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Holy smoke. Now Pixar, the most successful animation studio of the past decade-plus (six feature films, around a dozen short animations, eighteen Academy Awards, and a gross of ~$2.8 billion from their six movies), is part of one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.

This could have some interesting aftereffects. Now Steve Jobs (CEO of both Apple and Pixar) is the plurality shareholder in Disney, Pixar's capital resources are nearly limitless, and Disney has a hand in controlling the two most influential animation studios in the world (arguably, that is - Disney owns the global distribution rights and video sale rights to most of Studio Ghibli's movies).

So what do y'alls think? Good thing? Bad thing? Don't care?

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I'll say here what I said in another forum when I heard.

"Their quest stands upon the edge of knife."

Jobs seems to know his place when it comes to animation, which is to butt the f*ck out, and Pixar has become the most succesful cg animated studio in history because of it. Disney has had a bad track record of being out of touch with contemporary storytelling for quite a while now and with any luck, they'll realize that letting Pixar work its magic on its own will net them more earnings. The problem I see is that they'll try to franchise Pixar flicks and characters and end up trying to interfere with the creative and artistic processes in order to capotolize on whatever it is they'll try to capotolize on.

Another thought occurs to me that they could be trying to re-start Disney. They've pretty much shut down the entirety of their traditional animation studios at home and abroad, and so far, they're fair ways behind Pixar and Dreamworks in terms of quality of their 3d product. They might end up using the aquisition in order to grab the production template Pixar uses and apply it to Disney's fledgling in-house 3d studio. Doing that, they have a chance of creating new franchises that can be sole properties of Disney. Then they either drop Pixar or merge it with the in-house studio.

This post has been edited by Narratorway on 23rd January 2006 08:27

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For $7 Billion, I don't blame 'em for selling, I would. Let's just hope this doesn't stop more brilliant Pixar movies coming out in the future.

If it does stop brilliant movies from Pixar, then that will give Dreamworks less reason to make movies as good as Shrek and we will get rubbish like Sharktale... brr... and I won't be too happy.

Cross your fingers!

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'Let that be a lesson to all oppressive vegetable sellers.'

I heard about this this morning on NPR.

Disney is now the official Evil Empire of the animation world.

This post has been edited by Hamedo on 23rd January 2006 19:33

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Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.

~Pacifist Badge, 1978

I thought Pixar was going off to some other company in a few years. But as long as they keep makeing good animation, I really don't care much.

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Dead Winter. A nice comic.

Considering some of the not-even-close-to-being-par stuff that Disney's been manufacturing (that's right -- soulless is the appropriate adjective) lately, I'd hope that Pixar wouldn't become Disney, Part II and spin out the same nonsense. Pixar's got some pretty good titles under its belt, but that worry's looming on the horizon.

Please, O Please, don't make anything like a Bambi sequel.

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Quote (Shotgunnova @ 29th January 2006 09:56)

Considering some of the not-even-close-to-being-par stuff that Disney's been manufacturing (that's right -- soulless is the appropriate adjective) lately, I'd hope that Pixar wouldn't become Disney, Part II and spin out the same nonsense. Pixar's got some pretty good titles under its belt, but that worry's looming on the horizon.

Please, O Please, don't make anything like a Bambi sequel.

I think that while this is a valid concern, it's a ways off from being something that should be at the front of our minds. The technology required to create a Pixar film, while obviously cheaper now than ten years ago, still requires a good amount of time, effort and money to get off the ground. The recent traditional animated fare from Disney is taking advantage of a leveling out in the market to produce the rash of direct-to-home sequels; while Disney could well ask Pixar to do the same, I doubt that economically that would really work out in Disney's favor in the long run.

Of course, Disney WILL ask.

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"To create something great, you need the means to make a lot of really bad crap." - Kevin Kelly

Why aren't you shopping AmaCoN?

Gotta bit of an update about the whole 'Dixar' deal. It seems part of the deal is that along with Jobs getting the majority of Disney's shares, Lasseter is going to become the head honcho of all the animation departments and Imagineering I believe. The other thing about the deal is that Pixar gets to keep it's name and location. They aint moving, which is awesome for me because that means I only have a two hour drive to get over there and creepily hang around the front gate of the studio, instead of having to go all the way down to LA.

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I dunno a whole lot about the deal, pretty much just what I've read here and saw on some random misc. site I can't remember the name of for the life of me. Therefore my short, uneducated opinion on this is that it'll most likely be fine. Pixar and Disney have had successful joint works in the past (such as Toystory, which really helped to get Pixar off the ground) so this only seems to be the logical progression of an already mutually beneficial relationship. My thoughts on the manner are that there's going to be a short disruption in balance between the main powers, causing a few flops then things'll most likely get better again as they refind their balance. That is, if Pixar's reputation isn't totally smeared in the process, which while unlikely, is possible. In short, that means I predict bad immediate effects but that it'll be good thing in the long run. The only real way to tell is to wait 'n see I suppose. At any rate, it's a rather interesting acquisition to say the least.

*Goes to read the article Laszlow linked* So I'm a little backwards today. So sue me! XP


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Role reversal at its finest.

Quote (Narratorway @ 23rd January 2006 03:27)

Disney has had a bad track record of being out of touch with contemporary storytelling for quite a while now

How long is awhile?

Emporer's New Groove(2000)
Finding Nemo(2003)

Just off the top of my head...

Though I guess the latter is a Pixar film.

This post has been edited by The Ancient on 31st January 2006 16:02

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"

Emperor and Lilo are the only two movies that really come to mind that really have any particular bite to them since Aladdin. Emperor is only the way it is because the bloated epic they originally envisioned fell through and they had to make Groove at the very last minute using a completely different director, producer and I think even studio (I don't remember seeing Glen, Andreas or any of the other big names in the behind the scenes supplements of my DVD).

If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but from what I've heard, the reason Lilo was as good as it got to be was because there wasn't as much money poured into it compared to the usual big budget Disney flick so there wasn't as much pressure from executives to do bad tweaking. Treasure planet was supposed to be the real hit that year, 150 mil was put into it, but it tanked. That's what I was talking about. It's a very soft film, and what we've expected and got tired of from Disney.

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I actually agree with what you are saying. Disney ain't what it used to be. I really really liked Emporer's New Groove though. They really benefited from whatever train wreck allowed that to happen.

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"That Light has bestowed upon me the greatest black magic!"

I liked ENG alot, but it definitely felt more like a better-than-usual Warner Brothers animated flick than what Disney used to put up (I liked Tarzan and Mulan, but didn't like Treasure Planet, Atlantis, or Lilo and Stitch - the last true masterpiece that Disney produced was The Lion King, which I think is probably based off of an old Tezuka anime).

In any case, I believe that the best animated films of recent years have all been either Dreamworks, Pixar, or Ghibli, that is if you cound Aardman as Dreamworks and consider that Bluth Studios died out some time after making Anastasia (which is better than almost every Disney film of the past twenty years, IMO). Since Disney's had some down years recently animation-wise (why so many sequels to older movies?), I think that it was a brilliant idea for them to get the most moneymaking studio in the business on their side. They'd be fools to want creative control, and they aren't stupid enough to interfere with Pixar's doings. I think that this merger shouldn't affect Pixar at all, other than maybe increasing their resources. Their next films are supposedly Cars, Ratatouille, and Toy Story 3, so we'll have to wait and see.

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this is a blog mostly about comics and videogames
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