As part of their classic comedy routine, "The 2000 Year Old Man," Carl Reiner asked Mel Brooks what he attributed his amazing longevity to. To which Mel replied:
"I never, ever touch fried food. And I never run for a bus. There'll always be another."
I bring up Brooks' bus joke for a reason. In that it reminds me of a rather delicate Pixar-related problem that the Walt Disney Company now finds itself dealing with.
Copyright Pixar Animation Studios / Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved
To explain: Please take a look at the chart that I've compiled below. Which details the worldwide box office totals for every Pixar film that's been released to date.
* This film is still in theatrical release. Its box office totals have yet to be finalized
Please note this animation studio's highest earning production to date was "Finding Nemo." And that every Pixar production that has followed this Andrew Stanton movie then went on to earn significantly less than the picture that preceded it.
Now I bring up this pattern because -- if you're familiar with your Walt Disney Animation Studios history -- there's actually a historical precedent for Pixar's current predicament ...
... In that once the Walt Disney Company committed to producing a new animated feature (And -- in some cases -- two new animated features) per year, the worldwide box office totals for the Mouse's newer feature length cartoons began steadily dropping.
Oh, sure. There were a few WDAS productions that bucked this trend ...
... But these tended to be films that deliberately avoided the well established Disney Feature Animation template. Either by embracing a technology (In the case of "Dinosaur" and "Chicken Little," CG) that then gave these movies a distinctly different look or (In case of "Tarzan") by using some radically different source material.
Mind you, in the case of "Mulan," "Lilo & Stitch" and "Brother Bear," it was the studio itself (i.e. The late, lamented Walt Disney Feature Animation - Florida unit) that made all the difference. It was that talented group of artists & animators that actually worked onstage at Disney-MGM Studios that then came together to creat this truly entertaining trio of films. As the theory goes, these folks were far enough away from the suits back in Burbank that they could then develop animated features that had their own unique story sensibility.
Which -- in theory -- should also be the case up in Emeryville. But given that audiences today are clearly not responding to "Ratatouille" with the same enthusiasm that they once showed for "Monsters, Inc." and "The Incredibles" ... The people at Pixar are reportedly now wondering what they have to do in order to make their latest releases seem less like those buses that the 2000 Year Old Man referred to. In that you don't have to really rush out and catch the latest Pixar film while it's still in theaters these days. Because if you do miss out on it ... Well, there's always the DVD and/or the new Pixar movie that will be out next year.
With the hope that they can turn this lack-of-urgency situation around somehow, Disney & Pixar are now working together to find new ways to get would-be movie-goers excited about upcoming productions. Take -- for example -- that Buy n Large website that went live last week. Which will (in theory) help familiarize film fans with the enormous & inept faux corporation that helps drive the story in Pixar's Summer 2008 release, "WALL * E." FYI: Most of the witty image captures that I've used to illustrate today's article were actually grabbed off of that new website. So if you've got a few minutes and are need of some tongue-in-cheek fun, I suggest you go check out the Buy n Large homepage.
Beyond that, there are already plans in the works to help expand the definition of a Pixar film can be. With projects like "A Princess of Mars" and "1906" now in that studio's development pipeline, films that will liberally mix live action and CG ... Well, it's hoped that these two productions will then help get audiences excited about what else the folks up in Emeryville may have up their sleeve.
But for now, in the wake of "Cars" and "Ratatouille" not exactly wowing Wall Street and/or the movie-going public, the folks at Pixar and Disney are now trying to get a better handle on what film fans actually want & expect from this CG studio. Which explains that survey that just popped up over on the Pixar webpage.
Though this is obstensively a survey that's being used to fine-tune the features / mix of elements to be found on the Pixar webpage, there are also some questions here that (to be blunt) reek of a corporation that's trying to refine its mission statement. Take -- for example:
What do you like most about Pixar films? Quality of the animation & artistry Story Characters Cutting edge technology What does Pixar mean most to you? Quality Authenticity Storytelling Animation Family Entertainment Universally appealing films
What do you like most about Pixar films?
What does Pixar mean most to you?
Given that there are literally hundreds of Pixar fans who regularly come by JHM (If only to kick my butt whenever they feel that I've posted something that reflects badly on their favorite animation studio) ... Well, if you'd like to let the folks back in Burbank know which aspects of Pixar Animation Studios you feel are the most important, be sure and take this survey ASAP.
Beyond that, what do you think that Disney & Pixar officials should be doing in order to help this CG operation avoid the same pitfalls that tripped up WDAS back in the late 1990s? Change this animation studio's upcoming productions back into "must-sees" ?
Your thoughts?
sorry Jim that first chart (at the moment) is completely invalid. how can you compare Ratatouille's worldwide gross with the rest of the Pixar films when it largely hasn't been released outside America?
in my opinion just can't see how Ratatouille won't overhaul cars at the end of the day. it's already almost halfway upto to the amount of the domestic gross and is still to be released in europe (we get it in the autumn, when it's free from the big summer films). add to the fact that your charts seems to indicate that the worldwide gross equals and in many cases exceeds domestic gross (as you'd expect) and I don't think the great backlash you're trying to put across will turn out to be that great.
okay just re-checked my facts, even then it's a third of the domestic so for me the point still stands.
1. A good film is its own best investment in the long run. It ensures a long life as a library title and source of merchandise and spinoffs (like rides).
2. Don't start animation until the story's locked down. Worse case scenario, if a release date is pending, you start on a scene like the street crossing in TS2. And if you're shooting live action on location, have someone check a weather report first. Otherwise, the budget's just going to balloon out of control and there's going to be greater pressure to perform.
I don't think Wall-E is going to have any serious trouble making a profit, unless this current brainwashing with sequels and remakes discourages people from embracing experimental stories.
The hook here is that Pixar's next film will feature robots. ROBOTS. a popular choice in merchandise and movies, as we're currently seeing with Transformers. And judging from the two spoiler images alone, it'll be interesting to see what they can come up with with futuristic machinery. There's plenty of imagination to go around there.
Also, since Wall-E is going to have little to no dialogue, at least in the first part of the film, that will be an easy sell overseas. Little pressure to translate into a different language, giving audiences in UK, Japan, France, etc. plenty of opportunities to absorb the story placed in front of them.
The film itself will be a CHALLENGE. When you're being challenged, instead of having everything explained for you, you become more involved in the project.
There's currently no sequels or remakes reported for release next summer (someone might want to check on that), so yes, Wall-E has a great shot at success.
This article is so hypocritical it's idiotic.
At least you put in the asterisks to note that Ratatouille is still in the theatres and making money...and yet you go on to judge its performance even though we still have no idea how much it will end up with.
THIS MOVIE HASN'T EVEN BEEN RELEASED IN MOST MAJOR COUNTRIES. How can you possibly judge the overseas performance so far when it has yet to be released in big countries (and ones where it will likely do well) like the UK, australia, italy, germany etc? Especially when it just came out in france with Pixar's second biggest opening ever there?
And where's the admission that the 150-170M estimates were way on the low side? Domestically it looks like Ratatouille will make 200M no problem, beating most of the low expectations people had for this. And if any Pixar flick has a shot at making more overseas than at home, this is it. I still think this movie will have no trouble beating Cars' overseas numbers and still has a shot at beating it overall worldwide.
Not to mention the main difference between the pixar chart and the disney one - while many of the disney releases barely broke even or lost money, even a movie with as so called "bad" performance as Ratatouille will be incredibly profitable. Is making 200M domestic and 200M (incredibly conservative estimate) overseas on a movie that reportedly cost 150M really a "problem"?
And to add a little perspective, at this point it looks pretty inevitable that Ratatouille will end up ahead of every other CGI movie ever made by another studio with the exception of the Shrek flicks. Seriously, that's a "problem"??
"Little pressure to translate into a different language, giving audiences in UK"
That's funny. I didn't even know that they spoke a different language in the UK. Blimey!
I think Ratatouille definetly has a chance at breaking Cars' numbers with the overseas admissions factored in when it has run its course, but it still won't reach anywhere near Lion King or Nemo-status.
Also, it looks like the folks at Disney are already coming up with great ways to market Wall-E, but it still looks like it will be a tough movie to market and draw crowds in the midst of 2008's summer blockbusters and sequels. With Indiana Jones 4, Narnia 2, The Dark Night, Iron Man, Kung Fu Panda, The Incredible Hulk, The Love Guru, The Mummy 3, and Hancock (a Will Smith/ Charlize Theron fantasy-drama scheduled for release July 2, the Wednesday RIGHT AFTER Wall-E is released. Could be seeing the same pattern as this year but instead of Transformers coming out right after Ratatouille, Hancock would come out right after Wall-E).
But with the topic of Pixar keeping everything fresh and all with their movies... they're already making 2 live-acton/CG movies that are in the works, but what about a computer-animated musical, intertwining some fun flashy musical numbers like the Broadway-style Disney movies of the early 90s did, but with the refined animation techniques and storytelling abilities of some of the great minds of Pixar? Happy Feet was one of the first animated movies in a while that you could call a musical, and that had pretty big box-office numbers (even for a non-Disney/Pixar CG movie, and it went on to win Best Animated Movie at the Oscars- Cars won best animated movie at the Golden Globes though), but suffered from a flabby story. I think a Pixar movie-musical coming out in the winter holiday season could make some serious cash at the box office. If Pixar really is the #1 animation studio in the world, and now they are even integrating live-action into their movies, why not go all the way and make a musical or two? If Pixar wants to keep taking risks with newer and fresher movies to raise the bar and make every one of their movies a "must-see," CG musicals are very scarce if even existent. Computer animation is still new, and I really feel that movies like "Shrek" have moved the genre too much into this "everything has to be a satire of some sort" type mode that almost all of the studios seem to be in right now, which is really stalling the entire genre. Pixar is THE computer-animation studio- they've done the superhero genre successully with "The Incredibles" (and to some extent Buzz Lightyear from "Toy Story"), have tackled monsters with Monsters Inc and with the upcoming 2009 film, "Up," have made and are making movies about machines (which is a tough genre, giving life and emotion to something inanimate) with "Cars" and next year's "Wall-E," and have also made films about different types of animals- "Ratatouille," "Finding Nemo," and "A Bug's Life." Pixar is the unchallenged champion studio of CG, and their movies in the next few years already seem promising. But, I just think if the folks at Emeryville tried their hand at a musical or two, there would be huge results (as if any given Pixar movie DOESNT already get huge results, :P).
Pixar pixar pixar.