mrpayroll

http://www.thestreet.com/_yahoo/tech...FREE&cm_ite=NA

By George Mannes
Senior Writer

12/7/2004 5:22 PM EST


Well, at least Disney (DIS:NYSE - commentary - research) and Pixar Animation Studios (PIXR:Nasdaq - commentary - research) can agree on something.

The two companies said Tuesday that Cars, the final original film in their lapsing, multiyear production/distribution pact, would be released in June 2006 rather than in late 2005, as previously planned.

The move means that Pixar, the highly regarded computer animation studio behind such blockbusters as Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, will have a year-and-a-half gap until its next release, rather than the usual one-year gap that the company has usually has.

Pixar's shares, which started climbing in August in anticipation of the release of The Incredibles early last month, fell $1.13 to $91.06 in regular trading Tuesday, then dropped $3.45 in after-hours action following the release date's change.

"Cars longs to be a summer movie," Pixar CEO Steve Jobs said in a statement. "We plan to finish Cars on its original schedule, and look forward to Cars and our future films benefiting by summer theatrical releases and holiday DVD releases."

Pixar has released most of its movies in the fall, but on the company's earnings call Nov. 11, Jobs raised the possibility that the company might start releasing its movies in the summer.

In discussing the possible shift, Jobs compared the performance of Finding Nemo, which was a summer release, with that of Monsters Inc., which was released in the holiday season. Most of Finding Nemo's relatively better box-office revenue, said Jobs, stemmed from the greater midweek attendance enabled by releasing the movie at a time when many children didn't have to be in school.

At the time, Jobs wouldn't say whether Cars was under consideration for a release-date shift.


I wonder if this is the real reason for the delay!

Chris

Rogue588

By then, Eisner should be out. Meaning there's still hope...

majorjoe23

This message has been approved by the Department of Redundancy Department.

Jepthah

I smell 'tweaking' in the works. Perhaps Pixar is concerned about this one. The teaser seems to have underwhelmed a lot of people.

Deftones

Yeah, it doesn't look that interesting. But, moving it to summer where there is more competition doesn't exactly make sense following that line of reasoning. Who knows.

jaeufraser

Well, their highest grossing movie was in the summer, so that definately might have something to do with it. Incredibles opened just as strong with just as good word of mouth and is going to fall short by a large amount of what Nemo made. That might be a reason.

Michael Corvin

Since when does Pixar release a movie every year? They've done it twice, I would hardly call that an annual thing.

Toy Story: 95
A Bugs Life: 98
Toy Story 2: 99
Monsters Inc: 01
Finding Nemo: 03
Incredibles: 04
Cars: 06

Jay G.

Not only that, but the gap between Finding Nemo and The Incredibles was a year and a half as well, so they've actually only done it once.

MasterofDVD

I hope this is the case. I really enjoy Pixar and the work they do. Even their weaker films are better than everything else out there. I loved all their stuff up till Finding Nemo but I still bought it because it had enough good parts to make it worth 20.00 or so. Cars looks very weak to me and I can't see anything glimmer of hope right now that would make me want to see it or own it. I hope they can make me eat my words.

DRG

Good news! This gives DreamWorks some extra time to finish Automobile Story.

fumanstan

dcprules

I really don't think this is that good of an idea. The main reason why they want to do this move is to make more money, and while Finding Nemo did make more money than Incredibles will likely, there was very little family film competition than. Come on...Nemo opened up against flicks like Bruce Almighty and The Italian Job. I really like seeing Pixar films around Thanksgiving in lieu of the summer. Plus, Incredibles is doing incredible with all of the other animated competition.

While summer openings sometime do better, that is not always the case. Both of the Harry Potter films that opened around Thanksgiving outperformed the one that opened in the summer. I think they should just keep the release date where it's at, but what do I know.

TomOpus

Gee... look what movie got moved to Nov 2005

Chicken Little

Disney's website still shows it at Summer of 2005 but maybe it was a domino effect.

davejt1

I thought the same thing when I saw the initial teasers for both Finding Nemo and The Incredibles (and again, the one for Cars didn't seem overly exciting). Back when Nemo was being made, I remember that some of the earlier word-of-mouth reports were rather critical, saying that the story was uninteresting and some predicted that it might be Pixar's first flop. Also, when The Incredibles was being made, there were many concerns over how the "human people" would look, since they were now the focus of a Pixar film - the people didn't look quite right (not as realistic? I don't know what word I'm looking for here) in Toy Story and TS2 when compared with the toys themselves.

Fortunately, Pixar has made me eat my words twice already with those two - and I'm guessing that Cars will probably be serving #3 for me.

Iron_Giant

2005 or 2006, does not matter to me. I may go see the movie because I like Pixar films, but it does not thrill me like The I's did.