Disney's features division has been in a lose/lose situation for years. Their original movies have failed miserably, gobsmacked by just about every other family movie outlet around. Treasure Planet. Brother Bear. Home on the Range. So it's become apparant that nobody wants them to produce original content... and yet when they crap out features based on their beloved classic properties, the purists say those suck too. Bambi 2. Lady and the Tramp 2. Cinderella 2. So what are they supposed to do?
Here's a great Pixar/Disney deal editorial that pretty much says it all. Summary: Steve Jobs is highly aware of the odds that Pixar's winning streak is about to end, plus he knows that only Disney has the power to continue to wring money out of the Pixar stable. Disney is desparate to remain a force in the animated marketplace, it's just good karma to stay on good relations with the progenitors of their most successful licenses of the past decade, and they know they need a creative shot in the arm... an injection now personified in Jobs and Lasseter.
Of course, I don't agree that Pixar's creative output has been the end-all/be-all of the animated world. I still say they're writing more or less the same movie every time. And I wish they would make a movie with characters that live in a world of their own making, instead of always being some kind of hidden underclass that exists inside the human world. It's like Disney's Robin Hood vs. Disney's 101 Dalmatians. In Robin Hood, it's a world of talking animals run by a world of talking animals. In Dalmatians, the talking animals live parallel to normal human characters. I would like to see Pixar tackle more concepts like Robin Hood and less like Dalmatians.
Disney just has to be beside itself for allowing Pixar to become a brand name. If they had somehow managed to keep the hammer down in the early days of Toy Story's success, they wouldn't be fighting this brand split between the Disney family and the Pixar family. But, who knew then that these movies would hit so big? Disney had done plenty of lackluster sidebar-studio deals before, where they distribute somebody else's baby or share ownership in some fashion (Brave Little Toaster, Who Framed Roger Rabbit), so when Pixar pushed for equal marketing representation, they must have been "Sure, that way if it tanks, we only take half damage." For the Disney loyalist, allowing the rise of the Pixar brand ranks as one of the top mistakes the company ever made.
Also, when Toy Story launched, feature length CGI movies were still looked upon with a skeptical eye. Nobody thought you could get the same warmth and layers out of 3D constructs that you can coax from a hand-drawn character. Whoops.
What I like about the deal is this: we now just have a lot more talent in the same room. What Pixar provides can solve Disney's problems, and what Disney provides can solve Pixar's problems.
