NPR does its take on the future of animated fairy tales.
The Fairy Tale Struggles To Live Happily Ever After ...
(NPR is somewhat late to the party, but what's new? ...)
The article linked above marches through the usual litany: Disney is backing away from the genre, fairy tales are old-fashioned and sexist, the public is too hip for princess stories, blah-blah-blah.
Stripped to the essence, the fairy tale is now enduring all the arguments thrown against the Western for the past thirty-five years. But whatever the argument, it's really just bullcrap-colored wrapping paper that surrounds the real reason:
"Every time we make one of these things we lose our ass. So let's not make any more of these things."
If you don't have the strait-jacketed brain of a production exec, you know that genre doesn't matter. Content does. An audience doesn't walk to the front of their neighborhood AMC, stare at the electric signs and say "A fairy tale. Ewww." or "A space opera. Yaay." It reacts to stories and characters that it wants to see. (Might be a long-haired blonde with a frying pan ... or a gray-haired marshal with one eye, who knows?)
This is why conventional wisdom so often turns out to be wrong. The studio development executive with a death-grip on his seven-figure salary isn't going to greenlight a genre that isn't "safe," but a creator with clout -- be it John Lasseter or the Coen brothers or James Cameron -- will. And when the resulting feature makes half a billion dollars, then Conventional Wisdom begins to change. Slowly.
But the supposed bias against fairy tales is bogus anyway. What is Avatar if not a fairy tale? It's got the princess in the beautiful and mythical kingdom, the out-of-sorts hero, the black-hearted villain, the heroic final battle and uplifting ending. It might be dressed up as sci fi, but it's little different than Snow White, The Little Mermaid or Aladdin in many of its story beats.
Disney might not be making another Tangled anytime soon, but 20th Century Fox will be making as many sequels to Avatar as it can. And Paramount? I have no doubt that the Viacom company is delighted it greenlit that remake of an old John Wayne picture.
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11 comments:
wow.. for the first time.. ever. I actually agree with something you said Steve.
Try not to let it happen again please.
When Disney said "no more fairy tales" it was because "Princess and the Frog" didn't do well and "Tangled" was too far down the pipeline to cancel. Now that "Tangled" is an unqualified success, I wouldn't be surprised if Disney quietly started to gear up a couple more fairy tales.
wow.. for the first time.. ever. I actually agree with something you said Steve.
Try not to let it happen again please.
I'll do my darndest.
Tangled is NOT an "unqualified success." It's a fine film, but Disney is a public company, and Tangled is a failure where finances are concerned.
The "Disney isnt making fairytales again" comment was erroneous from the start. It took the quote "we dont have any fairytales in production right now" and turned it into "we will never make fairytales again ever"
Its bad reporting. THAT IS ALL.
And to the above poster, you're talking out of your ass. Tangled is NOT a financial failure. How do I know? I work at the hat building. Do you?
Tangled is NOT an "unqualified success." It's a fine film, but Disney is a public company, and Tangled is a failure where finances are concerned.
We know this how? (And show your work/sources.)
"Tangled is NOT an "unqualified success." It's a fine film, but Disney is a public company, and Tangled is a failure where finances are concerned."
If you have the spreadsheets, post them, let's see them. What are you basing your numbers on?
The film was in the top ten money makers in the US for 2010, and is even more successful overseas, being number one for several weeks in many markets. You can keep screaming that it's not a success, but that doesn't make it so. No matter how much YOU say they spent on it, being in the top 10 for the year is a success, period, for ANY film. Also it got the highest rating from CinemaScore of any 2010 film.
Cars 2 has been through several iterations as has Bear and the Bow but I don't read constant comments on here gloating about the fact that they've spent a bunch of extra money developing those films, nor do I expect to read, after those films do well, a bunch of comments here making sure people remember that a lot of money was spent making them and so they weren't successful. You haters ought to ask yourselves why it's so important to you that Disney remains a "failure" that you constantly try to rearrange the facts to make it that way in spite of all the facts available to you.
By the way Steve, I agree with you all the time, keep up the good work.
Well, I think the poster is referring to the L.A. times reported 260 mil prod budget before advertising cost which is typically an additional amount that is about half the film budget. Tangled will be profitable at some point but it may still take awhile. It is a critical success for sure and was a beautiful looking film.
B.O. Mojo also listed $260 million as the production cost. But since we don't know what the internal studio break-even is (we can guess, but there is no unimpeachable source that will tell us) everybody will need to go on speculating on blogs.
And being inaccurate.
Don't weep for Disney. The big mouse has always been effective at leveraging its product. At Disney there are no failures - ever.
Of course, we'll never see the spread sheets but that doesn't matter. "Tangled" is perceived as a success. That's what really counts in this crazy game.
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