I think that Ken K. speaks for a lot of Jim Hill Media readers when he says:
Now this is more like it.
I thought that the Jim Hill Media that I first fell in love with was gone for good. That I was never going to enjoy another epic-length theme park history story because you were too busy lecturing us about how the Walt Disney Company had paid far too much for Pixar or writing way too many stories about “A Christmas Carol.”
But these past couple of weeks, JHM has been great. Gone is the grouchy old bastard who went on and on and on about how “Cars” was such a disappointment. Now we’ve got a Jim Hill who says nice things about “Ratatouille,” who actually seemed excited about “WALL-E.” And your site is a much more pleasant place to visit these days because of this change.
I don’t know what it is that you’re doing differently these days, Jim. Whether Nancy’s got you on Prozac or just increased the amount of fiber in your diet. But please have her keep it up.
I do have one quibble, though. I wish that, instead of you always using unnamed sources, that you could just once tell JHM readers where you actually get some of these stories from.
Beyond that, I just want to say that it’s really nice to finally have the old Jim Hill back.
Dear Ken K.
Wow. Was I really coming across as this “grouchy old bastard”? Sorry about that, folks.
I mean, I wish I could tell you that it was something deliberate that Nancy and I did in order to lighten the mood here at JHM. But — truth be told — if you’re seeing a run of upbeat stories about the Walt Disney Company at JHM over the past few weeks … Well, that’s because it’s a fairly happy time at the Mouse House. That things seem to be on the upswing at Disney these days. And the stories that I post here on the site just reflect the change in mood that’s come over the company.
How to Get to Free Disney Sources – Corporate Website
Now as to Ken K.’s question about my sources … Sorry. But I really can’t reveal any names. Many of these people that I talk with have worked for the Walt Disney Company for years now. And I’m not going to destroy someone else’s career just because some JHM reader needs to know who my sources are.
Besides, sometimes the info that I post here at JHM doesn’t come from a person. But — rather — a place. Take — for example — the Walt Disney Company’s Corporate Information web page. You’d be amazed at the sorts of truly juicy inside information that you can find by clicking on the “Investor Relations” tab.
Don’t believe me? Then let’s start by accessing this site’s “Conferences & Presentations” file. Here, you’ll find slides, transcripts and even MP3 files of the various presentations that senior Disney Company managers gave to investors last month.
This — to put it bluntly, folks — is the mother lode.
You want to know what the Walt Disney Company is up to? More importantly, where this corporation is headed? All the information you need is right there in the Walt Disney Company Investor Conference files.
Take — for example — these highlights from Oren Aviv’s presentation. Where the president of production for the Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group talked about what the studio has planned for the next few years …
WARNING ! There be spoilers ahead! And given that I’ve taken the liberty of “borrowing” a few of the slides that were actually used in this presentation, maybe you shouldn’t scroll to the bottom of this article. Because — as this article zooms by — you may see something that you wish you hadn’t.
Jungle Cruise – Original Plan for Disney Film
Anyway … Where were we? Oh, yeah. Oren Aviv’s presentation … Here’s a few highlights:
Another project that we’re very excited about is “Jungle Cruise,” where we’ll be turning another one of our well-known, pedigreed, park attractions into an epic, exciting, groundbreaking family movie. We’ve got the writers of “Spider-Man 2” currently working on the script and it will be a star-driven action-adventure centered around our fun-loving con man of a riverboat captain. Think “Pirates of the Caribbean” meets “Indiana Jones”
“Jungle Cruise” is a great example of our commitment to building franchises for the studio and for the company. And, like “Pirates,” it represents another advantage of the Disney brand in as much as we already own all of the underlying rights to this very popular entertainment property.
Another potential franchise is called “Prince of Persia,” produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. Based on one of the longest-running and most successful video game series of all times, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” will become an epic, sprawling adventure from Walt Disney Pictures. This artwork represents the spectacular look that we’re going for in the film.
Meet the Robinsons – Lasseter and Catmull Early Synopsis
One of the other highlights of the Walt Disney Studios presentation was when John Lasseter & Ed Catmull got up to tell these investors about what was in the production pipeline for Walt Disney Feature Animation & Pixar Animation Studios. And John led off with this great story about how …
… the day after the announcement of the merging of the two studios, Ed and I walked in the Disney Animation Studios, and there we got to meet all of the artists. And each of the directors took us through all the films, and the one director, the young guy named Steve Anderson, was directing this movie called “Meet the Robinsons,” which was the next motion picture that’s coming out from Disney Animation Studios. And he talked about this story, which is about a boy who is given up for adoption and he always wondered why. Why did his mom give him up?
And, as he told this story, Steve mentioned, “I’m adopted.” And his personal story touched me so deeply that when I finally saw the movie, which, by the way, I have to say, it was about 80% finished when Ed and I walked into that studio. I looked at it and it was like the film didn’t have in it what Steve’s personal story had.
His personal story story brought me to tears, right, and I thought, ah, this feels like it’s had too many cooks trying to stir this soup. So we gave him a lot of notes, some really strong notes. We were very honest with him about the movie, but then I gave it back to him. I said, Steve, make the movie you want to make. Tell your story.
And he came back with changes to this film, minor changes, but it made all the difference in the world, and this movie about Lewis, the main character Lewis, who is focusing on the past, and he’s wondering, why did his mom give me up? And he wants to focus on his past, but this focus actually takes him to the future, where he meets this amazing, crazy, wonderful, appealing group of characters that actually turns out to be his future family.
And he learns through this experience to look forward in life, not to look back. And this story, it’s Steve’s story.
We’re really excited about this. I’m very, very proud of the film and what Steve and his crew have done. The film is really beautiful too. They have a stylization in this film that is really striking.
“American Dog” – Early Synopsis of “Bolt”
The next movie coming out after “Meet the Robinsons,” from Walt Disney Animation Studios, is “American Dog.” “American Dog” is being directed by Chris Williams, a very talented young filmmaker at Disney. And this film is about a dog named Bolt. Bolt is owned by a little girl whose father is this incredible scientist.
Now, to protect the little girl, he gives the dog superpowers, but the dad is kidnapped by these bad guys, and the little girl and the dog — and the dog is protecting her by fighting off the bad guys with his superpowers, and for 10 years they search for the father and battle the bad guys.
But all this is actually a TV show. You see, Bolt is the star of the most popular television show and it’s been running for 10 seasons, but he thinks this is real. He lives on the soundstage and that’s all he knows, so all of this is real to him. In one unfortunate incident, he falls into a box and he’s shipped from his home on the soundstage to New York City and he comes out of it and he thinks it’s all part of his life, where he has superpowers. But he is in the real world and nothing works like he thinks.
It’s crazy, and he’s trying to figure out what the heck is going on with the help of this crazy alley cat and this super fan hamster who is always in his hamster ball. He’s trying to figure out what’s going on and then he realizes that he is just an actor on a TV show, that his entire life, 10 years of his short life, has been spent being a fake, that he is not really what he thinks he is. It crushes him, but, really, he learns what it is to be a true dog. And it’s a very heartwarming story.
And one of the things, we’ve done a lot of research and development for this film, because computer animation always likes to make things look clean and perfect. Ed (Catmull) and I have been working our entire careers in computer animation trying to manhandle this computer and this technology to make things look organic, to look lived in, to have a sense of history that our natural world has, so it doesn’t look perfect and clean.
But the one thing that we’ve never been able to do is achieve the beauty and the softness that you see in the backgrounds of classic Disney animated film. We wondered why. We set out to do some research at Disney to figure out if can we take that look, that beautiful look of those hand-painted backgrounds and see if we could do it in computer animation. And we solved it.
How beautiful this imagery is going to be. There’s a softness to this, a look that no one’s ever seen before. So this is the look that we’re going to use in “American Dog” and we’re really, really excited about this. And Chris Williams is a very talented filmmaker.
“WALL-E” – Early Film Synopsis
Then — once he finished talking about Walt Disney Feature Animation’s future projects — John moved on what Pixar had in its production pipeline. And after talking a bit about “Ratatouille,” Lasseter then began discussing “WALL E.”
After “Ratatouille,” the next film coming out from Pixar is being written and directed by Andrew Stanton, who created “Finding Nemo.” He is taking his wetsuit off and putting his spacesuit on and taking you into outer space for “WALL-E.”
“WALL-E” is the story about the last little robot on Earth. He is a robot that his programming was to help clean up. You see, it’s set way in the future. Through consumerism, rampant, unchecked consumerism, the Earth was covered with trash. And to clean up, everyone had to leave Earth and set in place millions of these little robots that went around to clean up the trash and make Earth habitable again.
Well, the cleanup program failed with the exception of this one little robot and he’s left on Earth doing his duty alone. But it’s not a story about science fiction. It’s a love story, because, you see, WALL-E falls in love with [Eve], a robot from a probe that comes down to check on Earth, and she’s left there to check on and see how things are going and he absolutely falls in love with her.
And he follows her back up to her main spaceship, and you see a vision of the space and the future in this movie like you’ve never seen before. It is really spectacular. But with all Pixar films, one of the things we pride ourselves in, not only a great story, but the characters, memorable, appealing characters and these little robot characters that help WALL-E and Eve, these rejected, defective little robots, are the most charming group of characters we have ever created.
Finding Disney Information on Corporate Reports
You see? These are the sorts of things that you can find while poking around in those supposedly dry & boring corporate reports.
I mean, I would have never known that the final trailer for “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” was going to have an unprecedented global launch later this month, debuting simultaneously on dozens of network & cable channels if I hadn’t spent the past week reading through all of those transcripts of last month’s investors conference.
“At World’s End” on Nathan Rose & Tim Devine’s Magical Definition Podcast
Speaking of “At World’s End,” I’m actually going to be talking about the “Pirates of the Caribbean” film franchise as part of the debut of Nathan Rose & Tim Devine’s new Magical Definition Podcast. Which is supposed to go live this coming Sunday night at 8 p.m. EST. So if you’d like to hear what Nathan & I have to say about the problems that the Walt Disney Company appears to be having with their “Pirates” franchise, you may want to give a listen to that podcast.
Oops. Did I say “problems” ? That sounds like the old grouchy Jim is rearing his ugly head again. Maybe I should have Nancy bring me another heaping bowel of Prozac & Fiber.
Anywho … That’s it for this week, folks. Here’s hoping that you have a great weekend. And hopefully, we’ll see you all again come Monday morning.
Til then, you take care, okay?
j