Written by steet :
Recently, I've read a lot of news on many sites (especially animators sites), in order to know "what's coming". And I have found many "behind the scenes" (mostly Disney related) , that I thought were enough important to share :
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Universal has closed down their "Universal Animation Studios" facility since mid-2009. I'm not sure how to understand this news, because it seems they're still making CGI films though not indoors ("Despicable Me" is coming soon), but we DO know that they stopped making anymore Land Before Time sequels and series. So yes, we can safely assume that the facility behind the Balto, An American Tail or Land Before Time Direct-To-Video sequels is no more...Their last film is Curious George 2, which is finished since ages but has yet to be released in most countries. (including USA)
http://animationguildblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/state-of-industry-and-tag.html
- The trend since the 2000's for big animation companies, is to hire animators for one project when they're needed, and get rid of them when it's finished. For example, most of the staff behind The Princess & The Frog has been dismissed since last summer. (a few months BEFORE its release) During the last century, the animators would stay at a company as long as there were projects. That doesn't sound very respectful to their employees...And you have to wonder what happens when they switch from one company to the other. (what's the point in teaching, giving out secrets of animation making, if that's to "give" the employees to other companies?)
- Disney's Snow Queen, which was going to be the next "big" 2D project, has been shelved. Likewise, their other CGI project ("King of Elves") has also been cancelled. Which makes us wonder : what's going on? Not only this means there won't be any other hand-drawn film before ages ( 
), but their mid-term future is a blur, something that rarely happened before. (Of course, I'm not counting the Pixar projects - they're a different entity. Not counting the "Pooh" feature film either, because...well...you see what I mean.)
- Currently, it seems that Disney is blaming the not-fantastic box office of The Princess & The Frog on its name - they now think that adding "Princess" in the title wasn't a good thing (so what are they waiting to change the DVD cover, then??) Personally, if I were them, I would rather blame their "Disney Princesses" brand for giving a very bad image of fairy tales stories to anyone who's not a little girl... As a result, Rapunzel (their current CGI project slated for release this year) is very likely to have a name change before it gets released this fall. Apparently, the chosen name is "Tangled" (strange name for a Rapunzel fairy tale...) As always, that's a very short-term vision : it may do some favors to the film on its release, but will someone want to watch a Disney film named "Tangled" in decades, which doesn't give any hint on what the subject of the film is? I seriously doubt it.
Yes, that's not very joyful news - sorry! 
Stay tooned for more to come...
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demons
eper
I think that's just ridiculous!!!!!!!!!!!
Words cannot describe how dissappointing this is... UGH!!!
Movie like the Lion King, Spirit, Beauty and The Beast, Mulan and other 2D movies influenced me to actually continue drawing and believing the dream I had was REAL!!!
I don't know how I can even fix anything... because I'm just one person. And not many people might even read this... I don't care if people think this is some stupid fan wanting to be a nerd and keep 2D movies alive!!! It's what I believe in, and what I love people, you can't blame me for that!!!
But I really hope that they will continue to make amazing movies in 3D worlds, just make it good PLEASE!!!
And I will miss the 2D movies when they someday dissappear in my life.
I will be owning the Blu-Ray 20th and 60th anniversary Blu-Rays that came out when I was younger, and I will watch the REAL movies that have actually made a difference!!!
I'm making myself sad....
LET THE MAGIC LIVE!!!!!!!!!!
Husky
Reborn
Gray Husky Reborn.
atara-Je
nny
Fairy
Dragon
no1 fan
ch
Wolf!
If they make another story of Balto in 3D, at first it might look kinda weird but if it has a nice story just as good as the first we wouldn't even notice that it's 3D! Well.. only if the animations are good also, not like the 2nd and 3rd ones...
As for shuting down Snow White and such... oh well their loss. There's not much we can do except encourage them anyways. I'm guessing people just get less and less interested in movies and more and more interested in games (ps3, wii, xboxlive, pc, etc.)
storm
awolf
f
Darkfire
While it may be unpopular for traditional animation (which I prefer) at the moment in the United States, the odds are fairly high that such films will make a comeback. People still watch the Simpsons, various other cartoons, anime, and so on. When Disney and other American studios sees that it's missing out - there's no doubt that they'll re-enter the proverbial traditional animation rat-race. They're businesses first, and entertainers - if it's good for business - second.
But there are still animation studios out there - and doing fairly well. Check out Studio Ghibli's releases, which are ironically released to North America via Disney (John Lasseter of Pixar is a huge fan). You will not be disappointed.
Ranger
i HATED father of the pride, NBC only did it as a last ditch effort to get their ratings back
IT ONLY HAD ONE SEASON!, THEY CANCELLED IT!
besides, i think NBC has enough on their plate right now with the whole Conan v. Leno thing
ch
Personally, I'm looking more forward to Oobermind(even though some people speculate it to be the reverse of the Incredibles...)
Fur Wolf
88
Minespatch => Yes there was a Balto 3 (direct-to-video sequel), and the reason why so many talk about that is because Balto Source is my first site : http://www.animationsource.org/balto/en/
There won't be a Shrek 5, they're stopping at 4th. Which is already way too many in a such short period of time, if you ask me.
Skulblak => Yes, Disney announced they intended to make a traditional animated film every 2 year - though that was BEFORE the release of P&TF. And they're including the next "Winnie the Pooh" movie in it, when it's more an attempt to revive that children property for merchandise reasons than anything else. (just like why Pixar is making a Cars 2) Seriously, do they expect the P&TF public to go see a "Winnie the Pooh" film? If they do, they're seriously mistaken...
So that will make a huge gap with the next 2D animated film, since they have to start from the beginning, which means not before at least 3-4 years.
the
Writer
f
oh, btw, they are making a shrek forever after (it hink thatswhat its called) and later a shrek 5. they are seriously milking aperfectly good triology, they really dont need any more shrek films.
ch
There was a Balto 4 in the making? What was the third film?
In my opinion, I find the film Avatar pretty "iffy". It's was too bad that Cameron focused more on a subject of anti-war when in fact the humans were mercenaries than soldiers. To me, Avatar was like "Atlantis the Lost Empire" except that I like Alantis more(I think I'm going to say that Mike Mignola is cooler than Cameron). If I did Avatar, I would have made it similar to "The gods must be Crazy", a tourism film combining with the Avatar/navi-humunculus project. If the main character was just a tourist just visiting Pandora as a vacation, and he learned about the culture of the Navi, then it would be also similar to the beginning of the first Godzilla(American version).
Isn't it true that Universal somewhat is working with Dreamworks? Doesn't the explain why they have a Shrek ride in their theme parks? Other than that, I'm actually looking forward to their next projects: Gardians of childhood and MegaMind. Can't wait to see those. Despicable Me is also giving me interest, except that I wish they would play the other trailer than the one I keep seeing with the Pyramids of Giza missing. It's quite tedious that I keep seeing that commercial than the one I saw with the Princess and the Frog trailer when I went to see Planet51.
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