Disney/Pixar In General

Wasn't the show called Tale Spin? They couldn't even get the name of their own show right in their press release?

Yep.

Notice in the press release they keep calling Bugs Bunny "worn-out and aged."

And yet Bugs and the Looney Tunes gang were still on Saturday mornings, but Mickey and the rest of the Disney classics were on a premium channel that few people ever got.

Score one for the WB, then.

edited 4th Sep '16 7:41:26 AM by Aldo930

Both Bugs and Mickey were arguably worn out and aged by then. Not the original cartoons, mind, those are timeless, but the characters as such had mostly become relics everyone aknowledged but almost nobody took 'seriously' (if such a concept applies to cartoons) anymore.

IIRC, wasn't Tale Spin called Tail Spin during part of the development stage?

edited 4th Sep '16 7:43:41 AM by NapoleonDeCheese

I don't think I need to remind everybody that there was a time when Eisner was seriously considering replacing Mickey as the Disney mascot with Winnie-the-Pooh, and redoing all the classics in CGI.

(Oh, yes, and for as "aged" and "worn-out" and "out of tune" the WB's offerings might have been, you notice that Disney was sort of following in tune with what they were doing by the mid-90s? Gargoyles was originally more light-hearted compared to the Batman: TAS-esque show it was when it debuted.)

edited 4th Sep '16 7:47:14 AM by Aldo930

So the Disney/Netflix deal kicks off with Zootopia on Instant Netflix in two weeks. Any word yet on the dates of the other Netflix Disney releases?

For all we can say about the man's actual lenght of involvement, Steven Spielberg's cache was a MAJOR impulse for Warner's animation revival— without him supporting the Timm/Ruegger/Dini crew to some degree, I doubt Warner would have given them the time of the day. Ditto for the influence of Burton's Batfilms to kickstart the DC animated universe— left to their own devices on the subject I doubt Warner's executives would have cared.

Disney's own animated revival, at least, didn't seem to rely so much on 'outsiders' like Spielberg and Burton to make them get serious about it, but on homegrown people. Even Burton's own animated blockbuster for Disney at the time, Nightmare Before Christmas, didn't have that much of an influence on Disney as a whole— you can't say Disney rushed out to create a slew of Nightmare wannabes on its wake. (And then again, Burton's origins had more to do with Disney than Warner anyway).

Today I watched The Little Mermaid 3, and although the film was trite(on) as heck, one can't deny it was visually very pretty. Fluid, smooth, with great shading and coloring. Impressive for a cheapquel, for real! A shame it was wasted on such a lame tale.

When it came to animated films, Disney led the pack, and everybody sought to copy them.

When it came to animated TV shows, Disney was behind the pack, and tried to do what everybody else was doing.

When was that? The mid-2000s?

Eisner indeed was considering redoing all the classics in CGI in the mid-aughts, starting with Pinocchio. It thankfully never got through, but somehow I think the plans were stolen by another Disney executive who added "with live-action stars" to them...

Disney executives have actually tried to replace Mickey with Winnie-the-Pooh since the late 80s. So it's likely that the press release attacking Bugs Bunny as "worn-out and aged" might have been approved by somebody who thought Mickey was worn-out and aged as well.

edited 4th Sep '16 8:28:33 AM by Aldo930

I'm surprised they still haven't thought about replacing Mickey with Hannah Montana during the mid-to-late 2000's

When Disney re-entered tv animation in the mid-80's, the shows they produced were actually very impressive. First with Fluppy Dogs and The Wuzzles and then with the much longer lived Disney's Adventures of the Gummi Bears and The New Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, they were much, much better crafted, visually and in terms of story, than most any other cartoon on the air in the US at the time. Then you got Ducktales in the late 80's, and with Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers Disney started debuting stuff on the Disney Channel, and then moving it into syndication a year later. WB was actually following on Disney's heels in television animation with Tiny Toon Adventures(Disney'd been at it for 6 years when Tiny Toons debuted). Judging from the way they attempted to merchandise Tiny Toons I don't think WB understood just how much of it's audience was teenagers and college kids. Tonally, ''Tiny Toons" was different from anything Disney was doing, and so, as it was in the 40's, you had Disney taking one side of the street, and WB the other. Both turned out some really excellent stuff.

Disney's writing for their shows was always excellent. These were shows aimed at kids, originally for the Saturday morning slots, which were usually considered pretty disposable. They made them considerably better than they had to be. Greg Weismann. who'd later help develop Gargoyles, together with Tad Stones, built a whole, believable mythology for The Gummi Bears, and made a show about talking, bouncing bears based on a candy into one about the last outposts of a lost civilization trying to maintain their identity and way of life, without ever breaking it's light, fun tone.

edited 4th Sep '16 11:30:39 AM by Robbery

The Disney execs know that child stars are disposable. Once one is used up, you move on to another.

There were a few voices in the company who thought Disney was cheapening itself by going into TV animation - traditionally the realm of limited-moving half-hour ads. (The fact that Eisner considered junking the homegrown animation department in the wake of The Black Cauldron and sending their feature films to the same Korean and Taiwanese places they did their shows at didn't help.)

But eventually it did become clear that Disney's TV animation department was following the trends of the moment instead of leading them. Gargoyles was retooled from a much more lighter show into something more like the popular Batman: TAS; it still managed to be its own thing with its own voice, though. Or consider when Disney jumped on the creator-driven animation bandwagon that Nick started when they gave us One Saturday Morning.

edited 4th Sep '16 11:31:29 AM by Aldo930

Disney had the good fortune to have some seriously talented folks working for them, folks for whom the Disney name meant a lot more than it did to the executives.

I still find it cool that Bruce Timm essentially made the Batman: TAS test reel (the show's originaly opening is a polished up version of what Timm came up with) all by himself, and then managed to sell the folks at WB animation on the idea (aided in no small part, of course, by the success of the Burton movies).

edited 4th Sep '16 11:35:58 AM by Robbery

I'm surprised they still haven't thought about replacing Mickey with Hannah Montana during the mid-to-late 2000's

That would've put them in an awkward situation a few years later, wouldn't it?

Your average Disney tween sitcom is disposable by design; once one tween star has run its course another one takes its place. And when those child stars are let out into the world - well...

Cranking tween stars out like an assembly line isn't a good way to make TV, but what do you expect from a TV division run by people who retooled the Disney Channel because it wasn't hip enough for the kids?

edited 4th Sep '16 1:03:30 PM by Aldo930

And more often then not they end up horribly, like most child stars. (It's quite admirable for a child star to end up normal like, say, Neil Patrick Harris or Ron Howard)

I mean, is it really most child stars, or are those just the most prominent examples? Availability heuristic, look it up if you don't know it.

Walt Disney Company: putting child stars in the pathway to doom since Bobby Driscoll!

Remind me, what exactly happened to Bobby Driscoll?

He could never escape the reputation he had as a child actor, became a drug addict and an alcoholic, fell in with Andy Warhol for a time, died from his addictions and was buried in a pauper's grave.

Ah, okay.

Speaking of which... TCM is showing the Disney Treasure Island this Thursday. Those of you who have the channel might not want to miss it. The classic live-action films are not easily found today...

It's more to do with being a child star than being a Disney child star specifically. Kid actors have had a rough time since the beginnings of filmmaking (take Jackie Coogan for instance; his parents screwed him over so badly that some of the laws protecting child actors are named for him). We tend to hear more about the ones who self destruct than the ones who either successfully transition into an adult actor or go on to something else. And, of course, it's a different thing being a child actor than it is being a child star.

It's not that the kids on these Disney Channel sitcoms aren't talented, really, but that they're all more or less the same (as are their shows).There's no shortage of perky kids who can more or less carry a tune.

Almost as sad as Bobby Driscoll was Tommy Kirk, who, while he's still alive and doing well now, was an alcoholic and drug addict for awhile too (that may have had something to do with his struggling with his sexuality, too). Disney's female finds tended to do okay; Annette Funicello did well, as did Hayley Mills. Kathyryn Beaumont was voicing Alice and Wendy for Disney until 2005.

I've been saying this, but those shows and their stars are basically assembly-line product. When one of them wears out another one takes its place, repeat till the end of time.

Hayley Mills kind of was impacted by her Disney stardom (she was being considered for the Kubrick Lolita and Disney ordered her not to do it), but otherwise she was fine. And, of course, Annette Funicello had those beach party films with Frankie Avalon... And even there, Disney had to make sure the bathing suits she wore weren't too indecent.

Nowadays with Disney's female discoveries, though... What's going on there? Family Guy once did an episode where it turned out Miley Cyrus was a robot; I want to believe it's true and some of the stuff she's done since her show ended is because her programming was malfunctioning.

edited 4th Sep '16 6:16:34 PM by Aldo930

I honestly thinks that Cyrus is just trying to get attention to get herself relevant again. Remember that after her contract with Disney ends, she is in a pretty bad spot with a flop movie and several underwhelm songs. "Wrecking Ball" MV basically shot her into notoriety overnight. Emily Osment, Brenda Strong, Demi Lovato, Debby Ryan and Zendaya (among others) are doing pretty good for themselves (even if some are underwhelming) outside of Disney. On the male side we have Cole and Dylan Sprouse and, uh... that's it?

edited 4th Sep '16 6:23:00 PM by shatterstar