cruzness

From USA Today
http://www.usatoday.com/money/media/...ey-alamo_x.htm


Disney hopes profit arrives with guns blazing
By Michael McCarthy, USA TODAY
Walt Disney Co. (DIS) is hoping enough viewers remember The Alamo to make the $98 million film a box office victory.

Billy Bob Thorton, left, stars as Davy Crockett in The Alamo.
Deana Newcomb, Buena Vista Pictures via AP

A flop could turn up the heat on Disney management, which is simultaneously fending off a hostile bid from cable giant Comcast and an investor revolt against CEO Michael Eisner.

There's a lot riding on the latest big-screen version of the 1836 battle, which opens today. The motion picture unit has been driving Disney's growth and profit. Buena Vista Pictures became the first studio to collect more than $3 billion in global box office last year, thanks to smashes such as Finding Nemo and Pirates of the Caribbean and surprise hits such as Bringing Down the House, which boosted returns early in the year.

But Disney's last three flicks this year —Home on the Range, Hidalgo and The Ladykillers — have disappointed so far. Disney's box office from its six releases through April 4 totaled $197.2 million vs. $285.9 million for the five pictures out in the same period last year, according to Exhibitor Relations, a Los Angeles-based box office tracker.

Says President Paul Dergarabedian: "Big-budget epics are always a risk. One film like Bringing Down the House can make a huge difference."

With Eisner promising Wall Street 30% earnings growth for the current fiscal year and double-digit growth through 2007, the pressure is on at all levels of the company. Financial analysts will be closely watching the company's release of its second-quarter earnings next month.

"If Alamo bombs, it will be difficult for them to keep up their earnings momentum. A lot of the 30% growth they're talking about is coming from filmed entertainment," warns analyst Paul Kim of Tradition Asiel Securities. "But to say a flop would be another nail in Eisner's coffin is going way too far."

Eisner will be on the spot, however, later this month as Disney's board of directors gathers to discuss succession planning. The 62-year-old CEO was stripped of his chairman's post after 43% of shareholders voted against his re-election to the board at Disney's March 3 annual meeting. Eisner's current deal expires in September 2006. And Disney and Eisner are still smarting from the decision by Steve Jobs of Pixar Animation Studios to end their lucrative partnership and seek a new distributor.

Disney's darker, more realistic version of the Alamo battle opens to mixed critical reviews after a long and winding road to the big screen. Ron Howard dropped out of the director's chair after Disney refused to pay him a big fee. Native Texan John Lee Hancock then took over the project. Disney postponed the scheduled opening last fall, saying Hancock needed more time in the editing room.

But Dennis Rice, Buena Vista's publicity chief, says he "finds it amusing" that The Alamo is often described as "financially troubled."

"It came as close to budget as any other movie we have on our current slate," he says. "By today's standards, it's a fairly affordable production given the slate of movies coming out this summer and their production budgets."

The studio is also confident it will make money on the film, not only through domestic ticket sales but foreign box office and DVD sales and rentals. "This company is so strong from so many operating divisions that the success of the company is never predicated on one film. Certainly not this film, that I believe will perform well," Rice says.

Besides The Alamo, Disney has other potential film blockbusters in the pipeline for 2004, including King Arthur and The Village by M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense and Signs. One of the two remaining films from Pixar under the current contract —The Incredibles— is due in November




It seems Eisner's days could be numbered. I also saw CNN reporting that 'Home On the Range' will be Disney's last 2D animated film. And I heard a report last night (on Fox news I think) that Steve Jobs said that Pixar would consider renegotiating their deal with Disney if Eisner was gone. How long till He's gone?

Trigger

Oh man - 98 million bucks it cost to make that film? I could've told them at the treatment stage that this film wouldn't do half that in the box office. The Village might keep them afloat, but I'd have to see a trailer or synopsis first before making that assumption. The Incredibles will probably be a success.

Eisner will be gone eventually... but things are just gonna keep getting worse before they get better. It's like everyone's in 3rd grade and they've started an 'I hate Michael Eisner' club, but Eisner doesn't know about it.

Trigger

And didn't they say that about their last two 2d films... that they would be the last? They can say it all they want, but I'd bet they keep putting em out.

Dr. DVD

Man, if I had known going to see Alamo would help Eisner stay in his job I wouldn't have gone.

moocher

This might be a bigger driver than the disaster that is The Alamo. There are so many reasons to get rid of Eisner, how does he manage to stick around?

Jackskeleton

the fact that it's "The Alamo" should have kept you out of the theater alone.

cruzness

http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Movi...eut/index.html

The end of a Disney animation era?
'Home on the Range' may be last hand-drawn film
Wednesday, April 7, 2004 Posted: 1:46 PM EDT (1746 GMT)



"Home on the Range," with the voices of Roseanne Barr, Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly, debuted at No. 4 in the weekend box office.

LOS ANGELES, California (Reuters) -- When Walt Disney Co's animated film "Home on the Range" debuted on Friday, it may have been the end of an era for hand-drawn cartoon features as the company that all but created the art form moves to computer images.

Disney's film studio is under pressure in its animation division, having cut back staff and ended a lucrative partnership with Pixar Animation Studios Inc., which established new computer-animated movies like the $850 million global box office hit "Finding Nemo."

"Range," a comedy about a wiseacre cow voiced by Roseanne Barr who tries to save her farm, is the last hand-painted cartoon on Disney's current film slate, studio chief Dick Cook said in a recent interview. Moreover, most of the industry is moving in the direction of computer animation.

"It is where things are going," Cook told Reuters.

Computer animation, often called 3-D, is more than drawing with a computer pen. In some ways it is like puppetry, since designers build a character that they then manipulate with commands that work like digital strings. They can add as many layers of complexity as they want, so that a character could be built with one smile or 100, for instance.

Mickey Mouse has already made the jump to computer graphics and has a computer-animated holiday video in the works. Still, the studio chief stands behind "Range," calling it a "kick" and arguing hand-drawn cartoons are not yet dead in Hollywood.

"I don't think it is the end of an era. I think hand-drawn animation will continue in one form or another," he said.

Box office decline

Disney old-style animated films were at a peak in the early '90s, with "The Lion King," "Aladdin," and the Oscar-nominated "Beauty and the Beast" (above) ...
But statements like Cook's have been viewed by industry watchers as an attempt to downplay the importance of "Range" to Disney, in particular, and the phasing out of Disney-style animation in favor of computer-generated movies like "Nemo," DreamWorks' "Shrek" or Twentieth Century Fox's "Ice Age."

In fact, most of Disney's recent hand-drawn animated films, with the exception of 2002's "Lilo & Stitch," have been only moderately successful at best. Major 2002 flop "Treasure Planet" led the company to reduce its quarterly earnings.

"Range" is said by industry watchers to have cost Disney between $80 million and $100 million.

The movie debuts as Disney Chief Executive Michael Eisner battles an investor rebellion, and it follows the announced end of a relationship between Disney and Pixar that has yielded five smash movies with more than $2.5 billion in ticket sales.

The demise of the Pixar deal has only boosted pressure on Disney's animators to crank out a hit.


... but computer-animated films, such as "Toy Story 2" (above), have had more recent success.
Cook did say video games had set tastes of the current and previous generation of kids, and next year Disney's animation department will release computer-animated feature, "Chicken Little," which tells the story of the chick who thought the sky was falling on the day after she was proved wrong.

"Most animators that are in the business are pretty committed to digital now, and if not they are probably headed to the next hall, which is story boarding," said one-time Disney animator Mark Pudleiner, who worked on "Range."

Cutting back
Disney has slashed its animation work force by about two-thirds since 1997, which created a lot of uncertainty at the company, said Peter de Seve, an animator and character designer who worked on "Treasure Planet" and led the team that designed characters for Fox's "Ice Age."

The studio closed its Florida-based animation unit in January. The closing played a role in Roy Disney's recent challenge to Eisner at the company's shareholders' meeting, held last month in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Disney, Walt Disney's nephew, was the one-time chair of the studio's animation department.


Disney animation is iconic. Disney classics include "Bambi," "101 Dalmatians" and "Fantasia" (above).
"The drain of talent over the past several years from the company's feature animation department in Orlando, Burbank, Paris and Tokyo has been absolutely gut-wrenching," Roy Disney said in a statement at the time.

Many of the fired animators have formed their own company, Legacy Animation Studios, and intend to specialize in traditional hand-drawn animation.

De Seve said that Disney was making creative decisions in a corporate manner, watering down the artistic process.

"There is such an aim for the bottom line and so much census-taking and poll-taking that the stories get diluted," he said.

But, he added, the word is that "Chicken Little" looks good.



Holy Crap $80-100 million cost for 'Home on the Range' WOW I know animated films can get expensive but that sounds rediculous.

Goldberg74

Let me help you out Trigger: Trailer for "The Village"

Trigger

Looks cool to me, but I don't know if it has "box office hit" written on it. We'll see.

Wazootyman

It does have "From Director M. Night Shymalan" written all over it, which pretty much gurantees people to be there (yeah, Unbreakable didn't do too well, but it was a unique movie that many people disliked. Shymalan's name alone is why it opened HUGE though, and it made money)

Landoversnoop

I thought the trailer was pretty sweet. You definitely see the Shyamalan in it. That's for sure. I'll be anxious to see this one....along with the upcoming Sci-Fi documentary about him.

Giles

The problem with "Home of the Range" was that no one was really much trying here. To say that traditional hand drawn animation is failing is just an excuse for a limp predictable storyline and standard cliched humour. Pixar has always stated the script and story always comes first, "Ranges" was a feeble and very unscessful attempt.