Melvin Frohike
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Posts posted by Melvin Frohike
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Why is stunt casting so bad?
For Shrek casting Eddie Murphy worked wonders (his German voice sounds very similar by the way).
First of all, "stunt casting" is usually used as a derogatory term in reference to casting big-name actors and especially famous celebrities who aren't actors (and therefore may have minimal acting ability) just because they're so famous. Eddie Murphy is a skilled vocal performer who has a distinctive style, so I would not dismiss hiring somebody like him as stunt casting (any more than I would deride having a well-cast A-list actor in a live-action movie). Even for people like him there is a risk of being too recognizable, and this should definitely be a consideration, but that's a different issue, and as long as the performance is effective and entertaining, then I think that most of us wouldn't mind.
At least when I use the term stunt casting, I'm talking about hiring super-famous people who are not well cast and offer little-to-nothing to a movie besides their fame and their names; even when their performances are competent, if they are nothing special that many no-name actors could have done, and probably better, then this could be considered stunt casting.
It's kind of analogous to Hollywood becoming overly dependent on sequels. There is nothing inherently wrong with making sequels as long as they are warranted, and even some of my own favorite movies happen to be sequels. The problem is when a sequel is being made purely for money, such as the case of Frozen 2. Gee, I wonder what's next, Tangled 2? Maybe another "drop of sunlight" will fall from the sky and plop right on Rapunzel's head, making her hair turn blonde again and grow back to 70-foot length--instant sequel potential! KAAA-CHING!
If remember correctly for Aladdin they had small little Tom Cruise in mind (but without motion capturing).
Inspiration can be drawn from anywhere as long as it fits the character and story, and likewise famous actors who can deliver a distinctive vocal performance can have a place, too. Stunt casting, on the other hand, is solely about marketing.
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I imagine they'll be reluctant to do a sequel since OS wasnt great, similar situation to Monsters vs Aliens and Megamind which underperformed OS but were hit domestically
Right, while one could theoretically argue that sequels generally do so much better than originals OS, which seems to be true, the whole idea of making sequels to movies that lost money or barely broke even is like poison regardless--it would cast a shadow over the studio whether this is justified or not. DOM gross may subjectively be more important in some ways, but when it comes to more objective things like actually spending money on a sequel, it had better involve an objective winner (original movie that made a healthy profit) or else!
If DWA knows how important the voice actors are for their success, why don't they invest similar dilligence and money in looking for voice actors in the different OS languages?
I think it's because if they have any powers of observation and honesty with themselves at all, then they'd realize that stunt casting involving movie stars or other top celebrities only works some of the time. While it might have worked wonders for Home in NA, each market is a different case (as is each movie), and this strategy will often fail entirely for each on an individual basis, which makes it risky to the extreme to depend upon. They will still keep doing it, at least in NA, in case it would help, but it might not be financially worthwhile to do it in every market.
Ice Ages' German success is mostly due to Otto Waalkes voicing Sid.
But in this case the franchise did not hold up as well in NA, despite the celebrities--you win some and you lose some. They'll keep doing this in certain markets if they can find the actors they want and they deem the cost worthwhile (i.e. positive risk-benefit analysis), but obviously it's not nearly as simple or assured as Big Name Actors = Big $$$$--they have to be aware from their own experience and that of others that it often doesn't work at all, Home in NA notwithstanding (got bailed out that time--maybe this will encourage them to do it more OS from now on, but in any case I'm not a fan of stunt casting, so I'll leave it at that).
In the end Home will not make so much more than Pinguines WW.
Probably, but at least DWA comes off looking better in the case of Home. They might also have spent less on marketing WW, so in that case if Home also ends up performing a bit better WW (and it gets a bit higher of a percentage of the gross from the DOM market, where it succeeded), then the movie could potentially be pushed close to breaking even. Heck, I'm no accountant (not creative enough
), but I suppose if DWA had written off some of the movie's production budget as overhead for last year (they wrote off A LOT because it's better to get hurt fewer times), then they could potentially claim a profit (maybe with the SEC breathing down their necks yet again, but as long as the numbers add up in the end I suppose there wouldn't be too much trouble 
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In the end it should be about equal to The Croods 185-190M.
But OS without the benefit of the well known english voices of the voice actors, the picture is not so good. The 400M The Croods made are far away. I guess 200M is the target for it.
And this movie has to pay for all the bills of DreamWorks 2015?
Despite the movie's strong DOM performance, making a profit from the likely total WW box office gross + video sales is going to be a challenge. Whether it does or not will depend on actual marketing costs and how they do their accounting. The movie will at least mostly pay for itself (plus marketing and distribution), so relative to expectations DWA has dodged a bullet here--weak DOM performance would not have killed the studio, but the situation would have grown even more grim, I'd imagine. As for cash flow, they knew they'd be short this year, which is why DWA sold the whole studio campus. With this large infusion of cash (backed up by an increase in their line of credit) and their other revenue streams, DWA expects to break even or come close to it for this year. The important thing is that they'll survive, hopefully without any/many additional layoffs, and will have a chance to get back on track next year. Additionally, I think that weak OS performance hurts less than weak DOM performance in terms of perception--in the mainstream US media the movie is considered a success regardless of whether it will make a profit in the end, and this can only help.
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Yay! I still feel like they'd make more money by not dropping Marvel name from the movie.
Perhaps, but then again BH6 has out-grossed some of Marvel's own live-action movies, as it is. I'm not convinced that a Marvel-branded animated feature--even if it used well-known characters--would have grossed more. I guess you're thinking WDAS + Marvel branding, but there are reasons Disney avoids this with Marvel's movies when they could legitimately brand them as "Disney" in addition like Paramount used to with their own name.
Besides, pure marketing considerations aside, dual branding for BH6 would have been unfair to both WDAS (who made the movie) and Marvel (who did not).
Interesting that BH6 has seemed to underperform in quite a few of the markets where Dragon 2 did well, and vice versa. Dragon 2 did much better in Europe and Latin America, BH6 has done much better in most of Asia (save for South Korea).
What fastclock said, and in addition HTTYD 2 is a sequel, which is a tremendous advantage in many OS markets (more so and/or more often so than in NA). Asia was an exception for obvious reasons, but a big part of this was Japan where they usually only seem to go for Pixar and WDAS animated features, among foreign movies that is, regardless of how the rest of the world may view specific movies. HTTYD 2 wasn't even released in Japan, and it's not all that surprising, based on history. I guess if it's not Japanese, then for the most part it's got to be Disney--the Japanese have always liked Disney (one possible reason may be that culturally the Japanese tend to like cuteness, and Disney's sense of cuteness happens to be highly compatible), which is why for example among all of Disney's OS theme parks Tokyo Disneyland is the standout success.
Interestingly, Disney--both Pixar and WDAS--have struggled mightily in South Korea, but they kept trying and finally broke through with Frozen (and BH6 didn't do too shabbily at all for an animated feature), while DWA (generally much stronger in South Korea) seems to have given up on Japan for now.
Few differences:
1. Main protagonist and the city in BH6 is very Asian vs. the Vikings in Dragon2. Nothing is more obvious than Japan's BO for BH6. (of course this does not explain Frozen's run).
True, and Frozen's phenomenal success in Japan was based on many other factors. It didn't hurt that the movie is a fairy tale princess musical, and "Let It Go" and the other songs certainly made an impression, but the movie particularly appealed to the Japanese on several deeper levels, as well (thematically), and fully captured the zeitgeist in this market, no question--for this, Asian/Japanese characters and settings were not necessary at all.
Don't get me wrong, I think that BH6 also has appeal for Japan beyond the superficial, albeit not nearly as much as Frozen does, of course (no movies have besides Spirited Away and Titanic, and Frozen actually sold more tickets than Titanic, which I recall Japanese people going CRAZY for, too).
2. Currency exchange rate favors Dragon 2 in some countries, e.g. Russia, LA.
Yes, the US dollar has generally been strengthening across the board, of late, which has had a negative impact on the OS box office for American movies (a stronger dollar means fewer dollars coming in), and the examples that you gave here are pretty extreme, actually, with those particular currencies generally weakening at the same time (against other currencies collectively).
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Disney has confirmed it is developing a sequel to its billion dollar blockbuster Frozen
They'd better get that thing into production immediately and release it next year to grab the cash ahead of the backlash.
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Wait, what?!
Lol.
You may think it's a joke, but it' snot:
Well, it's snow, but these are still her little boogers. I guess this makes Elsa the first Disney princess (queen) who shoots snow with her nose, so to speak.
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From what I've heard (friend saw it but not me), the only characters to get any development were Hiro and Baymax, and the main reason Baymax was caring was because of his programming, rather than developing his own personality beyond his intended purpose like WALL-E.
Well, for one thing, Baymax did develop beyond his intended purpose, demonstrating that he is a true learning system. It's subtle but undeniable, and it happened during the movie as opposed to WALL-E who had developed his personally over hundreds of years before the movie's timeline had even started. The character that developed in that movie was Eve, but it just sort of happened and she started out as kind of a rebel already as we saw as soon as her transport took off, while with Baymax we got a more palpable sense that he was learning and adapting, which to me makes his development feel more believable and something I can invest in. While it's true that his design goal of helping people never changed (and in this story we wouldn't want it to), Baymax evolved from being a robot nurse to essentially being Hiro's brother (akin to the T-800's development in Terminator 2). This reinforces the themes of living on through what you did and created, and the impact you had on others. Baymax's development had to be kept subtle so as to support rather than take attention away from the main themes, but it is also necessary and present. WALL-E is a different movie with different themes.
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No revenge towards Katzenberg is necessary. Disney is already laughing as Dreamworks Animation is collapsing to the ground.
When Penguins of Madagascar was released, Lasseter was overheard saying "Baymax, destroy!" There was no intervention this time, and interestingly the result was that his neurotransmitter levels were up and his emotional state improved after all. Go figure!
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The Glendale campus always struck me as overindulgent in its design but Pixar's campus is quite similar.
Yeah, I suppose it's to bolster their sense of prestige and importance, and therefore the confidence and sense of responsibility of the staff, but for contrast WDAS has historically done much of their best work in dinky/dumpy facilities.
First there was the old Disney studio on Hyperion in Silver Lake where the first several Golden Age animated features were created in whole or in part, and then there was that unmarked warehouse across the street from WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) on Flower in Glendale where many of the Renaissance animated features were created in whole or in part (including the first "big" four). Comfort and grandeur are nice, but they don't necessarily imply better results--the threat of the studio closing has always been more effective motivation, and I guess we'll find out how DWA responds to such pressure. Maybe Katzenberg should move DWA into a dumpy warehouse like he did with WDAS when he first joined Disney.Much as it would be funny for Disney to buy the campus, what they would they use it for since I imagine they would keep WDAS in the Hat Building in Burbank and Pixar wouldn't leaving Emeryville.
I don't know, but coincidentally it sure would come in handy right now with WDAS almost completely moved out of the Hat Building while it is being remodeled (more like entirely gutted and redesigned from scratch except for the outer shell). A few staffers are still there, the luckier ones were moved to DisneyToon's practically abandoned studio in Glendale (nice building modeled after Pixar's, only much smaller), and the bulk of the staff have been moved to a crappy WDI warehouse right next to an airport runway (the previous crappy warehouse on Flower has been thoroughly renovated inside and now houses the Animation Research Library)--there they will stay until the Hat Building is finished, which will take at least 18 months.
Not that I'm being serious about any of this business regarding DWA's campus, by the way--it's just fun to ask "What if?"
Only if they can buy DreamWorks Classics with it. DreamWorks Classics has some great IP.
Well, Disney would be buying the DWA campus from SunTrust, not DWA, and I don't know how the lease agreement would be transferred and all of its particulars. That is some nice IP, though, yes...provided that it is utilized properly.
Revenge for what Katzenberg pulled with trying to sabotage A Bug's Life by making Antz around the same time.
That's right, it's really the only reason Lasseter would have any kind of a bitter enmity against DWA--Katzenberg specifically, that is. I'm sure that DWA's current troubles must be breaking JL's heart to pixels.
JK, for his part, doesn't have anything against JL (or Disney anymore)--he just used him and Pixar (and to some extent PDI) to get back at Michael Eisner, who then turned around and started an unnecessary feud with Pixar over something else. No wonder Frank Wells is so revered inside Disney--he actually got all of these massive egos (along with Roy E. Disney) to function in such harmony and for the benefit of the company until his untimely death. Immediately after that fateful helicopter crash Disney began to unravel from the top, eventually dragging WDAS and every other division down with it. Now it's DWA's turn to get dragged down--this time seemingly in large part by JK on his own. Disney was saved by ousting Eisner and replacing him with...his own hand-picked successor, of all people. Now how will DWA be saved, or will it? 
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I'm assuming this was their intention from the beginning.
Yes, this is a fairly safe assumption given how quickly this happened. They already had a pretty favorable deal going with DWA, though--I guess they don't expect DWA to be around for very long.
Still, it's like rubbing salt in the wound because I'm sure SunTrust is going to be asking a lot more for the property than what they paid DreamWorks for it.
Undoubtedly fetching a much higher price, if that is in the cards, would be a huge embarrassment for DWA.
Disney should buy it.
They surround that building anyways.
That's true--Disney already owns everything around DWA:
Disney's Grand Central Creative Campus + ABC Studio
Disney's main studio lot (including headquarters and WDAS) is just a couple of miles to the west in Burbank (follow Riverside Drive).
By the way, wouldn't it be something if the plan all along was for Disney to buy the DWA campus, using an intermediary for obvious reasons?
I'm sure that John Lasseter would love such a development--"This is a revenge story!" (Fred from Big Hero 6). -
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It did pretty good in Latin America. Better than Tangled and Wreck it Ralph
It did, although admittedly I expected it to do a bit better still.
Its problem was Europe
Agreed, it's really weak there--I expected weaker performance in Europe than other regions, but not quite this weak. By the way, I'm still boggled by how well sequels of some of the sillier animated features perform in Europe. I guess like superhero movies in NA, there are broad regional cultural preferences (not to stereotype as they don't necessarily apply to every country in every case, especially in Asia it seems).
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Marvel movies are already big success in China, and Star Wars will be quite big in China too.
I'm more concerned about the actual Disney-branded products (and also Pixar), since the new resort and theme park will be part of that.
Hope the Disney land will help Disney's future animated movies,
I sure wouldn't mind that happening, and it might, although I was hoping that the movies would have helped the brand get a stronger foothold before billions were committed to a theme park. The latter flopping in China would hurt one hell of a lot more than just movies, and Disney has already had and is having problems with Hong Kong Disneyland as it is. Granted, the latter is an example of gross underinvestment from the start while the new Shanghai Disneyland should be the polar opposite in this respect--designed from the outset to truly impress--but it's still a bit unnerving. At least Big Hero 6 seems to be doing well in China, although I would attribute this primarily to its subject matter as opposed to the Disney brand.
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What the heck are those snowballs?!?!
They're the "snowgies" which are
living boogers that Elsa sneezed out because she caught a cold.
They sometimes act as though they were a sentient form of microbots (from Big Hero 6), so I tend to think of them as microsnots.
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Nostalgia Critic reviewed BH6 and he said that the movie is just an "okay" movie.
http://channelawesome.com/disneycember-big-hero-6/
And I kinda agree with him.
But that's not the point--BH6 has grossed over $221M DOM and over $604M WW so far, and from what I've seen its videos are flying off the shelves. Clearly a lot of people like the movie regardless of what one person or other might think of it. I was commenting not on overall quality (I do think it's a lot better than just OK and is fully deserving of the Best Animated Feature Oscar, but that's just my opinion) but on spectacle, which is more basic. For whatever reasons the movie is not getting the attention and hype that movies that perform like this usually get.
It is the Pocahontas effect. A successful movie looks less impressive after following a mega hit (The Lion King).
I've suggested in the past myself that Frozen has been overshadowing BH6, and I think that it is natural and undoubtedly true, but for comparison I recall people talking a lot more about Pocahontas even though it was in the shadow of The Lion King, and not just about the perception that it underperformed or the historical controversy (although I guess these draw more attention in general). BH6 is just kind of weirdly quiet, and that's about it.
I'll take this over the movie flopping and the discussion being about what went wrong any day, though.-
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Neat... i guess robot movies really perform incredibly well in China
Sci-fi in general tends to perform well there, and although BH6 is not related to China specifically, having an Asian protagonist and Asian-themed setting probably doesn't hurt.
BH6 won the Oscar and crossed $600M worldwide and the the thread is still about the first look and new trailer
SHHHH! Conceal, don't feel, don't let them know.
What do you expect from one of the quietist BO performances last year. Still a good solid run IMO.
I know this has been brought up before, but why is this? Maybe if a movie is anything less than a cultural phenomenon like Frozen, then it's considered business as usual for WDAS these days? I mean, even watching it at home now, BH6 still seems like a spectacular movie that should have garnered a lot more attention outside of just the box office (although I'll take what I can get).
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But BH6 didn't break out big time. Do people now pay more attention to the studios behind the toons that they watch?
They're still usually blissfully unaware of who made what (aside from fans of specific studios), and even some animation fans get the studios mixed up, too. If anything, the GA might take notice of "From the creators of" in trailers and posters, though.
I was so surprise how Penguins flopped, didn't expect it to gross under 100M especially that it had a good release date
I didn't expect it to flop so spectacularly at first, either, but as soon as I saw that OD (Wednesday) gross, I figured it would finish between $80-90M DOM, and sure enough, it did. Originally I expected it to perform even better than it has OS, which I later revised downward because of the type of humor it has, so in the end it's actually doing better than I had predicted.
It was released too late. The TV show had milked the penguins for all the stories they could.
I'm a believer in this theory, although it's not the only factor.
I was talking to some friends earlier this week and one of them mentioned Despicable Me and thought it was from Dreamworks. Like, a lot of toons not made by Disney people seem to automatically assume with Dreamworks and yet they probably couldn't name some of the more recent real Dreamworks flicks if I told them to. Dreamworks has been such a trendsetter for almost all CG animated films made in the last decade that it's actually working against them now.
Even movies made by Disney (WDAS) are often mistakenly thought of as being made by Pixar, for comparison. Some believe that Pixar replaced WDAS or bizarrely even that Pixar always was WDAS. I don't know, it's kind of odd to think that the oldest feature animation studio, by far, and one that so dominated the field for decades would have so easily been forgotten by so many people, but it's what I see. I agree with you about DWA in this respect, too--for a number of writers/bloggers in the news media Pixar and DWA together still are CGI animation. Even with WDAS' resurgence, including Frozen, which I would think is quite difficult to ignore, I've read a number of recent articles that still only mention Pixar and DWA as the major players in CGI and feature animation in general. To me this makes DWA's current decline even more shocking (which might well be the intention
).Surprisingly, it outgrossed The LEGO Movie overseas.
By a pretty big margin, and it just edged past Wreck-It Ralph OS, too. Even so, this is not quite enough to be considered a truly successful OS run at this budget level, and flopping big-time in NA only makes its overall performance worse, obviously. I'm actually not too surprised about any of this, though, because Wreck-It Ralph and especially The Lego Movie seem to be geared more specifically for English-speaking markets than usual; this is actually more notable for the former because WDAS usually, with some exceptions, tries to avoid this, given that so much of their revenue has traditionally come from OS markets from the very beginning (their movies were pretty much the original high-budget international tent-poles).
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Big Hero 6 very close to 7M admissions / 9B yen
It's even closer to passing Monsters University in final gross (¥8.96B) for #11 all-time among animated features, although admissions will take a bit more (7.05M).
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Yes, it would be really amazing that China becomes top OS market for a Disney movie.
It would, and if anything it would make Disney and its shareholders (like me) feel a bit better about the huge, expensive theme park they're opening next year in Shanghai. One movie is not much, but any small foothold in that seemingly impenetrable market would be welcome news.
Well, besides the superhero aspect or the story, one has to wonder whether the rest of the world outside of Asia were ready for an Asian-American protagonist.
True, but it still did well enough outside of Asia and NA to gross over $600M WW, and that's a big win, as far as I'm concerned, all things considered. It's pretty much what I had expected, in terms of distribution, although admittedly I was hoping--if not expecting--the movie to do a bit better in NA, LA, and Europe in absolute terms than it has done.
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What? Why does a romantic relationship between toys sound unappealing, but a platonic relationship perfectly appealing?
It's not that a romance between toys, per se, is inherently unappealing, and actually I didn't say that--I said that a feature-length movie based primarily on this would be unappealing, at least for me. Why? I think it's because for me the Toy Story series has always pushed my willing suspension of disbelief to its limit, if not a tad beyond. I'd readily "believe" in all kinds of outrageous things in movies, in this context, but in this case all of these things seemingly happening in secret in the real world with living toys is almost too much for me to accept in a feature-length movie format, as it is. For one thing--among many--with all of the close calls this small group have experienced, one would think that toys being alive would have long been discovered by now. Not every magical thing in stories needs to be explained--in fact, some are best left unexplained--but in this specific case, without an explanation it feels implausible even for fictional movies. It's almost like a giant plot hole that pulls away my attention and involvement on occasion--it sure puts the "willing" in my suspension of disbelief, to be honest.
With the foregoing in mind, the idea of romance between toys in this case makes things even harder for me to accept because then I'd think of implications and ramifications like toy sex and reproduction.
Don't get me wrong, it doesn't have to be about those things at all, but I'd question the meaning and purpose behind romantic relationships with these toys, whereas with actual living beings--even when they're animated--I wouldn't even question it. Maybe this will be the point in Toy Story 4, but we don't know at this stage, and for me at least, this is where it starts to get weird. Maybe it will turn out to be weird in a good way, like in WALL-E, but I have no idea, and for the latter I have no issue with suspension of disbelief--with Earth getting into that state, definitely yes, but not with the lead robot characters and their relationship. I suppose I could question there being a "romance" between sentient robots, too, but I don't because in this case it could just be about love, and they're robots (who are expressly imitating humans they saw on an old videotape, no less), while the toys of Toy Story both act much more human-like and at the same time have a strange existence that I question to begin with. That's why it would be weird, at least for me. Now, maybe if this were a novel or a different story about toys with a whole different setup, then that would be OK, but not with Toy Story as we know it and in a feature-length movie format; a short film would be fine, much like the little romantic comedy subplots that are already in these movies. -
Copied almost verbatim from a post that I made under a different name on another website (in case anybody would think that I'm plagiarizing--feel free to ask him because he is me and would understand
):Even putting aside the history of Toy Story, except for knowing what we know about the characters, the idea of a feature-length movie based on romance between toys sounds pretty unappealing. Perhaps they're trying to break new ground regarding what people would willingly watch and be able to enjoy, not unlike what Walt Disney did with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and feature-length animation, so it's bound to have some doubters and naysayers, but then again by now we have a better idea of what generally will work for us, individually, and what likely will not. The issue for me is not that this is different and not just that romance between toys is ultimately weird--at least beyond a short film where it might be cute, like it is in small doses in the existing Toy Story movies--but mainly that I don't find romantic comedies, as a genre, appealing in the first place. This combined with implementing it in the Toy Story franchise, of all places, makes the whole idea and project feel off-putting rather than innovative as I'm sure Pixar intended.
To be fair, "romantic comedy" has a more general definition than the archetype that I'm sure immediately springs to mind for many of us--it's a loaded term, but maybe it's not what Morris meant (poor choice of words for public consumption). It could mean any romance that has a happy ending and some of the basic trappings (e.g. meet cute, opposites attract, etc.), not necessarily the style as we generally think of it. In that case, Pixar has made at least a couple of romantic comedies, in addition to the many subplots scattered throughout their movies. One example would be WALL-E, which involves robots of all things. Using the basic definition, a lot of WDAS' animated features would be romantic comedies, notably Tangled among the recent ones. These are rom-coms that I think that even rom-com genre haters (like me) can enjoy--they don't even feel like they're rom-coms, really.
Nevertheless, I still feel put off by what Morris said. But then again we still don't know exactly what Pixar's approach will be, so I'll try to keep an open mind as new information comes in.
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Ironically, I kind of feel the same way for HTTYD2 now. The more I think about it, the less it holds up.
Same here, although I still do like HTTYD 2 a lot overall. BH6 has its own faults, but it's easier for me to suspend my disbelief with this one, and I find it more consistently engaging as well as more appealing. Its story may be more basic and predictable, but it seems more solid for it, and while it may not get an emotional reaction from everybody, I think that it does a more than fine job in this respect, and I'm sure that all of the people I heard sobbing in the theater (no shortage of those) would agree.
As for The Lego Movie, I never got the appeal of this one, and I've watched it several times by now with the youngsters in my family. I just don't see the supposed greatness that gives rise to the sense of self-righteous entitlement that some of its more rabid fans--and maybe even its directors in some ways--have displayed.
Anyway, I have to say that while I liked many of the animated features of 2014, especially BH6, in my opinion the year as a whole is overrated regarding the quality of the animated features. I think that 2013's offerings being so weak overall might have caused an overreaction to the improved quality of 2014's (on the average). For me, among the American animated features Frozen was the lone standout of 2013, but I think that it would have stood out in 2014, too, quite handily. Then again, I think it would have stood out in most every year, so there's that (and I'm sure there are some who don't see its greatness--sometimes we just view things in very different ways).
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So undeserving....
So bitter!
Overrated
Overrated better describes HTTYD 2 to some degree and The Lego Movie to a much greater degree. The former has a lot of elements that don't make sense and come out of nowhere, while the latter is a bunch of pointless, annoying humor followed by long, slow, boring soliloquies that spell out the movie's minimally supported themes as though the audience were too dumb to figure them out (or maybe because they're so poorly supported by the rest of the movie).
If anything Big Hero 6 is underrated, at least by those who overrate its competitors and seem blind to their glaring faults.
Don't write off Moana already. It's from the directors of Aladdin and Little Mermaid. At this point last year, many claimed the Animated Feature award was between Lego and HTTYD2, and we saw how that turned out.
Yeah, sometimes the AMPAS actually has more sense than the majority of animation fans.
Not to mention it's supposed to be a musical. And we all know how insanely popular the last Disney musical was.
...and how unpopular the WDAS musical The Princess and the Frog was, however, which was coincidentally made by the directors working on Moana right now. At this point I'm not writing anything off, but I think that some folks have been making too much of this. Having any similarities with Frozen does not, in itself, imply any success whatsoever, in my view. Not every musical is going to be a big hit and/or well regarded, and the same goes for any movie involving princesses or ice--it depends on how everything is put together and whether the elements, of any type, have appeal. There are also things like zeitgeist to consider, and obviously this is highly unpredictable, being so subject to change.
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-$155.5 million write off for cancelled films Mumbai Musical and B.O.O.
Have they ever written that much off on any two movies that they've actually completed and released? I guess they'd rather suffer all of the losses now, even if the sum is greater, because they can't take many more of them in the future. I'm sure that the reductions in staff and their production schedule had something to do with this, but geez, this is nearly as much as they got for their Glendale studio.
Home comes out in a month, so I guess we'll have to see how that does.
DWA having to sell and then lease back their studio in Glendale shows how bad their financial woes are. Katzenberg must on his last chance to save the studio.
The bottom line here is that they desperately need liquidity--hard cash to keep funding operations in an immediate sense. I get what they say about owning large unencumbered assets such as the studio facility not making financial sense anyway (i.e. money should be invested in projects not real estate), but believe me, selling the studio HURT (as in JK's ego, feelings, whatever).
I am pretty sure they are gonna sink in about 1 month. Either that or they already included Home's bombage in 2014's losses.
No, they've set themselves up to keep operating for some time. Having written off so much up front, they expect to break even for this year, apart from Home, which means that if Home makes a profit then they'll make a profit and if it takes a loss then they'll take a loss, but they'll still have enough to keep operating regardless. The cost? Ownership of their posh, custom studio and the rent they'll have to pay for it, which adds up quickly over time (if they'll stick around for a while), but they need cash now, so....
Regarding Home, while it won't be an immediate make-or-break event for DWA, it could of course have either a positive or negative impact on DWA's stock price, image, and attractiveness to potential buyers, and they can ill afford yet more negativity. To think that the probable main reason that "sure bet" Penguins of Madagascar was moved up to last November was to avoid another flop, then it flopped anyway, and now DWA is stuck with the movie they were actually afraid would flop as their only theatrical release for this year. At this point they're in survival mode until their expected hits are released, but then those will likely be canceled out by their other projects. They need to brainstorm some better ideas and fast!
I have no faith they will last.
If they don't change for the better fairly soon and/or get bought out, then I agree.
Both BOO and Mumbai Musical had better premises and potential and were surely salvageable with the amount of talent they have and yet both were canceled for a $155m loss for Captain Underpants and Boss Baby to continue? Clearly their restructuring failed to discern which projects are still shit.
True, they kept some of the worst projects in addition to the best, showing that their decision-making is still extremely questionable. Is this JK or his new co-presidents of animation? Then again, for all we know the canceled projects might have been going nowhere good despite having better basic ideas. Dare I give them the benefit of the doubt? At this stage...NAH!
Man, this is like watching a train wreck in slow motion that got even slower but still seems just as inevitable as ever.
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Whose general idea?
A number of us were thinking earlier on that the Chinese audience would generally find a movie like Big Hero 6 more appealing than a movie like Frozen. If this isn't true, then do tell.
HTTYD2 can't make more than 70M, why would a non-sequel make that big numbers?
That's a good question, and should cast some doubt. On the other hand, maybe being Asian-themed in some ways would help out.
And Frozen wasn't affected that much by piracy because blu ray hadn't leaked when it opened here while when BH6 debuts the blu-ray will have been out for a month.
Does it need to be in HD? Although I don't keep track of these things because I never download them, I'm pretty sure that there were lower but acceptable quality downloads available for Frozen well before February.
Frozen was a phenomenon,
Frozen wasn't a phenomenon in China and many other markets. Where it was a phenomenon it was so huge that this more than made up for performance in a number of territories that even other animation studios, for example, would consider middling or lackluster.
BH6 won't be.
Nobody said that it would be, to my recollection, with the possible exception of Japan, where it is performing very well indeed, at least.
), but I suppose if DWA had written off some of the movie's production budget as overhead for last year (they wrote off A LOT because it's better to get hurt fewer times), then they could potentially claim a profit (maybe with the SEC breathing down their necks yet again, but as long as the numbers add up in the end I suppose there wouldn't be too much trouble 
).
First there was the old Disney studio on Hyperion in Silver Lake where the first several Golden Age animated features were created in whole or in part, and then there was that unmarked warehouse across the street from WDI (Walt Disney Imagineering) on Flower in Glendale where many of the Renaissance animated features were created in whole or in part (including the first "big" four). Comfort and grandeur are nice, but they don't necessarily imply better results--the threat of the studio closing has always been more effective motivation, and I guess we'll find out how DWA responds to such pressure. Maybe Katzenberg should move DWA into a dumpy warehouse like he did with WDAS when he first joined Disney.
They sometimes act as though they were a sentient form of microbots (from Big Hero 6), so I tend to think of them as microsnots. 
I'll take this over the movie flopping and the discussion being about what went wrong any day, though.
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The Good Dinosaur | Peter Sohn | BR/DVD release 2-23-2016 | Pixar's first BO flop
in Box Office Discussion
Posted
Well, Winnie the Pooh was a low-budget project that was done expressly to promote merchandise sales. Normally DisneyToon Studios handle these things, but at the time Walt Disney Animation Studios needed to keep their cel animation staff busy while that medium was still in limbo, so they took on the project. It was never expected to be much of a hit in and of itself, and that's OK because only about $30M (less than the Tinker Bell movies) was spent on producing it. Big Hero 6 was indeed a much bigger risk, if for no other reason than the fact that it had such a huge budget and was intended to be Disney's tent pole blockbuster for that season--a totally different situation.
That said, I think your general point still stands, regardless. Chris Williams, who directed Big Hero 6 with Hall, had previously directed Bolt, which badly underperformed at the box office. John Lasseter really liked their movies, however, which I'm sure was a factor in giving them another shot. Movies can succeed or fail for reasons that are often beyond anyone's ability to fully understand, much less predict, but good animation directors are hard to find, and if you keep making good movies (in Lasseter's subjective opinion, I suppose), then in the long run you'll be successful. The only other caveat is that every WDAS movie had been failing back then until that trend suddenly came to an end, while every previous Pixar movie had succeeded. This is a real difference, but I can't say whether or how much of a difference this would make with respect to the philosophy that I just described--hopefully it would make no difference, but in any case, much depends on how impressed Lasseter really is with Sohn's work.