Correct me if I'm wrong. But weren't we all laboring under the assumption that -- now that a new management team was in place -- that the Walt Disney Company would stop using Michael Eisner's old playbook.
And yet what did the Mouse do this past Friday afternoon? Waited 'til Wall Street had closed up shop for the week before announcing that 140 - 160 animators would soon be let go from Disney Feature Animation.
Wait. It gets better. Guess what then happened on Sunday? Totally co-incidentally, a story runs in the New York Times about how WDFA will soon be reviving its shorts program. This article features some pre-production art from one of the shorts that Disney Studios will be producing. It even goes so far as to list the titles of the four animated shorts that Disney Feature Animation soon hopes to put into production.
You get what's going on here? Disney's PR staff deliberately released some bad news about WDFA on a day (More importantly, at a time of day) which they knew would keep this potentially embarassing story out of the news cycle for a couple of days.
Then -- on Sunday (Just as the news cycle for the coming week is getting underway) -- Disney arranges to have an article run in a paper-of-record about all the good news that's coming out of WDFA these days. How Disney Feature Animation is getting ready to revive its shorts unit. Hip hip Hooray!
Care to wager which story Mouse House flaks hope will dominate the news cycle today? Yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
You wanna hear something really sad? Do you remember the last time the Walt Disney Company pulled a stunt like this? That's right. It was back in January of 2004, when word first came down on Friday, January 9th that Disney would be shutting down its entire Florida-based animation studio. Then -- on Sunday, January 11th -- the studio announced that it would soon be putting "A Day with Wilbur Robinson" into production.
I had hoped that now that John Lasseter & Ed Catmull were calling the shots at WDFA that Disney's days of conveniently timed press releases would be behind it. But I guess I was wrong.
Moving on to happier news now ... It's official! The Walt Disney Company is about to get its first ever African-American princess. According to casting information that's just been released about "The Frog Princess," that film's title character will be ...
MADDY -- A 19-year-old African American chambermaid. Bright, resourceful, ambitious, intense. A little too grown-up for her age.
... who winds up falling in love with ...
PRINCE HARRY -- A gregarious, fun-loving European Prince, in his early twenties. A young Cary Grant. Charming, witty but irresponsible and immature. Loves jazz. Dialect: British upper-class.
For further information on the rest of the characters to be found in this upcoming John Musker & Ron Clements project, I suggest that you head on over to Animated News. Which was the first to break this story this past Friday.
And finally ... Getting back to Disney's PR staff. How many of you recall seeing this photo of Walt Disney?
Copyright 1966 Walt Disney Productions
It's from one of Walt's very last photo sessions in 1966. Taken just months before the man died.
Why do I bring this image up now? Please follow this link. Then scroll to the bottom of the page. Where you find some shots that were taken by a tourist who was in the Magic Kingdom this past Thursday afternoon. Who noticed that WDW PR staff had Roy posing for some shots while seated in an old fashioned car with Mickey standing beside him.
I don't know about you folks. But I find these new PR photos to be in rather questionable taste. I mean, to have Roy deliberately posing in the same sort of car with the same character 40 years after Walt did it? That's just a weird choice. Particularly given that Walt passed away soon after that first set of shots were taken.
Anyone got any idea what these new PR shots were being taken for? I mean, I know that Roy's making the rounds these days, promoting those new "True Life Adventure" DVDs. But that's a very specific image to be recreating there. One that has an awful lot of emotion attached to it.
I wonder when (or if) we'll ever seen this photos pop up.
Your thoughts?
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