Disney's "The Wild" Launches Today...

And Kevin and I will track it here through the weekend.... This is the Mouse House's second sub-contract job in feature animation (the first being the ill-fated "Valiant") "TW" was produced in Toronto, not London, and it will be interesting to see how it performs. The LA TIMES sends it off with a solid review, so we'll soon see how much it cuts in to "Ice Age 2's" reign at the top of the charts. Animation Magazine thinks its propsects might be kind of "iffy." Addendum One: Box Office Mojo now has its Friday Estimates up. "Ice Age 2" clocks in with over $8 million, while "The Wild rakes in $4,140,000. "Wild's" got a smaller number of screens, also a smaller per screen average. Of course, "Scary Movie 4" blows both animated features away by collecting over $19 million in b.s. receipts. Addendum Two: Box Office Mojo now has its weekend estimates up, and "The Wild" sets no box office fires -- coming in 4th for the weekend at $9,559,000 (less than half of "IA2's" third weekend gross. "The Wild" and "Valiant" were two projects initated by Michael Eisner. We doubt that Robert Iger has any huge desire to see either succeed, since he just bet the farm by purchasing Pixar. And it doesn't look as though either entry will be a big performer. Our prediction: outsourcing of theatrical feature animation is dead at Disney for the foreseeable future.