Originally Posted By mawnck >>It will be interesting to see how long Wall Street allows Katz to stay at the head of the studio if they have another mediocre performance at the box office.<< I'm-a tellin' ya … How To Train Your Dragon 2 is TERRIFIC. Don't write him off until it comes out.
Originally Posted By leemac ^^ I don't doubt that - Dean deserves the opportunity to step out of Chris' shadow. He is a very talented writer and director. The problem for DWA is that as a standalone company it needs to be creating franchises. I'm not sure Rocky & Bullwinkle and B.O.O. will cut mustard.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>I still can't get over what a wonderful voice Kristen Bell has - she nailed it every time in Frozen.<< Right?! She's not known as being a singer at all, yet she was great. Not just good at singing the notes and rhythms, but also having the right emotion through it all. I was a little surprised and very impressed! >>Possibly - but I still think that releasing it in late July was a mistake - still so much family stuff in theater.<< It was also odd timing for their big marketing push. They had a HUGE campaign leading into and through the Indy 500, since that was the basis of the film. The trouble is, the 500 takes place over Memorial Day weekend, and the marketing machine had fallen through the cracks by the time the film opened ~6 weeks later. If they had done a Memorial Day or early June opening, I think they would have seen a lot more of that push realized
Originally Posted By TheRedhead Kristen Bell was in the Reefer Madness movie musical. Not a great film, but I was floored by how good of a musical theatre type actress she was. I was hoping she'd do something worthy of those talents. Took her long enough. Sheesh.
Originally Posted By Dabob2 I hope Jay Ward gets a good movie done SOMEWHERE in there. The Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right and Boris/Natasha movies were awful, and unless Peabody is way better than the trailers (possible - see: Frozen!) then there's another dud. Pretty sad if George of the Jungle turns out to be the best of the bunch.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I can't believe the legs that this film has. It's been in the top 3 every day since its wide release over Thanksgiving, with the exception of December 20 (when it was 4th) and Christmas (when it was 7th), both of which days had a ton of new releases To date, it's made over $277 million, and continues to be a solid draw; it's still being shown on well over 3,000 screens. Not that I expected it to perform poorly by any means, but I'm pretty surprised by how well it continues to do <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?page=daily&id=frozen2013.htm">http://www.boxofficemojo.com/m...2013.htm</a>
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>good movies = money made<< Somehow I think the message will morph itself into "princess movies = money made", even though there is almost nothing about this movie that follows the typical princess storyline other than the royal lead characters. Sadly, I think that message will probably be missed by the people who make decisions
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance Wasn't there a statement Disney issues around the release time of Tangled. It didn't do terrible, but not nearly as good as they had hoped, so they made the statement that they weren't going to make any "fairytale" or princess movies for a long time?
Originally Posted By basil fan Disney often announces they won't do x, y, and z ever again. All it takes is one hit to make 'em change their mind. Josie and the Pussycats <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.whatsitsgalore.com/glitch/jpglitch.html">http://www.whatsitsgalore.com/...tch.html</a>
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORWEN: But Ferret you're forgetting that princess movies usually DO equal lots of money made. Why fight the facts? I know some ducklings out there don't like princess type movies but they're still very popular so I guess it goes to show that it's worth making them--whether they follow a formula or not.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Only 2 of the last 4 princess movies have really met expectations at the box office. The Princess and the Frog and Brave were both somewhat disappointing, while Tangled and Frozen have done better. I'm sure that the merchandise sales associated with the films helps offset the production costs, but it's not a sure-fire strategy And I'm not opposed to princess films, but it seems like Disney's getting stuck in a rut. Yes, they do them well, but there are so many other genres that they do well too, so I'd like to see more of those. We've seen 4 princess movies between Disney and Pixar since December 2009; in that same time the only other animated features they've done are Toy Story 3, Cars 2, and Wreck-It-Ralph. In comparison, it took 29 feature films spread over 52 years before we had the first 4 Princess (sorry, Witches, Eilonwy doesn't get counted as a capital P Princess...nor does Tiger Lily). For the most part, I like the princess movies, but I don't think they should be made non-stop at the expense of other films; it makes them less special. It's bad enough how many people think that all Disney does is princesses; they shouldn't limit themselves based on people's stereotypes
Originally Posted By Witches of Morva ORDDU: But Disney HAS NOT limited itself to doing only or even mostly princess movies. There are only a handful of the princess movies compared to how many other kinds of movies the company does. It may just SEEM like they do mostly princess movies because those are the one's that tend to be the most successful. ORWEN: So the company must be doing something right after all. I mean, if the only thing they ever did was churn out princess type movies the public would get over them real fast. But there's still enough variety with Disney's movie making to satisfy a lot of different tastes. The princess movies tend to be spread out pretty evenly, too. ORDDU: Aside from that, we can't think of too many more princess type films left to tackle--unless Disney wants to create more original stories with princesses in them. ORWEN: Just wait until Giants comes out. That one sounds a lot like Aladdin to me.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>The princess movies tend to be spread out pretty evenly, too.<< Except in recent years they've been increasingly common. Here's a list of the features with a "Disney Princess", accompanied by the year it came out, and which number film it was 1. 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 12. 1950 Cinderella 16. 1959 Sleeping Beauty 28. 1989 The Little Mermaid 30. 1991 Beauty and the Beast 31. 1992 Aladdin 33. 1995 Pocahontas 36. 1998 Mulan 49. 2009 The Princess and the Frog 50. 2010 Tangled *13. 2012 Brave 53. 2013 Frozen It sure seems to me like there have been a LOT more princess movies in recent years. Yes, there was somewhat of a dry spell from 1998 to 2009, but the balance still swings much more princess-centric The 24 years from 1989-2013 saw 26 Disney animated features, 8 of them featuring Princesses. In the previous 51 years from 1937-1988 there were 27 Disney animated features, 3 of them featuring Princesses. That doesn't seem evenly spread out to me
Originally Posted By planodisney The last film was Wreck it Ralph and the next is Big Hero 6. I don't think they are currently stuck in a rut.
Originally Posted By andyll >>It sure seems to me like there have been a LOT more princess movies in recent years. Since you included Brave: Up, TS3, Cars 2, Monsters U, Winnie the Pooh, Wreck it Ralph 4 princess movies 6 non-princess movies
Originally Posted By FerretAfros ^^You're right that I forgot about Pooh from my list earlier; however, Up came out before PATF, so that's 4 of the last 9 movies featuring princesses (even if you include Up it's 4/10), or slightly less than every-other-film. The first 52 years saw 4/28, or one-in-seven. That's an undeniably huge uptick. Even if we spread it over the last few decades, there's been a very large increase. I'm not against princess movies, but if Disney wants to market them as something special (and keep their "no, we actually do more than just fairy tales" reputation in tact), I think they should produce them much less frequently. Then again, my views on what should be added to the parks are very different than Iger's, so the chance of this happening is extremely slim
Originally Posted By mawnck Since you included Winnie the Pooh, you also have to throw in the Cheapquels. The Princess hordes win in a landslide.
Originally Posted By leemac Frozen is likely to have another record tomorrow - first number 1 soundtrack for WDAS since Pocahontas - very deserved as it the best since Hunchback: <a target="blank" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/frozen-soundtrack-aiming-no-1-668481">http://www.hollywoodreporter.c...1-668481</a>
Originally Posted By leemac <<The Princess and the Frog and Brave were both somewhat disappointing, while Tangled and Frozen have done better.>> WDAS lost money on Tangled - the problem with spending $275m on a feature. Tangled had a decent international gross but only just eeked its way to $200m domestically. PATF was a turkey - awful domestic gross and it didn't really find its feet internationally. I think I've said enough about Brave recently.
