Tuesday, April 08, 2008

The 3-D 3-D Future!

Good to see that the Mouse House (and affiliated studio), is following Jeffrey Katzenberg down the 3-D 3-D rabbit hole:

In a big boost for the exhibition of films in 3-D, Walt Disney Co. said it would release all feature animation films from its Pixar unit in the format beginning next year ...

Disney also fleshed out its animation film schedule through the summer of 2012. Releases include a third installment of Pixar's "Toy Story" franchise and a sequel to Pixar's 2006 release "Cars" that is slated for the summer of 2012. Other releases include this June's non-3-D Pixar feature "Wall-E," the tale of a robot's quest for love; a Thanksgiving release of "Bolt," about a show-business dog featuring the voices of John Travolta and bankable Disney teen star Miley Cyrus; as well as a planned four-movie slate in its new "Tinker Bell" direct-to-DVD franchise ...

I got a call from a reporter about all this earlier today. He wanted to know, "Is it going to be tough for Pixar to produce more than one feature film a year?"

I said to him (paraphrasing here): "Not if they have enough competent story people to handle development, and not if story development goes smoothly.

"Trouble is, 84% of the time, story development doesn't go zip-bang-boom. There's always a snafu somewhere, and then you have the option of a) stopping forward movement on the production until story and character troubles are fixed or b) trying to fix story holes on the fly as production keeps thundering along."

In other words, there are no simple, one-size-fits-all solutions. If good stories were that easy and simple to develop, Hollywood would have a lot more homeruns and a lot fewer foul outs and bloop singles.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Is it going to be tough for Pixar to produce more than one feature film a year?"

From what I've read Pixar is NOT intending to produce "more than one feature film a year". Where did the reporter get that?
There are two different, large studios discussed in the press release, not only Pixar. Each has its own staff. Each has crews devoted to different projects at any given time, as you know.

Anonymous said...

Starting in 2009 and ending in 2012 (that's four years for the arithmetically challenged), Pixar will be releasing 5 new features.

That overlap is what the reporter was probably eluding too. Which is an increase in what they had been doing.

Anonymous said...

2 of those movies are Cars 2 and Toy Story 3. Pixar can afford to make another one for subjecting us to sequels to those.

Jeff Massie said...

According to yesterday's Variety, Pixar's two releases for 2011 will be newt and The Bear and the Bow, neither of which are sequels.

Anonymous said...

I notice no one's mentioned the Miley Cyrus voice casting yet...I'd say that's a new low for Pixar/Disney

Anonymous said...

ick.

Anonymous said...

would've loved to have seen that 'audition.'

Anonymous said...

WOOO! Dogpile on the cash cow childstar-singer!
omigod, the promos will be like a speedball for 12 year old girls.

Anonymous said...

The one picture I definitely feel like I can count on is TS3. Cars 2 is to appease the merchandise revenue projections for 2012.

Anonymous said...

"Good to see that the Mouse House (and affiliated studio), is following Jeffrey Katzenberg down the 3-D 3-D rabbit hole"

You do know that it was Katzenberg who followed Disney down the 3-D rabbit hole, don't you?

Anonymous said...

"You do know that it was Katzenberg who followed Disney down the 3-D rabbit hole, don't you?"

hmm thats not really true. PDI/DW have been looking to do a stereoscopic feature since the Antz/Shrek 1 tests. It has been more about the timing of the available projection technology. Today Katzenberg has been the most vocal about integrating 3D into the movie making process rather than adding it as an after thought.

The more the better I say and anyway it was really Polar Express in Imax 3D that got it all going again.

phil (3D guy at DWA)

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