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I don't understand. The only movies Disney have made in VERY WIDE Widescreen are:

1) The Lady and the Tramp (1956) CinemaScope
2) Sleeping Beauty (1959) Super Technirama 70
3) The Black Cauldron (1985) (Super Technirama 70?)
4) Atlantis: The Lost Empire (2001) (I don't know!)

Now these sort of widescreens are associated with grandeur and prestigious film-making. In fact, most ordinary comedy movies are not shot in these ratios. They would still be WideScreen, but not as wide.

Almost all films, however, are shot in these wide formats listed above. Then why wasn't The Lion King shot in those formats?

Surely it was a prestigious film of high calibre which deserved a wide ratio.

This also applies to Pixar films. Finding Nemo wasn't very wide. The Incredibles was wider.

My cerebral cortex is getting confused. (I studied my biology today).

For the Pixar films, A Bug's Life and The Incredibles were both in the 2.35:1 format, while everything else was around 1.77:1 or so.

As for why The Lion King wasn't a 2.35:1 film...I guess because Disney was still hurting from their last 2:35 film (The Black Cauldron). Or perhaps it was the directors' and artists' intentions to shoot it in 1.66:1 (to be matted in theaters at 1.85:1.

For Lady and the Tramp, it could easily have been done in Academy ratio (and they did animate it in Academy as well), I think Disney was simply testing the widescreen format with that film, while Sleeping Beauty, in its artistic grandeur, demanded a wide frame.

The Black Cauldron and Atlantis are both adventure films, which probably is the reason they went wide (though Treasure Planet was given a 1.66:1 AR). I personally would have loved to have also seen Tarzan or even Beauty and the Beast in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

Escapay

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Well Julian, it's simply an artistic choice. Just like a painter might choose a different size and shape for each canvas, filmmakers envision each project differently and choose a ratio that they believe suits the project. It doesn't have to be an "epic" to be wide. Many quiet comedies are shot wide: "Tootsie" "Bridget Jones' Diary" "My Best Friend's Wedding" and many blockbuster action pics are shot standard "Aliens" "Jurassic Park" "Spider-man"

Don't forget Brother Bear!

Disney has made many more (live action) movies in cinemascope and similar formats, but I guess you're thinking only of the classical animated features.

Just as Poppins#1 says, today it's mainly an artistic choice. There were other considerations in the 1950's, though, when widescreen formats were new. Some studios had committed to their own formats. Paramount had VistaVision, Fox had Cinemascope etc. If you're interested in the history and development of widescreen cinema, I suggest you take a look at this excellent site that explains it all (or most of it) :
http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/

I think the reason for few scope films in animation as because they may cost quite a bit. I read somewhere that animating in a scope format can up the costs of a film by 40% or so. That may be the reason why the films between The Black Cauldron and Atlantis were filmed in a 1:66:1 ratio to be matted to 1:85:1 or so; the animators may have used it to be more economical whilst retaining some feel of cinematic-ness at the same time, and even when Disney animation wasn't struggling as much, they kept on using the ratio as they were used to it by that point.

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Very true. In the bonus material on the Atlantis 2-disc set, they talked about how the studio originally said no when they wanted to shoot in 2.35:1 because of the added expense, but they convinced the studio they could do it with NO added expense, because they argued that instead of making the drawings 40% wider, they would simply make them 40% less tall!! No joke!

Yes. I remember that Walt explained (in some extra featurette for The Sleeping Beauty) how it takes a lot more time to paint a background for a widescreen movie than for a regular one (academy ratio). I cannot check that right now because I just moved and all my 600+ DVDs are in huge boxes.

Of course, CGI may make it easier to animate in widescreen as well.

Don't forget that Home on the Range also had a short episode in CinemaScope (as a reference to Segio Leone's spaghetti westerns).

My collection.