According to legendary screenwriter William Goldman, there is only one constant in Hollywood: “Nobody knows anything.”
TRANSLATION: No one person in the business can actually accurately predict what’s going to happen next. Whether a picture is going to hit and/or turn out to be a flop.
Some senior studio executives at the Walt Disney Company certainly like to pretend that they’re in the know. That their years of experience (not to mention the acres and acres of audience research info that they have access to) gives them some special insight into what movie-goers might actually respond to. But – in the end – these all-knowing Mouse House execs still can’t get it right 100% of the time.
Case in point: Fox’s “Ice Age.” Early last year, executives at Fox were becoming extremely nervous about this still-in-production CG flick. Given that the studio’s last foray into feature animation – their much hyped Summer 2000 release, “Titan A.E.” – had ended disastrously (Fox poured $85 million into the production and promotion of that picture. In the end, “Titan” was only able to pull in a paltry $23 million during its entire domestic release), Fox was giving some very serious thought to getting out of the feature animation game entirely.
Which is why – during the first quarter of 2001 – Fox studio execs reportedly quietly approached Walt Disney Company officials. Their mission? To see if the Mouse might be interested in taking “Ice Age” off of Fox’s hands.
Intrigued by their rival’s offer, senior officials at Disney Feature Animation supposedly screened “Ice Age” at the Burbank lot early last spring. Days later, they discreetly returned the work-in-progress print to the folks at Fox.
Disney’s verdict? “Ice Age” was dreadful. According to the feedback that top level WDFA execs allegedly gave Fox officials: The picture’s character design was butt ugly. The movie’s storyline was predictable and derivative. There was just no way that Disney would stoop to releasing a film that was as flawed as “Ice Age” was.
Extremely chagrined by Disney’s sharp criticism, Fox execs took back that copy of the work-in-progress version of “Ice Age.” After screening the film a few more times in-house (and ordering the animators at Blue Sky Studios to remove some of the more risqué, adult humored moments in the movie), the folks at Fox thought that “Maybe if we put together some big promotion for ‘Ice Age,’ we can con an audience into coming out to see this picture.”
Which is why Fox ended up getting in bed with Burger King as well as buying up all that ad time during the telecasts of this year’s Winter Olympics. All with the hope that the studio – with proper promotion – might be able to get back some of the $58 million that they’d spent on making “Ice Age.”
And what was the end result? “Ice Age” grossed an astounding $176 million during its domestic release earlier this year … not to mention the additional $190 million that this Fox CG flick pulled in during its overseas run.
Now – to put that $176 million domestic gross in perspective – you have to understand that the two films from Walt Disney Feature Animation that preceded “Ice Age” into theaters (2000’s “The Emperor’s New Groove” and 2001’s “Atlantis: The Lost Empire”) only pulled in $89 million and $84 million, respectively. And that – even if the Mouse were to COMBINE the domestic box office grosses of these two extremely expensive, highly promoted WDFA pictures – Disney still wouldn’t be able to equal the money making might of Fox’s mammoth hit.
So what does this prove? That the execs at Walt Disney Feature Animation wouldn’t know a good movie even if it were just HANDED to them? Well, that’s a little harsh. But not too far from the truth.
You want another example? Then let’s talk about Eric Goldberg’s pet project, “The Frog Prince.” For those of you who don’t know, Eric was one of the real powerhouse talents behind Walt Disney Feature Animation in the 1990s. His outstanding work as an animator (EX: Goldberg supervised the Genie in “Aladdin”) as well as a director (EX: “Fantasia 2000″‘s “Rhapsody in Blue” sequence was – start to finish – an Eric Goldberg production) has already made this guy a legend in the industry.
Anywho … Eric was tired of Disney doing these feature length animated films like “Hunchback” and “Pocahontas” (which Goldberg co-directed with Mike Gabriel, by the way) that took themselves WAY too serious. He wanted the Mouse to make a feature length cartoon that was fall down funny. Something that audiences could laugh at all the way through.
Which is why Goldberg (with the help of his extremely talented art director wife, Susan McKinsey Goldberg) developed a satirical version of “The Frog Prince.” Something in the tradition of the “Fractured Fairy Tale” section of Jay Ward’s late, great “Bullwinkle” TV show. Only with a strong enough story to keep the laughs coming for 90 minutes or thereabouts.
But – in the late winter / early spring of 2001 – when Eric and Sue finally showed WDFA’s creative executives all the development work that they’d done on “The Frog Prince,” they were in for a really rude shock. Schumacher’s minions reportedly rejected the Goldberg’s proposed feature in record time. Why for? Well, the alleged reasoning behind the suit’s high speed rejection of the film was that audiences just weren’t going to sit still for a film that spent 90 minutes making fun of fairy tales.
Now keep in mind that the brain trust at WDFA made this ridiculous pronouncement just weeks before Dreamworks’ “Shrek” rolled into theaters nationwide. And that CG animated feature – which actually spent 89 minutes making fun of fairy tales – ended up grossing $267 million during its domestic run at the box office. Not to mention scoring the first ever Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
Which is why – in a stunning reversal on their earlier position – Walt Disney Feature Animation immediately put two projects that made fun of fairy tales in the company’s production’s pipeline during the summer of 2001. One was “Chicken Little,” a wildly comic CG feature that’s being masterminded by the wits behind “The Emperor’s New Groove,” director Mark Dindal and producer Randy Fullmer. The other was “Enchanted,” another satire of the fairy tale genre that was to have mixed animation and live action.
WDFA had hoped that Eric and Sue Goldberg would ride herd on the animated portion of “Enchanted.” But – by the summer of 2001 – the Goldbergs had become extremely disenchanted with Disney. Which is why the husband-and-wife team both opted to exit the Mouse House in August 2001.
After this, Eric toyed with the idea of directing a CG version of Maurice Sendak’s classic children’s tale, “Where the Wild Things Are” (This project – which was to have been produced by Tom Hanks’ Playtone Company – would have been released through Universal Studios). But then Goldberg’s dream project came along: A chance to animate Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck and all of the other classic Warner Brothers characters in Joe Dante’s live action / animated tour de force farce, “Loony Tunes: Back in Action.”
That much anticipated project is currently slated to hit theaters on November 14, 2003 – at which time “Looney Tunes: Back in Action” will probably end up going head-to-head with Disney’s “Bears.” A situation which could probably have been avoided if WDFA executives had just listened to the Goldbergs in early 2001 and allowed Eric and Sue to go forward with their “Frog Prince” project.
To be fair, it should be noted here that the creative executives who are currently in charge of Walt Disney Feature Animation aren’t the only individuals at the Mouse House to ever miss out on a real opportunity. Case in point: The infamous day in 1980 that Card Walker turned away Steven Spielberg.
You see, ‘way back then, Steven was still smarting over the drubbing that his wunderkind reputation had taken following “1941”‘s disastrous reception at the box office. Having worked mostly for Columbia and Universal Studios up until that time, Spielberg was anxious to make a break from his past. Find himself a new place to call home in Hollywood.
Then-Walt Disney studios head Ron Miller somehow got wind of this situation. Which is why – in February 1980 – Miller asked Spielberg to come by the Burbank lot and literally offered Steven the keys to the kingdom. Ron wanted to set up Steven as the head of production for the studio. Which meant that Spielberg could call the shots on Disney’s entire production slate. Directing the films that he personally wanted to direct. Executive producing the rest.
Spielberg reportedly thought that this was just a wonderful idea. He talked enthusiastically about bringing his other film-making friends on board at Disney. People like “Star Wars” director George Lucas, Academy Award winning composer John Williams, high profile actors like Richard Dreyfuss and Harrison Ford.
So why didn’t this dream deal happen? To put it bluntly, Spielberg likes to share the wealth. He insisted that – were he were to become head of production at Walt Disney Studios – that the company would have to start offering “points” to the creative community. I.E. Giving the actors and key creative personnel who’d worked on particular projects a piece of the profits that those films would generate.
The awarding of “points” had become standard operating procedure everywhere else in Hollywood by the late 1970s. But not at Disney. Walt Disney Productions still treated its extremely talented staff as hired hands. The corporation’s animators, actors and artists all got paid a fairly decent salary. But that was it. In spite of the decades that these talented folks may have put in at the company, they never got to have any financial participation in the pictures that they worked on. All that money went straight to Mickey.
In order for him to agree to accept the position as head of production at Walt Disney Studios, Spielberg insisted that the Mouse had to get with the times. That Walt Disney Productions would have to agree to begin awarding “points” to the creative personnel that he intended to bring on board at the Mouse Factory … or the deal was off.
Then Walt Disney Productions CEO Card Walker realized that having Steven come on board at Disney was a tremendous opportunity. But Card just couldn’t bring himself to share. Which is why he reluctantly ordered Ron to pull the plug on the deal that Miller had set up with Spielberg.
Which just about broke both Ron and Steven’s hearts. Why? Because Spielberg had already told Miller all about the film that Steven had hoped to produce as his very first project at the studio. This very small, cheap-to-make movie that he felt would be just perfect for Disney.
And what was that movie’s story? It told the emotional tale of a lonely little boy from the suburbs who befriends this ugly-but-cute alien who’s accidentally been stranded on Earth.
Yep. Disney could have had “E.T.” But because Card Walker just couldn’t bring himself to spread the wealth around, the Mouse House lost out on having Spielberg as their very own in-house wunderkind.
Which – when you think about it – makes Disney missing out on “Ice Age” seem like a minor mishap. Rather than a mammoth-sized mistake.
Your thoughts?