Today I bopped over to Warner Bros. Animation to walk through a building I had missed earlier in the week.
Bad move.
Warners was moving productions from one space to another, and mostly I did face time with stacks of cardboard boxes and empty furniture. Then it was on to Glendale and Disney Toons ....
Disney's direct-to-video cartoon division (now run by J. Lasseter and E. Catmull) isn't moving production personnel like Warners, but it's going through changes of its own.
"We were going to do eight or ten Tinkerbell features, but studio chief Richard Ross [who replaced Dick Cook] has cut the number of features back.
"The second Tink feature didn't do as well as the studio thought it would. I mean, it did well, but not up to the company's expectations. Maybe it was because it came out the same time as a couple of big theatrical animated features, maybe it was because Dick Cook didn't have different units in the company working hard enogh to build synergy.
"Whatever it was, Ross reduced the number of shows. Now we do features with the four different seasons (we've done two) and then one more after that. A total of five. After that, it's on to the new series of features*. Hopefully most of us will be here to work on them ...
* Which haven't been officially announced yet.
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6 comments:
The series of features that haven't been announced I hope will focus on attracting boys and not be more Princess and fairy stories. I hope it's more original than that.
Is the Pirate series their doing coming from Disney Toons? Or is that Walt Disney TV Animation?
The next feature group out of Disney Toons will be non-Princess. That's all I feel like saying.
The pirate oriented stuff is "Jake and the Neverland Pirates," a hand-drawn series from Disney Television Animation.
Hey Steve could you post your studio tour schedule somewhere here on the the blog or on the main site so we have an idea as to when you'll be at a particular studio ?
What is WBA even working on these days? Nothing but Batman?
I thought that Lasseter had complete control over all animation departments. He reports only to Iger. Can Ross influence so deeply Disney Toons?
I know the first tinkerbell was done in India. How about the 2nd one ? and the plans for the future sequels ? Are they all outsourced ?
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