Strange World | Walt Disney Animation Studios | Comes to Disney+ on December 23rd

[AniNate]

 

[El Squibbonator]

On 4/27/2022 at 10:21 PM, dudalb said:

But Disney Studio propers big hits with the 16 to 25 male crowd have been scarce. Pirates if the only  big franchise for that audience that Disney has gotten, and that is pretty much dead at this pont.

Come to think of it, is there any particular reason this is the case? Or are teen male audiences just not willing to give Disney the time of day? 

[Spidey Freak]

20 hours ago, El Squibbonator said:

Come to think of it, is there any particular reason this is the case? Or are teen male audiences just not willing to give Disney the time of day? 

 

It's not just Disney. Every animation studio has had difficulty targeting tween/teen males. The 90's saw competition try with Quest for Camelot, The Iron Giant, Sinbad, Titan A.E. etc. and all failed. 

[Eric Atreides]

8 hours ago, El Squibbonator said:

Come to think of it, is there any particular reason this is the case? Or are teen male audiences just not willing to give Disney the time of day? 

 

7 minutes ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

It's not just Disney. Every animation studio has had difficulty targeting tween/teen males. The 90's saw competition try with Quest for Camelot, The Iron Giant, Sinbad, Titan A.E. etc. and all failed. 

When you're a 15-year-old boy, cartoons and Disney are gay.

[AniNate]

Male teens are into "edgy" animated stuff like Rick and Morty, Family Guy, et al

[Spidey Freak]

14 hours ago, Eric loves Rey said:

 

When you're a 15-year-old boy, cartoons and Disney are gay.

 

They're busy worshipping their anime waifus

[Morieris]

Quote

Don Hall (BH6, Raya) directs

 

Oh.

 

 

Well, I hope the story team got some in person face to face time to work on the story this time.

[grim22]

4 hours ago, Spidey Freak said:

 

It's not just Disney. Every animation studio has had difficulty targeting tween/teen males. The 90's saw competition try with Quest for Camelot, The Iron Giant, Sinbad, Titan A.E. etc. and all failed. 

Remember when the titles of Tangled and John Carter were changed because of Princess and The Frog underperforming because "boys won't watch a movie with Princess in the title" (John Carter had the double whammy of Princess and Mars)

[AniNate]

I will say it's not like WDA's recent male driven movies have been failures. BH6 and Wreck it Ralph performed pretty well. It's just unlikely they become phenomenons like Frozen.

[AN9815]

Without going into stereotypes I think animated movies that were more "male driven" have not done so bad either. I mean Big Hero 6, Wreck it Ralph, and even Zootopia were movies that did not follow the princess-prince storyline and still made a lot of money, one of them even made a billion dollars. Then Pixar has proven success recently also with Toy Story 4, Incredibles 2 or even Disney+ hits like Luca or Soul. 

[El Squibbonator]

Quote

It's not just Disney. Every animation studio has had difficulty targeting tween/teen males. The 90's saw competition try with Quest for Camelot, The Iron Giant, Sinbad, Titan A.E. etc. and all failed. 

Now, to be fair, that was the 90s, when pretty much any animated movie that wasn't from Disney was practically a guaranteed flop, regardless of what genre it was. I also wouldn't put Quest for Camelot in the same category as the rest of those-- it was a more conventional Disney-style musical, with all that entailed. It was however, originally planned as a darker action movie aimed at a teen audience, and it was re-worked into a Disney ripoff because it was thought that would sell better. Lauren Faust (yes, that Lauren Faust) worked on the movie, and did not speak fondly of the experience.
 

Anyhow, in the early 2000s, Disney tried reaching out to young male audiences with a merchandise line called "Disney Heroes". The logic was that it was supposed to be the counterpart to the Disney Princess franchise, with the core character group consisting of Aladdin, Tarzan, Robin Hood, Peter Pan, King Arthur, Simba, and Hercules. So why wasn't it successful, while the Princess franchise was successful? Probably because the Princess franchise was successful. As some of you guys mentioned, the audiences they were trying to reach were the same ones who considered Disney to be somehow beneath them. I know that, because I was a 12-year-old boy once, and that's how we think. In fact, it's been argued that the failure of the Heroes franchise, along with that of movies like Atlantis: The Lost Empire and Treasure Planet, was an inciting factor in Disney's acquisition of Marvel, Lucasfilm, and eventually 20th Century Fox. 

 

What does this have to do with Strange World? A lot. See, Disney went through at least two distinct phases when they tried to reach out to the teen male audience, both of which happened during times when they were in dire financial straits. The one I just described, in the early 2000s, was the second. The first happened in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and involved movies like Tron, The Black Hole, The Black Cauldron, and The Watcher in the Woods. Neither of these two "phases" resulted in a new major audience for Disney, and they only found success again when they returned to their traditional fare of family films. 

But Strange World is different. For one thing, it's being produced at a time when Disney is actually doing very well. For another thing, Disney no longer has a reputation as a "girly" company-- at least, not to the extent it did 20 years ago. Marvel and Star Wars are now deeply incorporated into the Disney brand. And finally, there's a case to be made that teens and young adults today don't see animation as "immature" to quite the same extent as past generations did.  If there was ever a good time for Disney to attempt a movie in the vein of Atlantis or Treasure Planet again, it's now. 

 

Edited May 6, 2022 by El Squibbonator

[Eric Atreides]

 

[filmlover]

Jake Gyllenhaal is the voice of the lead character.

[lorddemaxus]

Thought that was John Krasinski honestly. Character looks modelled exactly after him too.

[Grebacio]

Once again, Disney being ambiguous about how it will be released

[Grebacio]

[Eric Atreides]

Was hoping they would do the ol-timey trailer thing through the whole thing instead of meeting us halfway and going into generic animation trailer mode.

[YM!]

Looks good but hopefully it turns out good because I’m not a fan of BH6 or Raya. 
 

Me: I wish Disney does a black lead where they don’t turn into an animal or a marketing thing.

The monkey paw uncurls, we get a black lead but is the secondary lead.

[Morieris]

Do we know the actors yet?

[YM!]

Just now, Morieris said:

Do we know the actors yet?

Just Jake Gyllenhaal it seems.