#plus production seemed to think they were making a don bluth movie which is NOT the kind of designs u wanna be getting for tv animation

[fishyartist]

So mad about me just realizing the color pallet despite being in Sonic mode for the past like week

#I’ll repost this w/ the doodle dump later #but also feel free 2 rb now #if u want #I’m just too lazy to tag #I’ve been mostly thinking about fucking Sonic underground. #which is worse than danny phantom but for sure in the category of #’’has enough missed potential that I go insane’’ y/k? #triplets r fucking born man #plus what’s known about the production makes me want to find the asshole who ordered a 40 episode single season in 1997 #expecting it to be fucking done in 1998 #INSANE #it missed that deadline and didn’t come out til early ‘99 which is still CRAZY for a first season #like they were writing 2 22 minute scripts a week it was fucking bad #like u have to do so much production shit that most shows take 2 1/2 or more years for a 26 episode order #DiC sucked dick man #plus production seemed to think they were making a don bluth movie which is NOT the kind of designs u wanna be getting for tv animation #when u have about 2 1/2 weeks per episode (NOTE: NOT ACTUALLY HOW PRODUCTION WORKS. ITS MULTIPLE STAGES HAPPENING SIMULTANEOUSLY LOL) #ok I’m gonna stop bc I’m gonna try to do an underground doodle dump too and if I do I can talk there #where it’s relevant

[kylesvariouslistsandstuff]

Animation Face-Offs

I find it amusing that the first real major animated movie box office show-off is occurring some 35 years after the one that arguably started it all...

November 18, 1988... Walt Disney Feature Animation's celebrity-loaded modern musical OLIVER & COMPANY from first-time director George Scribner, and Universal's release of the Steven Spielberg/George Lucas-produced ex-Disney director Don Bluth adventure THE LAND BEFORE TIME...

This wasn't the first time two animated pictures opened next to each other.

In fall 1982, Hanna-Barbera's HEIDI'S SONG opened opposite a Looney Tunes clipshow anthology movie called 1001 RABBIT TALES. Combined, they made $5m at the domestic box office... Not great times to open an animated feature that wasn't Disney, and not that their distributors probably even cared at the time anyways.

Sometimes, there are around two animated features a month. It's not uncommon for two studios to share. Off the top of my head, you had - in November 2010 - MEGAMIND at the beginning of the month, and TANGLED before Thanksgiving. In the early summer of 2013, MONSTERS UNIVERSITY only opened about a few weeks before DESPICABLE ME 2. TROLLS and MOANA shared November 2016. Again, just random examples off the top of my head.

But usually, they're spaced out... TROLLS BAND TOGETHER and WISH are five days apart...

TROLLS 3 is projected to take in around $20-25m this weekend, which is significantly less than what TROLLS took in back in 2016, but still alright for this kind of movie. WISH is set to out-open it, with over $50m for the 5-day Thanksgiving weekend stretch. For a $200m-costing movie, it's going to need all the legs in the world to get by. TROLLS 3 will need to pull some good weight too to more than double its much more modest $95m budget. (Wild to think that $95m seems *low*... There was a time when a DreamWorks/PDI movie cost $75m... And for a good while, roughly $135m!)

I'm curious to see how each film affects one another. Families aren't made of money, and there's gotta be a kind of adult pull to really make big bucks, and I'm not sure if either of these films have that. Plus you have stuff like WONKA right around the corner... Thankfully no Marvel, Star Wars, or Avatar movie to counter with. Although, PUSS IN BOOTS Dos last year, woooooow. That cat held his own against the blue cat aliens.

But yeah, if you think about it... This is a rare head-to-head race.

One could argue we saw this in late winter of 2021 when Warner Bros. released their live-action TOM & JERRY, and then Disney Animation had RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON out a week later. But that was before vaccines got out for all age groups (they were distributed to the elderly first, I - who was 28 at the time - couldn't get my first shot until April.), and the films had simultaneous streaming debuts, so I don't really count that. Plus, Cinemark theaters refused to show RAYA over a disagreement on who got most of the earnings. (That would've been my return trip to the movies after a year-long hiatus, my return ended up being A QUIET PLACE: PART II two months later.)

It's funny how TROLLS 3 is Universal and WISH is Disney... Just like how LAND BEFORE TIME was Universal, and OLIVER was Disney.

The Disney-Universal race was successful for both. OLIVER took home $53m domestically (the $71m figure you often see comes from the film's 1996 re-release), LAND BEFORE TIME took home $48m. Worldwide is up the air, because Disney never released OLIVER's numbers, Universal reported that LAND made around $84m. Winner is unknown, but it was always assumed to be LAND. Maybe because dinosaurs are more Universal than a modern-day New York comedy? Who knows!

Perhaps greatly inspired by that double-whammy of animated hits, MGM/United Artists wanted to try that for themselves. Don Bluth split with Spielberg and Lucas due to creative disagreements during production of both LAND BEFORE TIME and his other Spielberg collab AN AMERICAN TAIL, and set up ALL DOGS GO TO HEAVEN with the lion. MGM/UA released ALL DOGS the same day as THE LITTLE MERMAID...

Bluth's movie got left to sink by the Ron Clements and John Musker-directed musical sleeper hit... It wasn't even close. $27m domestic vs. $84m domestic, and in addition that, MERMAID's worldwide figures put it at roughly $183m. (Again, in 1989-90, without the 1997 re-release counted.) ALL DOG's worldwide total is unknown.

This didn't entirely scare distributors away from trying again.

The fall of 1990 was originally set to see another Bluth vs. Disney face-off. If plans had held, MGM-Pathe would've released Bluth's ROCK-A-DOODLE on the same day as Disney's sequel THE RESCUERS DOWN UNDER. MGM-Pathe ran into financial and legal problems, putting Bluth's film in limbo for a bit...

Instead, Warner Bros. went toe to toe with Disney, releasing an animated feature that wasn't a Looney Tunes clipshow: THE NUTCRACKER PRINCE... Suffice to say, it barely scrounged up $1m domestically, and Disney's sequel had troubles of its own, stalling at $29m domestically, $47m worldwide.

Two films fled from the autumn of 1991, as BEAUTY AND THE BEAST looked to not be a repeat of RESCUERS DOWN UNDER, but a repeat of LITTLE MERMAID and OLIVER's successes... 20th Century Fox - who had FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST - and The Samuel Goldwyn Company - who picked up ROCK-A-DOODLE - chickened, literally in the latter's case...

Only Universal had the guts to take on the beast... By releasing AN AMERICAN TAIL: FIEVEL GOES WEST the same day. The Don Bluth-less sequel made only $22m domestically, while BEAUTY AND THE BEAST made... $145m in North America alone, and blew up with $331m around the world...

After FERNGULLY and ROCK-A-DOODLE wisely fled from BEAUTY AND THE BEAST, they duked it out in April 1992. DOODLE opened the first weekend of the month, with FERNGULLY following. FERNGULLY won with $24m domestically, DOODLE struggled with $11m. (It's worth noting that DOODLE first came out in the UK in August of 1991.)

Universal initially thought they'd have WE'RE BACK! A DINOSAUR'S STORY ready to compete with ALADDIN, but they likely realized that that was not a great idea... WE'RE BACK! opened over a full year after ALADDIN and still flopped hard. It opened nearby BATMAN: MASK OF THE PHANTASM, which also made a paltry amount.

From there on out, things were typically spaced out. Sometimes the smaller efforts opened close to each other.

And now here we are, Thanksgiving week of 2023... We have trolls vs. wishing stars. Universal vs. Disney. It'll be fun to watch, but I hope the two film crews of both get to put food on their tables once more.