Has Hollywood Fallen Out of Love With Wallace and Gromit?
Jim Hill has stumbled upon a fascinating explanation as to why Disney just shut down production of Gnomeo & Juliet and Dreamworks Animation is currently retooling Flushed Away. Could it be that certain studio executives actually believe that the type of humor & story-telling that is typically found in British-themed toons doesn't appeal to American audiences anymore?
Does Hollywood Actually Believe that American Audiences Have Lost Their Taste for Anglo-style Animation?
Quick question: How many of you Trek fans out there remember that classic old Saturday Night Live routine, The Last Voyage of the Starship Enterprise ?
For those of you who can't actually recall this memorable sketch: The Last Voyage made its debut 'way back in May of 1976 during Saturday Night Live's first season. It featured John Belushi doing a dead-on impression of William Shatner, Chevy Chase portraying Leonard Nimoy and guest host Elliot Gould as Herb Goodman, head of programming at NBC.
This routine starts off as a pretty faithful imitiation of your typical Star Trek episode. But then the sketch takes a decidedly bizarre turn as the Starship Enterprise finds itself being pursued by a 1968 Chrysler Imperial.
The next thing you know (In a moment that would have done Luigi Pirandello proud), Herb Goldman is standing on the deck of the Enterprise. Where he announces that -- due to low ratings -- NBC is cancelling Star Trek.
Mind you, Shatner & Nimoy are (at this point in the sketch, anyway) refusing to break character. Still playing their roles of captain & science officer, Kirk turns to Spock and says:
Captain Kirk: Wait, Mr. Spock! We have yet to try Vulcan mind meld. Where you actually enter the alien's brain, merge with his intelligence and read his thoughts.
Mr. Spock: I entered Mr. Goodman's mind while you were talking to Dr. McCoy, Captain. (As Nimoy talks, he gradually grows more & more hysterical) It was all ... all dark and empty in there. And ... and there were little mice in the corners. And spiders had spun this web ...
Captain Kirk: Spock!
Mr. Spock: I kept bumping my head on the ceiling. And once ...
Captain Kirk: Snap out of it, Spock!
I bring up this particular SNL sketch because ... Well, over the past 30 years, there have admittedly been many huge changes in the entertainment industry. But one thing (sadly) has remained the same. And that is the empty-headness of most studio execs.
Don't believe me? Then let's talk about the rumors that have begun circulating about what many industry executives supposedly believe to be the real justification for Gnomeo & Juliet's cancellation? Or -- better yet -- why Dreamworks Animation's November 3rd release, Flushed Away, is currently being retooled?
The way I hear it, certain execs are now insisting that the real reason that Gnomeo got its plug pulled and Flushed Away is being retooled because these two animated projects were just too British.
I kid you not, folks. In today's Hollywood at certain levels of management, just the mere fact that a new animated project is set in the U.K. and/or that the tone & humor of a proposed film is thought to be a bit too Anglo-centric is now considered to be a real liability.
"What a ridiculous idea," I can hear you all saying "Why would any executive in Hollywood think something like that?" Well, I can give you four reasons, actually.
The disappointing box office performance of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The disappointing box office performance of Valiant
The disappointing box office performance of Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit
The truly disappointing box office performance of Doogal AKA The Magic Roundabout
It was The Curse of the Wererabbit that had a particularly chilling effect on any British-themed animated projects that were then in the production pipeline out in LA ... Or so I've been told.
I mean, this Nick Park & Steve Box film was one of the more widely acclaimed motion pictures of 2005 (Rottentomatoes.com gave this stop motion movie a 95% rating. Meaning that 95% of the critics who reviewed this Dreamworks Animation / Aardman Animation production thought that this particular motion picture was flat-out wonderful) and then went on to win this year's Academy Award for Best Animated Feature ... And yet -- in spite of all of those accolades -- Wallace & Gromit still only managed to pull in $56.1 million during its initial domestic release.
To be fair, The Curse of the Wererabbit did much, much better overseas -- pulling in $131.1 million in foreign theaters. Which meant that the combined worldwide box office for this Dreamworks Animation / Aardman Animation release was $187.4 million. Which is (admittedly) a very nice chunk of change.
But Hollywood (as it turns out) is a very small town. And studio execs? They like to be able to brag about how well their film did during its initial domestic release. Not eventually point out how well their motion picture did once it finally reached the cineplexes in Chechnya.
Plus industry execs are prone to making these profound-sounding blanket statements. Saying things like "Musicals are dead." Which -- given how the movie versions of Phantom of the Opera, Rent and The Producers just performed at your local multiplexes -- seems like a very astute observation right about now.
And yet let's remember that -- until just a few years ago -- it was a widely held belief in Hollywood that "People won't pay to see a pirate picture anymore" ... And then Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl came along and blew that assumption right out of the water.
When it comes to the way that this industry actually works, perhaps it's veteran sceenwriter William Goldman who put it best: "Nobody knows anything." But -- that said -- that still doesn't prevent certain studio execs from pretending that they really know what's going on. That they alone have a finger on the pulse of what moviegoers really want to see.
And given that the cost of producing a film now hovers somewhere between $64 - $80 million (More importantly, that the cost of marketing this same movie now averages between $35 - $40 million) ... Well, I guess you can understand why studio executives have grown increasingly cautious. Only greenlighting projects that seem to be pre-sold. Like the recently announced big screen version of Welcome Back Kotter (Which will star Ice Cube in the role that Gabe Kaplan used to play). Or -- better yet -- how about that live action remake of that somewhat popular animated show from the 1960s, Underdog, which Walt Disney Pictures recently began casting on?
Now let's be honest here, folks. Are audiences out there actually clamoring to see big screen versions of Welcome Back Kotter and/or Underdog? Hell, no.
But studio executives ... They like to try & remove any elements of risk involved with the projects that they're producing. They want to make sure that -- if they're actually greenlighting production of a ridiculously expensive motion picture -- that there are at least some safeguards in place that will guarantee that the studio will eventually get a return on its investment.
And in today's Hollywood, these "safeguards" can often amount to little more than following a trend. Soooo ... If American movie-goers seem to have temporarily lost their enthusiasm for any animated films that feature British settings and/or rely far too heavily on English-style storytelling and humor ... Well, then that's now considered to be a good enough justification for development executives to steer their studios away of these sorts of projects. At least for the time being.
Which (I know) sounds rather ridiculous. Particularly to those of us who live in the outside world. But you have to remember that this is Hollywood that we're talking about here, people. A place where consistency and logic are (at best) abstract concepts.
You know who else finds this sort of top-studio-brass-group-think mentality to be particularly laughable? The Incredibles director Brad Bird. While taking part in a panel discussion on "The Animated Performance: Art Meets Technology" (Which was held at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater back in July of 2005), Bird really tore in the corporate decision makers that currently populate Tinseltown. Saying things like ...
"You have to understand that Hollywood is like this big dumb shark. It doesn't want to be bold or innovative. It just wants to make money. Which is why studio executives so aggressively follow trends nowadays. They're always trying to figure out what it was that made that last film so popular with ticket buyers. So that they can then duplicate that exact same formula and have a hit film of their very own.
I swear that -- if there were two hit movies where the hero wore a red shirt during the bulk of those motion pictures -- that there then would be some stupid studio exec in this town who'd proclaim: 'Audiences now love heroes who wear red shirts. Make sure that all of the heroes in all of our studio's movies all wear red shirts from now on.' "
Does Brad's quote give you a better understanding of the sort of corporate mindset that we're dealing with here, folks? I hope so ...
Anyway ... Getting back to this whole "Hollywood-seems-to-be-trying-to-get-away-from-making-animated-films-that-feature-British-settings-and-characters" scenario: You've got to feel sort of sorry for the guys who are currently retooling Flushed Away. Given that this is an Aardman Animation film that's actually set in the sewers under London ... Well, it's going to be pretty damned difficult to de-British-ify that particular animated feature.
And -- as for Disney ... Well, they're supposedly being very selective about which projects they actually de-Anglo-ify. Take -- for example -- My Friends Tigger and Pooh That new CG series that's due to debut on the Disney Channel as part of that cable channel's preschool block in the Spring of 2007.
The reason that the Christopher Robin character was dropped from My Friends Tigger and Pooh & replaced by a cute little American girl who likes to bike was ... Well, Disney Channel executives supposedly felt that this energetic new character might have a much broader appeal to Playhouse Disney viewers than pale & passive old Christopher Robin.
And as for the upcoming stage musical version of Mary Poppins that Disney Theatrical Productions will begin presenting at the New Amsterdam Theatre starting in October ... Well, there's a strong belief in-house at DTP that the London version of this show may be just a bit too dark & Anglo-centric for American audiences to really enjoy.
Which is why (it's been strongly rumored) that many of the "improvements" that were made to the London version (I.E. Folding in large chunks of the original P.L. Travers stories into that musical's libretto) will now be removed for the Broadway version. With Disney Theatrical Productions opting instead to make the NYC version of this new musical more closely resemble the 1964 Academy Award-winning film.
Of course, the real irony of this increasingly bizarre situation is ... Well, here we have Disney executives who are supposedly deliberately steering their company away from including too much British-style humor and story-telling in its upcoming movies, TV series and stage plays ... And yet what was the highest grossing film that Walt Disney Pictures was involved with (I.E. Disney co-produced this motion picture with Walden Media) last year? That very, very English fantasy, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Which -- to date -- has sold over $718 million worth of movie tickets worldwide.
Mind you, the DVD version of this C.S. Lewis novel goes on sale today. And given how popular the first Chronicles of Narnia film was, I would imagine that (just as Brad Bird said they would) that the film-makers who are making this Narnia sequel (I.E. Prince Caspian, which is expected to begin production later this year and finally be released to theaters in December of 2007) are going to try & follow the exact same formula that made that first film so popular. Which means -- in essence -- embracing the very British nature of the original source material.
And don't even get me started on the whole Harry Potter phenomenon. Which is arguably the most successful series of books & movies that have ever been produced. Which are aggressively (some might even say obnoxiously, in a charming sort of way) English.
Now as to why we could have these two hugely popular motion pictures in 2005 (I.E. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe) that seem to celebrate British culture ... And yet -- at the same time -- we still have studio execs saying things like "The American movie-going audience just doesn't seem to get British humor. So -- if you really want your film to be a huge success -- you'd better get that Anglo-centric stuff out of there" ... I don't know what to tell you, folks. Other than to repeat what I said earlier. Which is that this is Hollywood that we're talking about here. A place where consistency & logic are -- at best -- abstract concepts.
But what do you folks think? Do you think that the British subject matter and/or the Anglo style of humor actually prevented The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Valiant, Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit and Doogal from reaching a wider audience here in the U.S.? Is this a valid excuse on the part of studio executives? Or just another case of empty-headed people-in-power attempting to explain away something that really can't be explained?
What are your thoughts on this matter? Would you care to "beam up" an answer to JHM's discussion boards?
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Jim Hill – Editor-in-Chief
Jim Hill is this allegedly award-winning writer who lives out in the woods of New Hampshire. He has one beautiful daughter and four obnoxious cats. When he's not sprawled on the couch trying to figure out how to make the DVD player work, Jim writes about the Walt Disney Company.
© Jim Hill 2006