Originally Posted By phruby It's funny how a lot of Disney sites have completely ignored this new CG movie from Lucasfilm. Disney is releasing it under Touchstone and was made by Lucasfilm Animation Singapore and ILM. I guess this one was far enough into production so Disney couldn't kill it during the recent merger. It kind of reminds me of the outsource CG movies Disney distributed to show they don't need Pixar before buy them. Anyone care about this movie? Some say its the sequel to Frozen. Personally I see more Jar Jar in it then anything.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros I know next to nothing about it, but between releasing it under the Touchstone banner and sticking it in January, they really don't seem to have much confidence in it. The voice cast listed on Wikipedia seems pretty decent, but that's hardly a gage of success
Originally Posted By dagobert Until now there are no informations if this movies is coming to Europe. I don't think that I'm going to watch it. I'm not sure if Disney is going to lose a lot of money with that movie. The movie was already in production years before Disney purchased Lucasfilm. So most of the money spent on the movie came from George Lucas himself.
Originally Posted By dagobert >>>The Wild<<< In my opinion this movie wasn't so bad. I liked it better than Madagascar, which was very similar to that movie. I even own it on DVD.
Originally Posted By utahjosh To be fair, my wife's family loves The Wild. Nigel the Koala is one of their favorite characters.
Originally Posted By dagobert I haven't seen the movie for a long time now, so I don't know if I still like it. However I enjoyed the movie in the cinema and got the DVD through Disney Movies & More programm.
Originally Posted By CuriousConstance I bought the second copy of the DVD. My kids always liked it, but it was never one of my favorites. That movie doesn't feel Disney at all to me. Too much like Madagascar, which I don't like at all.
Originally Posted By leemac The reviews have been pretty bad so I presume this will sink at the box office this weekend. I do find it amusing that the studio thinks that "from the mind of George Lucas" will sell tickets. His recent track record has been pretty dismal! The weird thing about this movie is that he actually staffed it up right - the writers were David Berenbaum (Elf - although he did also write The Haunted Mansion) and Irene Mecchi (one of the best animated screenwriters of all time with The Lion King, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules and Fantasia 2000 under her belt - also Brave but everyone deserves one miss) and Gary Rydstrom directed (he is a sound engineer by trade but directed Lifted for Pixar and was then unceremoniously dumped off his directorial debut from the studio). Just goes to show that Lucas can't conceive or write squat.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros >>...and Fantasia 2000...<< This may be a silly question, but how much screenwriting went into that one? Obviously each segment had a plot, but I would imagine that they were done more in the storyboard fashion than by a traditional writer. I've always found the celebrity introductions from F2K to be cringeworthy, so hopefully that isn't what she contributed
Originally Posted By skinnerbox Big difference between directing a short and a feature, like running the 100 yard dash vs the Iron Man Triathalon. That being said, I wonder if this will finally kill his aspirations of directing animation? Not too many folks get to sit in the big chair again after collosal failures such as this.
Originally Posted By phruby From Box office Mojo: George Lucas' Strange Magic opened to an estimated $5.53 million this weekend, which is one of the worst debuts ever for a movie playing at over 3,000 locations. It's essentially in the same range as past animated bombs like Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs Evil, Valiant, Everyone's Hero and Happily N'Ever After. Strange Magic's audience was 56 percent female and 38 percent under the age of 13. It's unlikely that Disney is able to keep these screens after the second week, which means the movie is almost guaranteed to finish below $15 million.
Originally Posted By FerretAfros Yikes! That's even worse than I was expecting! Of the films listed, the only one I even remember existing is Valliant, and that's solely because of Disney's involvement in its distribution. This may make John Carter or Mars Needs Moms look like a relatively modest success in comparison...
Originally Posted By danyoung I saw it this past weekend. I went in knowing practically nothing about it, but I really enjoyed it. The animation was stunning - they must have used some type of motion capture, as the lip movements and facial expressions were perfect. It was kind of a strange (no pun intended) concept, with the characters singing pop songs from the 60's and 70's. But for me it worked nicely.
