Animation draws a winning hand
The success of "Aladdin" makes three hits in a row for Disney, following "The Little Mermaid" and "Beauty and the Beast." This year brings a reissue of "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937), and Tim Burton's new stop-motion production, "The Nightmare Before Christmas."
Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment will release its fourth animated feature this year, "We're Back," following last year's "An American Tail II: Fievel Goes West" and the earlier "An American Tail" and "Land Before Time."
Don Bluth, who partnered with Amblin on the latter two films, has re-emerged from the collapse of his company in Ireland last year with a refinanced organization and "Thumbelina" set for release this year.
Turner Pictures is releasing Film Roman's "Tom and Jerry: The Movie," following successful runs in Europe, and Turner-owned Hanna-Barbera has "Once Upon a Forest."
"The Speed Racer Movie Show," a compilation drawn from the popular '60s TV series, will be released in repertory art theaters this summer, with new TV episodes set for fall.
Disney's witchcraft brew, "Hocus Pocus," and Spielberg's dinosaur saga, "Jurassic Park," are among many features that will include top-of-the-line animation elements with special effects.
Meanwhile, on prime-time TV, Fox's "The Simpsons" remains a solid hit. ABC has Hanna-Barbera's new two-hour Flintstones movie, "I Yabba Dabba Do!" set for prime time (7-9 p.m. ET) on Feb. 7.
On cable, MTV's "Liquid Television" and Nickelodeon's "Ren & Stimpy" and "Rugrats" are cult hits, to be joined on MTV March 8 by "Beavis & Butthead." Showtime's newest edition of "American Heroes & Legends," with Denzel Washington narrating the story of "John Henry," premiered Feb. 3, repeating Feb. 9, 22 and 27.
And Turner's The Cartoon Network was successfully launched last year and is moving in fast on five million homes.
For the younger set, the Fox Children's Network, launched in 1990, is in competition with the now-established blocks of Disney product. Fox's "X-Men, ""Batman: The Animated Series," and "Steven Spielberg Presents Tiny Toon Adventures" lead the assault.
The Disney Afternoon block of "Chip 'n' Dale,""Tailspin,""Darkwing Duck" and "Goof Troop," continues to attract kids, and other popular shows include "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,""Bobby's World,""Inspector Gadget,""Mr. Bogus, ""Prince Valiant" and "Widget."
There's lots more to come, including a new "Pink Panther" series from MGM, "ExoSquad" from Universal--and down the road, "Aladdin" from Disney.
Disney Studios is given most of the credit for sparking the current animation boom.
"TV animation went through a slump in the '60s and '70s," says Margaret Loesch, president of Fox Children's Network. "But now there's more than ever before."
"Disney's Ducktails" turned everything around six years ago. We put entertainment first," says Gary Krisal, president, Walt Disney Television Animation.
Fox was clever in exposing "The Simpsons" to wider audiences than its inital spot on "The Tracey Ullman Show." Now, "The Simpsons" scorns all competition at 8 o'clock Thursdays.
Even Disney was having trouble in the years following the death of Walt Disney in 1966.
"Look at the movies made after he died," says Peter Schneider, president of feature animation at Disney. "'The Sword and the Stone,""The Fox and the Hounds" and "The Black Cauldron," are not really significant movies."
Roy E. Disney, the company VP who oversees animation, is equally frank."'The Black Cauldron' was, I think, the most expensive movie we ever made here--and it was a thorough disaster."
Things changed at the studio when Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, and Jeffrey Katzenberg took over in the mid-'80s.
"Suddenly, they wanted to step up animation," says John Musker, co-writer and co-director with Ron Clements of "The Little Mermaid" and "Aladdin."
Musher and Clements had been working on a project called "The Great Mouse Detective.""Under the old regime, it had been kicking around in story development for literally three years," Musker says.
The new management reviewed their storyboards. "They said, 'OK, we're gonna do this, but you've got a year to do it so let's hit the ground running and start moving,' " says Musker. "They cha-nged things around overnight."
Roy Disney recalls that "The Great Mouse Detective" did reasonably well in 1986, but then came "Oliver & Co." and "Who Framed Roger Rabbit."
"They were the two, that in my mind, really started to turn everything around ," Disney says.
Musker speaks fondly of Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto's 1976 "Allegro Non Troppo," and Ralph Bakshi's 1972 "Fritz the Cat," and 1973 "Heavy Traffic," but he agrees that "Roger Rabbit" made the breakthrough.
"It helped broaden the audience for our films," Musker says. "It got adults to go see animation, where before there had been a stigma about it being just for kids."
Musker and Clements' "The Little Mermaid" followed. Disney rediscovered the value of music.
"Going out and hiring Howard Ashman and Alan Menken from the Broadway stage really helped revitalize things," Musker says. "It brought a level of real wit and soph-istication to the music that didn't condescend to the audience."
Meanwhile, Steven Spielberg had entered the field. "It was his love of animation that led Amblin to it," says Bonnie Radford, VP, animation, at Amblin Entertainment. "He went to Universal in 1984, and said that he would become involved if Universal would be his partner."
With Don Bluth, Spielberg produced "An American Tail" and "Land Before Time."
"They were both quite successful and part of the renaissance of animation," Radford says. "Steven was there at the beginning and he continues, because he loves it."
Still, it wasn't always easy to get studios to back animated features. "At that time, no one was really sure animation was going to make money," says Bluth. "Universal didn't even know if "American Tail" would make money. We couldn't get play or pay to make "Land Before Time" until we were a good five or six months into it."
That's when Bluth moved to Ireland to save costs and opened his studio in Dublin.
"Land Before Time" was completed and released, and did quite well. But Bluth's company went under last year. It has now received new financing through Hong Kong's Media Assets. A distribution deal will be announced within the next two weeks regarding this year's "Thumbelina," and Bluth has two films, "A Troll in Central Park" and "The Pebble and the Penguin," set for 1994.
"Things at this moment are in very good shape," says Bluth. His Dublin studio's in a building called The Phoenix House; he expects his company to rise from the ashes.
Other animators are optimistic. David Kirschner, a co-producer of this year's "Once Upon a Forest," has written and will produce an elaborate picture called "The Pagemaster" for 1994.
Spielberg has two more features on the drawing board, and Disney has "The Lion King" for 1994 and "Pocahontas" for 1995.
