Dreamworks Dumps Wallace and Gromit

Tiger4 writes "Aardman Animation and Dreamworks are splitting their relationship. Apparently Dreamworks feels they lost money on 'Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit' and 'Flushed Away.' So off to their separate ways they go. Aardman is going back to stop motion and clay, Dreamworks will be staying with their CGI ways." In addition, Aardman Animation announced that a new Wallace and Gromit film is in the works.

Comments

Re:I say

[jpardey]

I think they might have used computer animation for backgrounds and unwieldy scenes, but it was mostly clay, as far as I know. However, I think the point was mainly now that we know for a fact that Dreamworks will not be contributing CG animation to Ardman.

Re:I say

[91degrees]

Quite a bit actually. Mostly just effects, but IMDB says "The movie contains a considerable amount of CGI of all kinds, from drifting fog through to the bunny rabbits in the Bun-Vac. In all, there are over 700 shots that contain some kind of digital effects work.". But spiritted away had a lot of computer generated backgrounds. This is when CGI is used properly - when you don't really notice it.

Re:Gromit

[zambotsu]

"Oh well Gromit lets have a cup of tea and a nice bit of cheese. The UK still loves you Ardman"

.. and not a sheep to worry about, eh?

Re:Simple reason

[Anonymous Coward]

English Humour > American Humor fixed your expression.

Re:Smart Move?

[owlnation]

Toy Story was Pixar, not Dreamworks. Dreamworks did Shrek, which was excellent. Shrek 2 was better and Shrek 3 is coming soon.

And while WereRabbit was a brilliant movie, Flushed away was really not.

Re:How bad was it?

[Knuckles]

Exactly how unprofitable was it?

Very, very unprofitable:

Production Budget: $30,000,000
Worldwide Gross: $185,724,838

Re:Smart Move?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just a few minor points:
1) Toy Story - Pixar film, not DreamWorks
2) Shark Tale 2 - Will never happen, Shark Tale didn't make enough money
3) There is no such movie Farther Over The Hedge
4) Madagascar 2 and Kung Fu Panda are seperate films

Ardman movies have been the lowest box office returns for DreamWorks Animation.

At the end of the day, DWA is a business. If it is not making money, they can't afford to keep doing it.

And besides, I don't agree on the Ardman films being the best. They were ok, I preferred the two Shreks and Over The Hedge.

Re:Dreamworks...

[Duds]

Oscars don't come with cheques.

Re:How bad was it?

[clickclickdrone]

I don't have numbers handy but it was a huge hit in the UK but a fairly minor one Stateside. Nick PArks said he had a lot of trouble keeping the British humnour in as Dreamworks wanted to excise it under the impression it wouldn't travel well to the US. The fact that the film wasn't a hit vindicated their position in their mind. Parks knew the chances of making the next one the way he wanted was about nil.

Re:I say

[suv4x4]

I think they might have used computer animation for backgrounds and unwieldy scenes, but it was mostly clay, as far as I know.

In Flushed Away, it was CGI, including the characters. They *made* them look like clay though, and it looks pretty convincing, except their body language is kinda too smooth or versatile for a clay doll at times (required by the script though).

Re:I say

[AgNO3]

Flushed Away was 100% CG.

language barrier

[DrLang21]

Actually from what I heard, the real problem was that the studios just didn't like working with eachother.

Lost money on 'Curse of the Were Rabbit?

[KokorHekkus]

Apparently Dreamworks feels they lost money on 'Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were Rabbit' and 'Flushed Away.'

After checking the box office figures (over at boxofficemojo.com) I can buy that 'Flushed Away' was a loss with a production budget of $149 million and just a lifetime boxoffice gross of $170 million. But 'Curse of the Were Rabbit' did very nicely since with its smaller $30 million budget it pulled in a worldwide gross of $192 million. Haven't seen 'Flushed Away' so it's hard for me to judge on how much a quality difference and how much it was mis-timing (happens more often with animations I heard). With a luckily timed release, not too expensive production and perhaps a good idea handle of the demographics you can make money on almost anything... "Stomp the Yard' is cementing itself in the IMDB Bottom 100 but it has still made 3 times its (smallish) production budget in 3 weeks.

Re:I say

[fermion]

Some of the rabbits were CG, particularly when floating around the bun-vac. I am sure there were other instances.

Hand made films are extremely expensive and are becoming out of style, like black and white films. We see this with Titan A.E. and the death of hand drawn animation.

What Aardman does is an art, and there is little room for art in the major studios. As much as I respect Dreamworks, serperating Aardman from the real plasticine is a crime. OTOH, I say no problem with supplementing the plasticine with CG in Werer-Rabbit

Re:How bad was it?

[Tech]

Obviously a case of Hollywood accounting.

The promoted it

[el americano]

Don't take it personally if Flushed Away didn't get the same box office that other movies in that market usually do. They did the full marketing job on it, complete with MacDonalds and Breakfast Cereal tie-ins. Fortunately, this shouldn't affect their ability to continue producing films.