The Little Mermaid is the first movie I saw in a theater. The theater had a coloring contest upon exit, and I won a copy of the one-sheet that hangs in my parents' house to this day. I love the movie and sing songs from it at karaoke. I would pay to see it in a theater again, just as I would many other Disney Animated Classics.
I loathe the idea that there will be any children whose first cinematic experience will be sitting in a theater in front of an iPad instead of being enveloped in the experience. Their instructions:
Bring your iPad with you to the movie
Interact with the film, play games, sing along, find new surprises and compete with the audience
Download the free app before you arrive at the theatre
Requires Second Screen Live app and iPad or iPad mini with iOS 5.0 or higher
Thankfully, it looks like only 12 theaters nationwide are doing this crap: six in California, one in Manhattan, two in suburban NYC, and one each in New Jersey, Kansas, and Texas (Plano).
Here's an idea, Disney: do limited re-releases of your animated classics in theaters once a quarter like you did when I was a kid and create new fans instead of behaviorally-trained distraction drones.
I lost track of a news link I saw that reported this as something akin to Disney starting their own Mouse House digital locker service like UltraViolet. It's not, and thank god, since we've got enough locker up there in the magical, mysterious "cloud".
Having redeemed the Oz the Great and Powerful code, I can say that Digital Copy Plus is just a responsive design site that funnels you to your digital vault of choice, whether iTunes, Amazon, or Vudu.
Who actively uses Vudu, by the way? Other than Walmart employees?
Now, you can redeem those codes directly to your iTunes account from any web-accessible device via the responsive site.
The biggest plus to Disney moving away from disc-tethered Digital Copy (aside from general convenience and stronger engagement) is that their Digital Copy files are now HD and carry iTunes Extras. Paramount, Universal, and Lionsgate/Summit releases have had this since last year.
iTunes Extras still, inexplicably, only work in iTunes itself and not on iPhones, iPads, or the AppleTV. Maybe that's another no-brainer, long-neglected UI problem Apple will fix in this, the year of Apple adding missing features that they should have years ago.
Fox is now the only studio delivering Digital Copy in SD on physical discs.
For only the second time in my life, my half-sister is visiting from overseas. She grew up in Cuba, but now lives in Italy with her husband and daughter. A big highlight of both trips has been watching movies with my niece. A particular treat is getting to watch the Spanish version of Disney movies, which not only feature high-quality voice dubs, but in some instances, modified on-screen imagery.
This is the first one of these in which I've used SquareSpace's image gallery block. Expect to see more of them.
Disney didn't include a 2D Blu-ray in the 3D Blu-ray edition of Sam Raimi's Oz the Great and Powerful. People were upset. Disney said "pay us another $6 and we'll send you the 2D disc".
According to former Disney animator Tom Bancroft on Twitter, Disney gutted their hand-drawn animation division this afternoon, and laid off some of the studio’s biggest names: Nik Ranieri, Ruben Aquino, Alex Kupershmidt, Frans Vischer, Russ Edmonds, Brian Ferguson, Jamie Lopez and Dan Tanaka. Two of the animators who still have jobs are Eric Goldberg and Mark Henn.
These people are all considered at the top of their field. Sad news indeed.
Kotaku reports that a source has told them that Star Wars 1313 was going to be about Boba Fett:
This happened last May. Star Wars creator George Lucas looked at 1313—which at that point had been scrapped and refocused multiple times—and told the team he wanted it to be about Boba Fett, the mercenary whose origins as a clone were revealed in the Star Wars prequel movies.
You can see concept art from this version of Star Wars 1313 above. Boba Fett stands over someone who looks a whole lot like Bossk, a lizard-like bounty hunter who Fett has apparently captured. They appear to be in the seedy underworld of Coruscant.
Like I said yesterday, the game is not entirely dead, and it's expected that Disney is shopping it around for sub-licensing to finish it out and publish it.
I was afraid this would happen. The moment the Disney deal got announced, I worried most about LucasArts landing at a company that was on track to end all internal development. LucasArts was not the same company it was during what people consider its golden age, but it was still full of talented people doing interesting work.
In this statement to Game Informer, they confirm the closure of the legendary development house and confirm that future Star Wars games will be sub-licensed externally in the future.
Would it have killed them to announce the layoffs before GDC so that developers could network and look for work there?
Website Kotaku is reporting that 150 LucasArts employees have been laid off, and that the games Star Wars: First Assault and Star Wars 1313 have been cancelled. However, the representative we spoke to said that the company is also evaluating its options regarding projects currently in development, which could be licensed out to external development and publishing partners:
"It is worth noting that we are looking for proven external partners who can help us provide video games to our fans. We still believe in the video game industry, we still will provide Star Wars games, we're just looking at different models rather than internal production... They're evaluating everything. There's always a possibility that it [Star Wars 1313] can still come out via licensing."
The representative also remarked on the general mood at the studio today, which, understandably, is not upbeat:
"It's super sad. It's a terrible day. I want to make sure everyone realizes that there still will be Star Wars games out there."
"Super sad", huh, bro? Great word choice, and yes, of course there will still be Star Wars videogames out there. I think your audience actually cares more about the fate of the developers that make the games they care about. They aren't so dim as to assume that one of the most lucrative franchises in gaming history was going to suddenly stop making piles of cash.
I'll spare you the Alderaan "voices cry out" reference with regard to the few hundred super-talented people without jobs as of today. They deserve more respect than that or how this big heave-ho is being press-released. Here's hoping they all land on their feet and get to do work that is rewarding and means something to them.
Before we start down that road, everyone would be kidding themselves if they think Disney will let go of Secret of Money Island, Day of the Tentacle, or Grim Fandango (or sub-license them, for that matter).
The L.A. Times reports that they've got a final title for the sequel to Finding Nemo. It's set on the California coast about a year after the first movie. I feel like Andrew Stanton got a raw deal on John Carter of Mars (I know that the release title dropped the preposition). He's one of my favorite modern directors, alongside other Pixarians. Here's the familiar-looking key art:
Yes, goofy talking gargoyles are an awful thing to add to Victor Hugo's classic. Yes, it's dishonest to radically change the ending to make this a story suitable for kids, but boy howdy did they do it for The Little Mermaid too.
Those songs by Stephen "Wicked and a ton of other amazing musicals" Schwartz aren't too shabby either.
I never watched the sequel to this one. Am I fuzzily remembering a promo for said sequel that talked about how they cast Jennifer Love-Hewitt in it as a sorta-kinda-but-not love interest girl, or did they do something moderately sane and not creepy?
Growing up, I didn't see this one as often as other Disney Animated Masterpieces (I think that's what they're still called). I was more into Pinocchio, Oliver and Company, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh.
This is yet another clean, crisp, and vibrant HD mastering of a Disney classic. Mulan is on Blu this spring, Little Mermaid in the fall, and Jungle Book is quietly announced in the Pan booklet as coming in Spring 2014.
It's an injustice that Vincent Price's Moriarty-in-rat's-clothes performance as Ratigan is not as well-remembered as other so-called iconic Disney Villains.
This could theoretically open the door to the original, un-altered versions of the Original Star Wars Trilogy becoming available legally and in HD. Then again, it could result in them being just as buried as original cuts of Disney titles.
Seven (Make that eight and counting) things after listening to their conference call announcement just now:
1) Disney now owns all LucasFilm IP: Star Wars, Indiana Jones, Skywalker Sound, LucasArts (games), Lucas Books/Animation/Licensing/Marketing/Online, and ILM (the company that once owned Pixar), as well as the trademark for "Droid". Disney will now own all intellectual property rights with some distribution and licensing "entaglements" based on existing deals, much like how Universal still has the Marvel theme park license for a while yet and Sony makes Spider-Man movies.
2) Much was made of Disney's global licensed product and distribution reach making better use of LucasFilm licenses, with all emphasis on the $4.05 billion paid being relative to the value of the Star Wars franchise. For example, this would imply that any Star Wars (and Indiana Jones?) licensed comic books will now go under Marvel once the current Star Wars/Dark Horse contract ends, and video games would go through Disney Interactive.
UPDATE 1:: Bob Iger: "We're likely to focus more on social and mobile than we are on console. We'll look opportunistically at console, most likely in licensing rather than publishing, but we think that given the nature of these characters and how well known they are, and the storytelling, that they lend themselves quite nicely, as they've already demonstrated to the other platforms" ...so maybe Star Wars comics are safe at Dark Horse? ...I want to say no way in hell, when you own one of the two megalithic comic publishers...
3) Disney plans to release a new Star Wars movie every 2-3 years starting in 2015. All of them will be in 3D.
4) Star Wars Episodes 7, 8, and 9 will be a trilogy. The treatment is done, is in "early stage development", and the movies are to be released every other year.
5) ILM will remain a studio-agnostic gun for hire. Disney does not want to change anything about how they operate.
6) Fox retains ownership and distribution of all existing Star Wars movies (until that contract expires... UPDATE 4:: Episode 4 is owned "in perpituity" and all other existing movies are owned through 2020). Disney can use any and all characters from the entire Star Wars canon in all of its new movies. All future films will be distributed by Disney, unlike Paramount retaining partial distribution rights when Marvel was acquired. No mention was made of who now owns the Star Wars Holiday Special.
7) They made it extremely clear that the Indiana Jones (and other non-SW) IP was not factored into their valuation of LucasFilm, only Star Wars and Star Wars-related IP. They made an oblique reference to "entanglements" (i.e., Paramount's distribution and ownership of the existing movies and, I expect Young Indy, if they remember it exists).
8) This may be reaching, but they made repeated reference to the broader reach of the Disney content family in general, and toward the end someone asked about the Disney Faeries and other "girl-oriented" IP expansions and how they'd handle that. Disney sidestepped addressing it in terms of specific plans, but acknowledged that they have many plans in this area for sure.
UPDATE 2:: Bob Iger: "We love the fact that this will take its place in our live-action strategy as a known and loved brand. We really like Star Wars’ potential on TV, and Disney XD would be a great home for that."
This means that the long-rumored live-action Star Wars TV series is just the tip of the iceberg. No word on how Clone Wars (distributed by Warner Bros on home video) falls into any of this.
9) I just realized this means that Disney now fully owns Captain EO and Star Tours. This deal has been in the works for a long while, I guarantee you. Think about it.
All in all, and call it controversial, but I firmly believe this is the best possible thing to happen to Star Wars in a long, long time.
I'm re-listening to my recording of the call and will update as necessary with corrections and additions.
