Current Slate of WDAS

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DisneyAnimation88
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Post by DisneyAnimation88 »

Julian Carter wrote:So, what is the current slate at WDAS? The first post in this thread is a little old
According to the most recent TAG blog that Sotiris posts on here, Wreck-It Ralph is well into production but nothing seems to be officially greenlit to follow it. King of the Elves, Snow Queen/Frozen and an unknown Clements & Musker film seem to be in some stage of development and a few months ago it was rumoured KOTE would be the next film after Wreck-It Ralph.
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Sotiris
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Post by Sotiris »

Julian Carter wrote:So, what is the current slate at WDAS? The first post in this thread is a little old.
I've just updated the first page! Check it out!
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Post by Jules »

Thank you for your replies, Sotiris and DisneyAnimation88! :)

I see ... so the previously untitled Chris Buck film was in fact Frozen?
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Post by Sotiris »

Julian Carter wrote:I see ... so the previously untitled Chris Buck film was in fact Frozen?
After the hand-drawn Snow Queen was shelved, Chris Buck was to direct an adaptation of Jack and the Beanstalk but because of Warner Bros' own adaptation of the tale Jack: The Giant Killer those plans were cancelled. Then when the Snow Queen was revived as a CG project he went back to helm the film.
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Sotiris
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Post by Sotiris »

Steve Hulett wrote:There are multiple fairy tales in development at Disney.
Steve Hulett wrote:The way development of animated features works: Creators dream up multiple projects and storylines. Mr. Lasseter looks at same, selects one of the projects/storylines for further development, and off everyone goes. Writers come aboard, scripts are written, and table reads of those scripts (with Mr. Lasseter in attendance) take place. Then, if Mr. Lasseter's reaction is "thumbs up," further development happens (sequence boards, story reels, more character designs, etc.) And the reels either lead to a production greenlight or not.
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... isney.html
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Post by AlasmineLover:) »

I hate how the "darker" projects are being scratched. The Hunchback of Notre Dame mentioned sexual desire and wasn't scrapped. What has changed since 1996? I wish we had more art like it. Things can be dark in a subtle way. Anyway, I'd hate to get off-topic. I personally hope to see a hand drawn film soon. I'm not a big fan of computer animation. Oh, and hi. I'm new. :)
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Post by Super Aurora »

AlasmineLover:) wrote:I hate how the "darker" projects are being scratched. I wish we had more art like it. Things can be dark in a subtle way.
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Post by Jules »

AlasmineLover:) wrote:I hate how the "darker" projects are being scratched.
Same here. I find Lasseter's decisions to be very conservative. I don't see him ever greenlighting something like Hunchback.
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Post by qindarka »

AlasmineLover:) wrote:I hate how the "darker" projects are being scratched. The Hunchback of Notre Dame mentioned sexual desire and wasn't scrapped. What has changed since 1996? I wish we had more art like it. Things can be dark in a subtle way. Anyway, I'd hate to get off-topic. I personally hope to see a hand drawn film soon. I'm not a big fan of computer animation. Oh, and hi. I'm new. :)
What darker projects have been scrapped? Was King of the Elves particularly dark?
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Post by AlasmineLover:) »

What darker projects have been scrapped? Was King of the Elves particularly dark?[/quote]

Mort was. I have no wish to scare children, but it's like the studio has no mind of its own. They are so scared about the parents revolting. It's not like any movie would explain the explicit to your child. The children would not understand.
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Post by estefan »

The reason Mort was scrapped was not because of fear of darkness, but because the film rights were too expensive (as the rights-owners wanted Disney to buy the entire series and not just the one book).
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Post by Disney's Divinity »

I was going to say that.

Still, I doubt they would greenlight something like Hunchback again, tbh. Especially not right now. I mean, sure, Tangled was a hit, but it's not always guaranteed the next films will be and it wasn't very long ago they really were in the gutter.
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Post by DisneyAnimation88 »

Disney's Divinity wrote:Still, I doubt they would greenlight something like Hunchback again, tbh.
Agreed. With the early buzz that Wreck-It Ralph is generating, let's hope that the finished film lives up to expectations and is a commercial success. If it is, perhaps Disney will be encouraged to go outside the box a little more in their animated films and experiment in different themes and stories. If it doesn't then it wouldn't surprise me to see Disney stick predominantly to fairytales, especially when Tangled's box office gross was so good and the film's merchandise seems to have been very successful.
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Post by Sotiris »

Steve Hulett wrote:While I was running around, a veteran staffer told me a about projects in various stages of work.

"There's Big Hero Six and Frozen going into production, and then three projects after that. One of them Ron and John's feature, and two more. Nobody knows what order they'll be in, John Lasseter hasn't decided. But we've got more features in development. Three or four more beyond those three..."
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... o-hat.html
Steve Hulett wrote:After a month away, yesterday I was back in the Walt Disney Animation Studios' hat building on picturesque Riverside Drive.

Some of the things happening:

• John Lasseter was down from the north country, reviewing sequences for the next feature, some of the shorts that are in work, and various other projects.

• Some of the hand-drawn crew are working on a real interesting short* that will (I'm told) be out with Frozen next year.

• Frozen hasn't gotten into high gear yet. Story work is still being done and animation hasn't yet shifted into third gear. (So it's gonna have the same petal-to-the-metal production schedule that Ralph did.)

• Staffers tell me the studio is rejiggering its production pipeline.

As I write, Wreck-It Ralph charging along at the box office, with a domestic cume of $123.7 million as of Monday. Reviews have been strong, and as Den of Geek's Brett Nachman relates:

[Ralph] is the type of movie that begs for a sequel, and even more, a theme park attraction. Disney should be dreaming of all of the possibilities in how they can utilize these characters.

Strange thing. Scuttlebutt in and around the hat is that there will be a sequel. Makes sense to me, given the feature's on-going results.

* Something old and something new. And I'm keeping my yap shut about it. So don't ask.
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... d-hat.html
Steve Hulett wrote:There are several [projects] lined up on the tarmac. Big Hero Six is still deep in story. Mr. Lasseter will be down shortly to flog development along, also hold meetings large and small. I saw a dandy scene from Frozen yesterday. Picture looks good, even though everybody has pedals to the metal.
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... -wdas.html
One of the signature moves of the Lasseter and Catmull era at Disney has been the creation of the story trust, a group modeled on Pixar's so-called brain trust, where a dozen or so filmmakers gather to screen work for one another and consult on thorny problems of character, structure and tone. Attendees vary but typically include Lasseter, Moore, "Little Mermaid" directors Ron Clements and John Musker, "Tangled" directors Nathan Greno and Byron Howard and the studio's other directors.

When filmmakers are in the last year of production, they meet with Lasseter weekly — a change from the more insulated chief executives of earlier eras. "We used to have what we called the gates, or gatekeepers," said Buck, who left Disney in 2004 before returning in 2008. "There were all these executives who we had to show our work to before we got to the boss. Now you go straight to John, he gives you his gut reaction and you move on."
Source: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mo ... .htmlstory
Steve Hulett wrote:I was informed about a newer project in development that has not yet been announced to a breathless public, and since I need no grief don't ask me about it, since I know very little anyway.
Source: http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/ ... ature.html
Last edited by Sotiris on Wed Nov 21, 2012 2:43 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Post by The_Iceflash »

I would be nice if Disney could focus on making some "Epics" instead of films supposed to be "cool" and "hip".
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estefan
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Post by estefan »

Well, they can't make "Epic", because Blue Sky is releasing that movie next year. :P
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Post by qindarka »

The_Iceflash wrote:I would be nice if Disney could focus on making some "Epics" instead of films supposed to be "cool" and "hip".
Um, which of their recent or planned films are supposed to be cool or hip? I'll give you Big Hero 6, what else?
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Post by DisneyEra »

qindarka wrote:
The_Iceflash wrote:I would be nice if Disney could focus on making some "Epics" instead of films supposed to be "cool" and "hip".
Um, which of their recent or planned films are supposed to be cool or hip? I'll give you Big Hero 6, what else?
Big Hero 6-Hip
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Post by jazzflower92 »

DisneyEra wrote:
qindarka wrote: Um, which of their recent or planned films are supposed to be cool or hip? I'll give you Big Hero 6, what else?
Big Hero 6-Hip
Frozen-Cool
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Sotiris
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Re: Current Slate of WDAS

Post by Sotiris »

Q: Pixar has around 1,200 employees and a lot of them are in on secrets about Pixar’s film pipeline. Yet it’s very rare for information about Pixar films to be leaked. Why is that?

Ed Catmull: There’s a very good reason for it. I will use a counter-example: When we first got to Disney Animation, there were a lot of leaks. People were going crazy trying to stop them. All I knew was that it was one or two people who were talking inappropriately and it was not good for the morale of the studio.

I got up in front of everyone at Disney Animation. I pointed out that when you make a movie, when you first put it up on the reel, it doesn’t work. [A story reel is a video of a series of sketches, often with some simple animation − in effect, a mock-up of the planned film.] In fact, the first versions are disastrous. We have meetings afterwards where various directors, story people, and others get together and have hard discussions about making the film work. When that meeting is over with, the director and his team have to go back to their crew and talk about the things that didn’t work. They have to trust the crew with what they’re telling them. And the things that don’t work will then seep throughout the studio. I said that if somebody goes and speaks to other places or talks to a blogger, which is what was happening in this case, what they do is they break that trust.

When I said that, the entire audience burst into applause. For the one or two people who were talking to bloggers on the outside, what they saw was that everybody else in the studio was really upset that somebody was doing this. So the message didn’t come from me, the message came from that response of the audience − and whoever was doing it stopped doing it.

My belief is that the way you keep secrets is you tell people the information; you let people know what the problems are so they have ownership in the solution. If we don’t trust them, so we’re trying to keep secrets away from everybody, then they feel less ownership and in fact they’re more likely to talk about it outside. So it’s by an act of collusion that we get the ownership that keeps the problems in-house.
Source: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-04-0 ... ation.html
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