When I was working at Walt Disney Feature Animation at the turn of the century, we were just finishing Lilo & Stitch. After that film came out, Disney went public saying that box office returns were just not good enough to justify making any more films like Lilo & Stitch. No more '2D' animation AT ALL in fact, sadly for everybody, they had there minds made up to shut it all down.
HOWEVER.....Lilo & Stitch's budget was $80 million, and its total domestic total gross was $145,794,338.
Compare that to 'Minority Report', the blockbuster science fiction feature film released the VERY SAME WEEKEND as Lilo & Stitch, directed by Steven Spielberg, starring Tom Cruise and Colin Farrel that cost 102 million to make.
The domestic total gross? $132,072,926.
So, CLEARLY there would have been no market for another big budget science fiction film starring Tom Cruise...or a Steven Spielberg science fiction film for that matter. I mean, it cost more to make, and earned less, so CLEARLY it was an abject failure. Right? NOT!! We were sold up the river, for whatever reason...it was all fabricated. It baffles me.
The math is extremely simple.
It noteworthy as well, that in international markets Lilo & Stitch also did extremely well, eclipsing Minority Report once again at the box office. Additionally it spawned a couple of successful TV series for them, and multiple relatively successful sequels, AND it made billions off of toy sales as well. Minority Report? Nada.
Hmmmph. I think there should be an investigation, and the pin headed executives that made all those short sighted decisions should give us our studio back....
What think you?
2 comments:
You can't fault that logic.
Perhaps the closures gave Disney an easier transition in regards to buying Pixar?
I don't know. I'm just a 2D student.
I can't imagine how they could justify that either. The Japanese market is still saturated with traditional animation (not all of it terrible either lol) and I still think there is much more freedom with pencil and paper. And that doesn't mean we need to forego the digital medium either. We're at a point now (and even were back then, Lilo and Stitch being a great example) where we can meld the two quite succesfully.
I really hope we return to this, being an animation student in my final year with a focus on traditional animation I would really love to work on some traditional projects in the future. Even if I have to open my own studio (which IS one goal of mine) I hope to keep it up in the future.
Keep Fighting the Good Fight Joe!
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