Toon Thursday: Disney hits the reset button on Winnie the Pooh

Jim Hill

15 years ago

It wasn’t exactly the news that animation fans were
expecting. That Walt Disney Animation Studios would be following up “The Princess and the Frog” (i.e. The Company’s much anticipated return to hand-drawn animation) with
a feature-length Winnie the Pooh project.

Ah, but there was method to the Mouse’s madness. After
several years of experimenting with A.A. Milne’s much beloved characters (EX:
Using virtual sets as well as the Japanese “Bunraku” puppeteering technique for
Playhouse Disney’s “The Book of Pooh” show to make it appears as though this
set of stuffed animals had actually come to life …

… to the CG animated “My Friends Tigger and Pooh.” Which
hoped to make Milne’s characters more palatable to contemporary audiences by
giving the Hundred Acre Woods gang a few new playmates. To be specific a
six-year-old girl called Darby and her pet dog Buster) …

… survey work done by the Company showed that consumers
weren’t all that crazy with the direction that Disney had taken with the Winnie
the Pooh franchise. That – to be honest – they wanted the silly old bear that
they remembered from their childhood. Not a version of Winnie the Pooh who
dressed like a super sleuth and then solved education-based mysteries.

About this same time, “Meet the Robinsons” director Steve
Anderson and “The Princess and The Frog” story supervisor Don Hall approached
John Lasseter with what they thought was going to be a home premiere project. And what they proposed was almost startling: An old school Winnie the Pooh movie. Done in the style of the original 1966 featurette, “Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree” …

… where the characters in that animated film knew that they were living inside of a storybook …

… More importantly, that they were all stuffed animals who belonged
to one special little boy, Christopher Robin.

But what Steve & Don didn’t realize was that John was a
huge fan of the “Winnie the Pooh” featurettes of the 1960s & 1970s. That Lasseter
loved virtually every aspect of these films – from their watercolor backgrounds
…

… to their whimsical style of storytelling. And here’s the
really important thing: That John kind of resented what The Walt Disney Company
had turned Pooh into over the past 33 years. That what had originally made this
silly old bear so unique & distinct had been lost while A.A. Milne’s
characters had been commercialized.

So Lasseter surprised Anderson & Hall but not only
embracing to their old school Pooh idea but by also insisting that this proposed home premiere (which would just be called “Winnie the Pooh”) be a theatrical release.
What’s more, John wanted this new hand-drawn film to be as close as to “Honey Tree,” “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day” and “Winnie
the Pooh and Tigger Too” in style & tone as it could possibly be.

In order to do that, Steve and Don reached out to Disney
Legend Burny Mattinson. Who – as it turns out – had actually worked on the original
“Winnie the Pooh” featurettes. Not to mention giving a very young John Lasseter one
of his first jobs at Walt Disney Productions back in the late 1970s. Which
was animating several characters for “Mickey’s Christmas Carol.”

Anyway … Anderson, Hall & Mattinson put their heads
together and came up with a suitable feature-length storyline for “Winnie the
Pooh.” FYI None of the stories used in this film will be drawn from that
authorized Winnie the Pooh sequel that hit store shelves last week, David
Benedictus’ “Return to the Hundred Acre Wood”
(Dutton Juvenile, October 2009). No,
this new Walt Disney Animation Studios production will be based on the original
source material. Five A.A. Milne’s stories from “Winnie the Pooh” and “The House At Pooh Corner” that hadn’t yet been used in any previous Disney Pooh
projects.

“Which five stories?,” you ask. Well, the folks at WDAS haven’t
officially announced this yet. But at least two of the tales being adapted to
the screen this time around will be from Milne’s first “Pooh” book, 1926’s
“Winnie-the-Pooh.” And they are Chapter IV (In Which Eeyore Loses a Tail and
Pooh Finds One) and Chapter VIII (In Which Christopher Robin Leads an
Expotition to the North Pole).

Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter at the Walt Disney Animation
Studios / Pixar Animation Studios presentation at Disney’s D23 Expo on
September 13, 2009 at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim,California. Photo by Eric Charbonneau Copyright 2009 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Anywho … For those of you who are fretting that a
feature-length “Winnie the Pooh” film may be a little cutsie-pooh … er …
cutsie-poo to sit through while it’s in theaters, Lasseter says not to worry. When he
talked this project up at the D23 EXPO, John made a point of saying that this
upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios release is “ … not just for little kids.”
More importantly that “ … you won’t believe how funny this thing is.”

Now where this gets interesting is that Disney Consumer
Products is going to try & take advantage of this new “Winnie the Pooh”
film. Use this old school take on A. A. Milne’s characters as an excuse to hit the reset button on several Pooh product lines.

This past June at the Licensing International Expo in Las
Vegas, DCP officials talked a bit about their plan to reposition Disney’s
Winnie the Pooh franchise. Highlighting some of the language that will be used
as part of this relaunch. As in:

“Wouldn’t be great if you and your child could return to
that singular, golden place … The Hundred Acre Woods? Only Pooh can take you
there. Join us on the journey.”

So look for a lot of these old school Pooh products to start
turning up on store shelves in early 2011. Which – not-so-co-incidentally – is when
this new WDAS hand-drawn feature-length project, “Winnie the Pooh,” will start
popping up in theaters around the country.

So what do you folks? Would you actually buy a ticket for a
new theatrical Winnie the Pooh movie? Particularly one that has the whimsical style &
tone of those Pooh featurettes that Walt Disney Productions released back in
the 1960s & 1970s?

Your thoughts?