ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 4.10 - JANUARY 2000

The Watershed Is Coming

by Andy Klein

1999: It was the best of years; it was the worst of years.

On the one hand, not only were there more first-rate animated features in the theaters than in any other recent year; there was a greater diversity of material. On the other hand, only a narrow range of that material brought people into the theaters; most attempts at really pushing the various envelopes that restrict popular animation were once again punished financially.

A Bug's Life dominated the animated box office in the first quarter. © Disney Enterprises, Inc./Pixar Animation Studios. All Rights Reserved.
This Year's Contenders
Disney owned the year. (Big surprise.) Commercially, the first third was dominated by A Bug's Life (held over from the previous year); the middle third by Tarzan; the last two months by Toy Story 2. The first and third were, of course, Pixar productions and therefore not rigidly within the traditional Disney mold; even Tarzan represented a slight departure from what had been an increasingly conventionalized formula. (In the spring, the studio also had the less ambitious, and less successful, Doug's First Movie.)

Most non-Disney releases didn't do as well, for a variety of reasons. The failure of Warner's The King and I is the easiest to diagnose. All one can ask is: What the hell were they thinking? Who did they imagine was interested in seeing an animated retread of one of the most egregiously dated hits of the Fifties? It's not merely the kids' audience that had no nostalgic interest; even most parents were too young to remember or care about the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical. Add to that the material's political implications, which were only slightly less thorny than 1997's Anastasia, and you have a project whose green lighting is an utter mystery.

While some films did not succeed for obvious reasons, others where punished for much more subtle transgressions. © Morgan Creek.
But there were other, more troubling failures, as well as one troubling, if utterly predictable, success. The latter is, of course, Pokemon: The First Movie: Mewtwo Strikes Back. Coming in at the peak of a year's worth of frenzy among the nation's children, Pokemon was such a sure shot that even Warners couldn't mismarket it into oblivion.

That said, one could argue that they did mismarket it. The bungling of their card giveaway suggested a complete misestimation of their audience; the film's extraordinarily rapid drop after its first week -- $50 million the first five days, $30 million for the rest of its run -- is either an indictment of the studio's long-term strategy for the film or a paean to their hit-and-run exploitation of a turkey that was soon killed by word of mouth.

Most disturbing were the three films that represented real departures and still were disappointments at the box-office. The Iron Giant received probably the strongest reviews of any feature of any kind in 1999 and yet failed to break $25 million. Princess Mononoke, the first anime feature to be distributed by a major independent (Miramax), has had a lackluster performance. And although Paramount appeared pleased that South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut made a little over $50 million, one could argue that any live-action comedy with a built-in fan base and such strong reviews would have been considered a failure with that number.


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