Re: Faith-based Fail

On Wed, 3 Nov 2010, Bruce Geerdes wrote:

>> Well, the jury's still out on what effect the Disney-Pixar merger is 
>> having on *both* studios.  Pixar, these days, is in the sequel business 
>> (which Disney, incidentally, has almost *never* been, with the 
>> exceptions of The Rescuers Down Under and Fantasia 2000)
>
> Why have the sequels picked up with Pixar under Disney? Time was Pixar 
> sequels were the exception as well.

That's a very good question.

Prior to the Disney-Pixar merger, when Cars was the last film that Pixar 
was contractually obliged to make for Disney, and Pixar was threatening to 
partner with some *other* studio, Disney created an entire division 
(called Circle 7) that would have done nothing but produce sequels to 
Pixar's first seven films (because the rights to all the characters in 
those first seven films would have remained with Disney regardless of 
where Pixar made its *next* films).  Reportedly, the Circle 7 crew even 
got started on a version of Toy Story 3 that would have seen Buzz 
Lightyear get recalled to a factory in Taiwan or something.  This got 
Steve Jobs rather hoity-toity about the evils of non-stop sequelization 
etc.

But then, shortly before the release of Cars, Disney and Pixar surprised 
everyone by announcing that they had merged, and Steve Jobs was now one of 
the biggest shareholders (possibly *the* biggest shareholder) on the 
Disney board of directors, etc., etc.  And one of the first things the 
merged Disney-Pixar did was shut down Circle 7 and cancel their plans for 
Toy Story 3.

And then, one year later, Disney-Pixar announced that they were making a 
*different* version of Toy Story 3.

And then they announced Cars 2.

And then they gradually let slip that Monsters Inc. 2 was in the works.

And recently they registered the domain names for Finding Nemo 2.

Along the way, Disney-Pixar has announced only *two* non-sequels -- one of 
which, Newt, ended up getting cancelled altogether.

The other one, The Bear and the Bow, was recently renamed Brave (because 
Disney-Pixar is all about the one-word titles now, apparently; see also 
how Rapunzel Unbraided became Tangled), and *that* film has turned out 
somewhat controversial, because it was supposed to be Pixar's first 
"female" movie -- female director, female protagonist -- but the other day 
it was revealed that the director (who is highly regarded within the 
industry) had been sacked and some guy was taking over for her.

So make of all that what you will.

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