Disney/Pixar In General

Got both of them (on comixology) for less than the price of getting one! Thanks!

I want to ask you something Swanpride! Is this true?

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/germany-original-jungle-book-biggest-885953

I certainly loved the german version...and I just heard it just now! If its true its no wonder!

It's true, keep in mind a couple of things, though.

1. There is no data prior to 1963 (meaning it is possible that there were more successful movies beforehand, they just didn't get recorded).

2. The list is based on how many people (estimated) watched the movie, not on box office revenue, like it is done with the US charts. This actually puts newer movies in disadvantage, because while the population has grown, the number of cinemas has shrunk, due to alternative entertainment.

Still a crazy successful film for the German market. In terms of Disney movies, the most successful for the German market are Jungle Book (first overall), Lion King (eight overall), Aristocats (eleven overall), The Rescuers (19), Finding Nemo (28), Aladdin (74) and Robin Hood (90). The first Herbie movie is btw on 42, which is not surprising, considering that it stars a VW bug.

Though, again, keep in mind that movies from the 1960s and 1970s are kind of in advantage is this kind of list, because they fall in the brief period between them starting to count and home video becoming a regular thing.

And personally how do you rate the film? Do you like it?

It's the favourite Disney movie of my father and it is difficult not to get sucked into his enthusiasm. My own feelings are a little bit more complicated:

https://swanpride3.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/by-the-book-the-jungle-book/

I have a second article in the works, in which I will compare the animated movie with the live action remake.

Overall I like it, but no, it is not one of my personal top ten Disney movies. Maybe top 20, for sure top 30. It has some of my favourite songs, though. The German version of Bear Necessities is awesome…

Here is a link to the German version with subtitles (read the description to understand what the one untranslatable German word is about).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHs4RDnK1ls

Edited by Swanpride on Jul 29th 2018 at 2:04:30 AM

AWWWWWWWWWWW!! Thank you Swanpride! You rock! I really wanted a translation!

Edited by AegisP on Jul 29th 2018 at 3:13:19 AM

Hey, remember how Jhonen Vasquez and Jenny Goldberg made a pilot for a show called Very Important House and it kind of didn't go anywhere?

Someone found an animatic reel of it:

(Watch it before lawyers try to take it down.)

If by "didn't go anywhere" you mean "stolen by the company so it's no longer his" then yes.

I was kinda trying to show something funny, but yikes...

In better news, remember how DisneyToon Studios was going kaput and we all wondered what it would mean for the employees there?

We know at least one person from there has a bright future, because former General Manager of DTS Meredith Roberts is now Senior Vice President of Animation Strategy for Disney Channels.

Apparently she "will be responsible for leading a unified vision for the animation content produced by Disney Television Animation and other studios for Disney Junior, Disney Channel, Disney XD and related platforms."

Sounds important, right?

Let's hope so, because it would be good to salvage anything from Toon Studios.

Hopefully her job won't be "how to maximize revenue out of animation".

Even the guys who went "Hey, you know what people really need? A The Fox and the Hound midquel with country singing dogs."?

Edited by Psi001 on Aug 1st 2018 at 11:37:29 AM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpUx9DnQUkA

I know its not animation. But its VERY MUCH RELEVANT. I specially want to know what Swanpride thinks of this.

Neat! Hope good things come from it.

Embedded for convenience:

Lindsay speaks the truth...

So...I covered Beauty and the Beast adaptations last winter (if you are interested, there is more out there than just the Disney one), and while I didn't do a rant about the Beauty and the Beast Remake the way I did one about Maleficent and the Cinderella remake when I covered respective Sleeping Beauty Adaptation and Cinderella adaptations, I went into my feelings about remakes in general. Here is the article:

https://swanpride.wordpress.com/2017/12/27/honoring-the-heroine-belle/

And here are the most relevant part of my thoughts:

"Thing is that most remakes nowadays don’t really bring anything new to the table. Their angle is “Hey, people used to like this, so let’s do it again”. And honestly, I can’t even begrudge the studio this. Beauty and the Beast made Disney more money than any other movie this year so far. It is the highest grossing movie of the year, both domestic and worldwide, and while The Last Jedi will most likely catch it eventually, a Billion Dollar movie is nothing to sniff about. So in a lot of way it is our fault, that Disney doesn’t stop churning those out. So as long as they don’t do something downright insulting to the original the way they did it with Maleficent, all power to them."

And

"Beauty and the Beast was the first animated movie ever which got nominated for a best picture academy award. It is already as close to perfect as a movie can be, and you certainly don’t improve it by trying to replicate its artwork in a live action movie. And it is not like Disney had any new angle for it aside from adding stuff and explanations to it, which don’t necessarily elevate the story. In short it is the most pointless exercise ever – or it would be, if not for the Psycho remake I mentioned. I would always point people to the animated version over the live action take, because the animated version wrote animation history in more than one regard while the live action version just filled Disney’s pockets."

Regarding Lindsey, she is completely right about the movie (I assume - I admit, I have still not seen that particular remake). This tendency to overexplain is something I already noticed in Cinderella, and it really, really annoys me when Disney jokes about their older movies, mostly because they tend to address complains which were BS in the first place.

Where I disagree with Lindsey is this Idea that Iger turned Disney into a soulless money machine. Okay, I hate those remakes. But Disney wouldn't do them if the audience didn't come to watch them. And let's not pretend that Walt Disney never did anything to please the audience. Walt Disney didn't want to go back to the Fairy Tale movies, but he did it anyway, because they were a sure bet and the studio was close to bankruptcy after WWII, and so Cinderella was born and the studio survived. Those big money makers, they pay for Disney's more experimental movies. Ie Finding Dory exists so that Pixar can risk Insight out. Moana exists so that the Animation studios can risk Zootopia. Ironman 3 exists so that there can be a Guardian of the Galaxy. And yes, a lot of those turn out big successes in their own right, but Disney can't know that.

I actually like Iger as CEO of Disney, because he understands something Eisner never got: You have to protect the brand. And that means quality, quality, quality. And I don't really mind it if this kind of thinking infects Fox, too.

I am btw not sure why Lindsey thinks that there will be less movies after the Disney/Fox merger.

Edited by Swanpride on Aug 1st 2018 at 10:54:11 AM

Because they have no incentive to make more when they can just funnel any money that would be spent on the 20 Fox movies per year into advertising the eight Disney films per year, without any fear of competition.

Edited by Tuckerscreator on Aug 1st 2018 at 11:09:04 AM

Disney bought Fox for a reason. They wanted something which compliments their own slate. They wanted the line-up of Academy Awarded movies Searchlight features, and they wanted a new brand for the stuff Touchstone used to cover.

Do you know how many Academy Awards for best picture Disney has won? Nill. They have a couple of nominations (for Mary Poppins Beauty and the Beast, Toy Story 3, Up and...I am not sure, I think there was another Pixar movie which scored a nomination), but they never won it. Not once (and I think Mary Poppins should have won instead of "My Fair Lady", but whatever).

At worst there will be less blockbusters coming out of Fox, because, well, Disney has that area covered good, and we can expect that if Disney will step it up, it will be with more Marvel movie per year, or trying to create another block buster franchise, but frankly, Fox was never known for its blockbusters - or its animation for that matter.

That's what makes the merger such a good fit...Disney is great with animation and their crowd pleasing blockbuster plus the occasional family friendly releases. Fox is great with their more experimental fare, their horror/thriller movies and their critically acclaimed TV shows. It's a match made in heaven, and I honestly, don't see Disney limiting Fox outside of taking control over the Marvel properties and the Avatar franchise, because that is simply not Disney's MO.

I mean, I don't disagree and I feel that disney's acquisition of fox is going to end with fox for the most part being somewhat separate from the disney brand, or they might just merge existing franchises/labels such as marvel with x-men, touchstone with the more serious works of the studio. But a lot of disney's strategy is less is more, releasing bigger movies but somewhat infrequently. A look at the calendar shows how strategically they are released, usually giving competing movies berth, they're pretty much never released in the same weekend. If fox is still a somewhat different entity, they could release movies closer together if Disney feels they appealing to entirely different audiences, but it isn't going to be the slew of films that fox currently produces, they probably aren't worthwhile enough in disney's mind to produce so many unsure bets, especially since these movies aren't the ambitious films that Disney is looking to produce. I just feel disney is going to cut back on Fox's movie slate, and from a movie industry standpoint, Fox is actually there biggest competitor when it comes to box office revenue. They'll want to use that to gain money from markets disney is still unable to reach, but I imagine they'll turn it into an opportunity for less competition, which means producing less.

Eh, a year has around 52 weeks. Let's assume that Disney wants to keep at least one weekend between their releases in order to not compete with itself, you they have 26 weekends to fill. This year Disney will release 11 movies, but that is actually a little mora than Disney usually cranks out because with A Wrinkle in Time, Christopher Robin, Mary Poppins Returns and The Nutcracker they have more productions from Disney Pictures out than usual. Fox releases 16 movies this year. So if you do the math, Disney and Fox together release (give or take one or two movies) exactly the number of movies they need to fill every second weekend.

I doubt that there will be much of a change in the number of movies.

And, btw, Fox might be a big competitor in revenue, but both Warner Bros and Universal are already releasing between 20 and 30 movies per year.

Edited by Swanpride on Aug 3rd 2018 at 12:07:01 PM

I watched a youtube video list that briefly said Disney's rule is that they space out their releases by a month. No two Disney-led movies can ever be released less than 4 weeks or 31 days from each other. But I don't know where the writer of that video got that information.

Edited by kyun on Aug 3rd 2018 at 8:46:52 AM

Eh....Solo was originally scheduled to drop two weeks after Infinity war and even when Infinity war moved, it was still only three weeks away, not a whole month.

Plus, even if Disney has a general "sparse the movies out" rule, said rule is most likely based on the number of movies they actually release instead of releasing the right number of movies to fulfil the rules. If it exists, it will most likely be adjusted to "every two weeks".

You mean Youtube video creators aren't totally professional???

yeah, surprising, isn't it?