Disney and Pixar

[Another Voice]

The rumor about town this morning is that Michael Eisner will annonuce at the next meeting of the Disney Board (in about two weeks) that a new deal with Pixar can not be reached. Various mouse-suited executives are already spinning out the "we won't make a bad deal for the company" line.

Pixar has already arranged financing for its film in 2006 and is telling potential distributors that will retain all rights to the movie.

 

[KNWVIKING]

***"Pixar has already arranged financing for its film in 2006 and is telling potential distributors that will retain all rights to the movie.***

Why would Pixar need to seek financing ? I thought Jobs had cash on hand for his next project. Is it simply the way things or done ? Just curious.

 

[DIGGER68]

Very intereting..

That's a lot of revenue walking out the door. Curious if anyone has hints on how they plan on moving forward with annimation?

JD

 

[hopemax]

There is an article about the Pixar/Disney relationship in the LA Times today

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-pixar11sep11,1,7007687.story?coll=la-home-todays-times

 

[crusader]

I'm going to play a little wait and see on this. Not that I don't believe it. Nemo's success delivered an opportunity to Pixar which may not be available again for a very long time. They have to capitalize on it

 

[HB2K]

I'm just shaking my head.....

This is what happens when you stop MAKING something and start selling other people's work....

Sad day for Disney.

 

[Keyser]

I know Disney is working on at least some computer-generated movies - I saw some of the work for "Chicken Little", plus some work from another CG movie (the name escapes me now) Disney is developing, at a conference a month ago. Does anyone know more details, though, such as: Has a target release date for Chicken Little (or the other movie) been set? Is this from the same group that did Dinosaur, or a different part of Disney? Are there more movies in the pipeline?

I guess my point is that Disney is at least working on their own CG stuff. I imagine they'll have a couple of in-house movies out before Pixar has their first solo one.

 

[DancingBear]

duplicate post

 

[DancingBear]

Interesting. Why the rush by Eisner to tell the Board they CAN'T get to a deal, when the existing deal still has two more films to go? (My first thought was it makes more sense if Eisner is trying to get the deal done so he can proudly announce it to the Board). Possibilities:

---They are just WAAAAAAAYYYYYY too far apart now to see any hope of coming together.

---Pixar is ready to announce some other affiliation (which they are now free to do).

---Eisner wants the two-movie lead time to get in-house CG up and running (or to cut a deal with another CG house), and wants to get the Board committed to funding that now.

 

[Another Voice]

Pixar has been free to seek alternate distribution since they delivered Finding Nemo back in March. Since it takes two or more years to produce an animated film, they're right on schedule to figure out how to handle a summer 2006 release.

The first rule in Hollywood is never make a movie with your own money. Moives are too risky a business and you can always find some smuck to buy their way into the glamour (by writing you checks). And the way the finanances work any - you pay everything up front to make the movie and only get cash back when it's released - it make sense to borrow to fund a movie. That way you can pay off the loans with the box office reciepts (Hollywood worked this way for a century and was the reason why Disney was so tied to Bank of America).

Disney has already announced CGI deals with three outside production companies. Disney shut-down the group that made Dinosaur and fired all those people. At the moment they are forcing all existing traditional animators into training to become computer artisits - but all that's doing is driving the good people away.

It's been "rumored" that the offical decree is Disney will no longer produce animation in house. Everything will be produced completely by out side houses, or storyboards will be shipped overseas to animation houses that will produce the completed film.

Eisner has seen the future and it looks exactly like Pokeman on Saturday morning.

 

[crusader]

At the moment they are forcing all existing traditional animators into training to become computer artisits - but all that's doing is driving the good people away.

It shouldn't. CGI is an added tool not a replacement. You still need the artist so where are all these "good" people going - Cartoonland? Sounds like a career limiting choice.

 

[Keyser]

Originally posted by Another Voice
It's been "rumored" that the offical decree is Disney will no longer produce animation in house. Everything will be produced completely by out side houses, or storyboards will be shipped overseas to animation houses that will produce the completed film.

OK, I'm confused. As I said, I saw some presentations (at SIGGRAPH - the major computer graphics conference) from some folks at Walt Disney Feature Animation at the end of July. They were mainly describing some software techniques they developed, but in the process, they showed models and animations that they said were from two movies they were working on. Most was from "Chicken Little," the rest was from something I don't remember now. This was definitely beyond the storyboard stage, and from all affiliations stated was "in-house."

I'll admit I don't know how the business end of this stuff works, but I would have thought that if they were not from Disney, they wouldn't have listed their affiliation as WDFA. Also, I don't know much about the movies themselves - maybe they are shorts? They seemed to have too much work invested (in Chicken Little, in particular) to just throw it away, though.

 

[KNWVIKING]

***"The first rule in Hollywood is never make a movie with your own money. Moives are too risky a business and you can always find some smuck to buy their way into the glamour (by writing you checks). And the way the finanances work any - you pay everything up front to make the movie and only get cash back when it's released - it make sense to borrow to fund a movie. That way you can pay off the loans with the box office reciepts (Hollywood worked this way for a century and was the reason why Disney was so tied to Bank of America)."***

This makes sense, and it's kinda the answer I expected, but how would this kind of financing differ from what Disney was already doing. Pixar was using Disney money to cover half the production costs, Disney in turn got half the profits. If Pixar finds a Joe Wannabe to come up with the production costs of it's first non-disney product, why won't Wannabe be entitled to a similar profit ?

 

[meowthew2]

Good riddance to Pixar, I say. Their formula is becoming pretty stale, and if their future films are in the vein of what "The Incredibles" appears to be, I think their winning streak will be coming to an end. Disney will be fine without them.

 

[HB2K]

Good riddance to Pixar, I say. Their formula is becoming pretty stale, and if their future films are in the vein of what "The Incredibles" appears to be, I think their winning streak will be coming to an end. Disney will be fine without them.

Spoken like a true snowglobe shaker.

Yeah it's a wonderfull thing for Disney to throw away millions of dollars of profit....yeah who cares about that! We got our snowglobes!

The Incredibles will do big box office numbers based on Pixar's brand name alone. I personally wasn't too interested in Nemo from the original trailer i saw, but kept an eye on future trailers and went to see the movie no matter what because it was a Pixar film and they've yet to let me down. (co-incidentally I felt the same way about Monsters).

Guess what. Not only was I pleased with what I was given, I went two more times to see the movie.

Pixar has earned my benefit of the doubt....kinda like what Disney used to have....

 

[Planogirl]

Yep, a company that just made the number one animated film of all time certainly has a stale formula. Pixar has never made a film that even comes close to being bad or formulaic, and I'm a devoted fan now. And I even own a snowglobe.

 

[d-r]

snow white is the number one animated film of all time

 

[Planogirl]

Originally posted by d-r
snow white is the number one animated film of all time

OK, let me rephrase that. The number one animated film in UNADJUSTED dollars. My point is that it is a heck of a moneymaker for a movie with a stale formula.

 

[d-r]

that's true.

 

[ThreeCircles]

Originally posted by Planogirl
OK, let me rephrase that. The number one animated film in UNADJUSTED dollars. My point is that it is a heck of a moneymaker for a movie with a stale formula.

The number one CGI animated film. NOT the number one animated film.