went to Disney, there was a somewhat even split, so Pixar has a lot on the line with each title.
The teaser trailer for Cars wasn't that great, sure. To get a better idea of what the film will be, check out the little-circulated international trailer.
Toy Story 2 surprisingly managed to be even better than Toy Story 1. If they could make a third movie that was again even better then I say go for it. The reason Toy Story is so good isn't because of it's plot or how it's rendered - it's the personalities and relationships of the characters. The movies have a plot simple enough for children to follow but a depth that will keep adults interested. It's just good movie making. We really learned to care about the characters. That is really the important part about any movie.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Hollywood has always only been about dead presidents.
Yeah, but they used to be about getting dead presidents by delivering quality entertainment.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I've been working with franchise movie memes for the past couple of weeks. Although they often show equal or higher sales, their actual audience interaction declines steadily with each successive movie.
y =movie_madness_threedux
http://www.realmeme.com/roller/page/realmeme?entr
Essentially, I believe that the original movie sets a cultural context that successive movies play upon, and that each sequel is attractive to audiences BECAUSE it requires less thinking. It's interesting that sales often remain the same, even though there's less expressed interest.
That's a reworking of the idea of marginal utility in economics. Because the sequel costs less, it's equally desirable as its marginal utility falls.
Very interesting stuff that you can derive a lot of conjectures from.
If only George Lucas had thought as you do.
If my call is important, why am I talking to a recording?