If It Were Simple ...

The Weinstein brothers had a nice profit with Hoodwinked, but it seems this cartoon thing isn't as easy as it looks:

[The animated feature Escape from Planet Earth] is not expected to resume until August or early fall, [and] was halted because of script issues, said several people involved in the production. The film is being written by Tony Leech and Cory Edwards, the writing team behind "Hoodwinked!," The Weinstein Co.'s 2006 hit release that took in $110 million worldwide. Leech is also directing the movie.

But Leech has not been satisfied with his script and has worked through several rewrites. Most of the movie's 150 animators were sent packing from the Vancouver production facility until the creative issues could be resolved ...

There aren't a lot of memorable animated features that haven't been reworked like pretzel dough during the course of production. Snow White had half-finished sequences cut. Aladdin had its whole second act thrown out and redone ("Jeffrey gave us three and a half weeks to reboard it," an artist moaned to me at the time). Toy Story was hanging by a thread when the world's first cgi feature went through a major overhaul. Lion King and Shrek changed directors, and the crews wondered if the pictures would ever come together.

Face it. Creating ninety minutes of animated entertainment that audiences will flock to see is tough under the best of circumstances, which is why so many companies flame out trying to make an entertaining and profitable cartoon. Lasseter, like Disney before him, figured out that having good creative minds focus on story problems and offer solutions was useful, but the landscape is littered with production houses that haven't absorbed the lesson.

Best of luck to the Weinstein Co. It's been a long time since Hoodwinked.