Chicken Little: success or death!
Filed under: Animation, Comedy, New Releases, Disney, RumorMonger, Newsstand
With each day that passes, it seems as if the importance of Chicken Little to
Disney rises; at this point the pressure is such that one expects the
studio to get swallowed up by the earth if the movie isn't a massive
success. As has been discussed here, it's Disney's first foray
into totally computer-generated animation - not only does the company
need to prove to Pixar (with whom they are once again in negotiations)
that they can compete in the animation field, but they also need to
bounce back from the animated disasters that were Home on the Range and Treasure Planet. (The fact that 95% of the population reads those
titles and says "Wait, what?" is a sign of just how magnificently they
failed.) In an early effort to expand Chicken Little's potential audience (Disney felt that part of the problem with Home on the Range and Treasure Planet was their limited appeal - and no, they don't mean because they were bad), the script was revised to change the main character from "an overreacting, doom-and-gloomy girl chicken repairing her relationship with her dad" to a manic little boy who is dealing with both his dad and an alien invasion. Disney apparently feared that only little girls would see a movie based on that early draft, while boys, girls, dads, and aliens will, hopefully, be desperate to see the film's final version. In addition, Chicken Little has become something of a test for a new, more sophisticated 3D technique. While big profits for the 3D version will surely lead other companies to rush their own 3D cartoons into production, failure won't save us entirely from those damn glasses, as several other 3D films are already in the works.
All of this is just a lot of details that mean one thing: Disney and all of the rest of Hollywood will be desperately awaiting next weekend's early box office reports.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
11-02-2005 @ 7:08PM
Jason Anderson said...
In my opinion, The Emporor's New Groove was one of their last really good cartoons in any form.
I kinda hope Chicken fails so they do go back to talk to Pixar. Eisner was a jerk. Jobs would do good to join Disney with the new guy. As much as I'd like to see Disney fall and Pixar rise, they could both benefit from staying together.
Reply
11-01-2005 @ 12:53PM
Finished.Law.School said...
Disney is the General Motors of the film world...
Reply
11-01-2005 @ 10:50PM
Allan Silliphant said...
It is pretty much of a "no Brainer" to those who saw
"Polar Epress" in 3D IMAX that 3D is almost as
much a natural part of CGI animation as color or sound. Perhaps not quite as important as those but at least 30% of the value added by those attributes. If
you didn't see "Polar Express" this would sound nuts... I know. The reason is that so called "3D
animation", such as Pixar and Dreamworks have been
so successfully dishing up, is mearly created with
3D math computation, you don't see it in 3D stereo.
But it is actually easy, very very easy to render a
3D stereoscopic version of any CGI animation while it
exists as complete production files. If you dump the files to clear drive space, you throw away something that can cost millions to re-create. Unless "Chicken
Little" is a profound turn off in digital 3D, it is
very likely that all future animation films will be
rendered both ways, and held for future improvement of 3D technology. Insurance of that kind might only cost a few hundred thousand dollars. Think, if
"Snow White" or " Pinochio " had been released in only
Black and White when they first came out. Shouldn't
Disney have saved the color information for a few years, so that Technicolor would eventually be used for a future release. Fortunately, Technicolor was
ready to go when those early color annimation features
first opened. In those days any theater could run
a Technicolor print. With digital 3D, only theaters
with expensive 2K digital projectors can run this
kind of 3D. The theaters are waiting for 3K or even
4K to be available...very much cheaper,,,before lots of theaters can run digital 3D. In the meantime, the
only practical alternative is upgrade the existing film projectors to the level of 4K. This can be done for just a few thousand dollars by installing a
mechanical modification kit. The system is called
CINE160 and makes the image 1.6 times as big, while still using regular 35mm film stock. This bigger film area, (6 perfs per frame)only increses the cost of the prints moderately. Almost any existing projector can be retrofitted to this standard by going in for service. Thousands of these super machines could be showing 3D all over the world with 18 months...It's
not such a wild idea...really...since 3D is coming on
so strong at this point, and only the digital projection is the running up the cost so radically!
Reply
10-30-2005 @ 10:04PM
Christopher Campbell said...
I saw a disturbing ad for McDonald's the other night featuring Chicken Little, the pig character and others sitting down for some tasty carnivory. Sick.
Reply