PIXAR v/s Disney
While reading through message board on IMDb, I found the analysis of PIXAR-Disney split. It was well-written. I couldn't have agreed more, so I thought to post it on my blog.
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I think it has to do with creative differences. Pixar wants to make unique stand alone films, while Disney wants to milk as much money as possible. An example of this is Toy Story 2, which was in fact very good. However, its my understanding that Pixar never wanted to make any sequels, but as Disney is the distributor they own the rights to the characters.
The reason why this is bad is soon Disney will turn Pixar into itself. Like you go to the grocery store and see "Peter Pan 2", "102 Dalmations", "Lion King 2", "Little Mermaid 2", "Aladdin 2". I've never watched these, but you can tell just by looking at the quality of the drawings showing scenes from the films that this is just Saturday morning quality animation. Its just "Hey, we have this brand called Peter Pan, lets squeeze a little more profit out of it."
The problem with this is Disney has diluted its brand image. Right now people know any time they see a Pixar logo that the film will be great. Why? Because they have slowly built up a reputation. As such they don't need the big named stars necessarily to get an audience in. Their name is the star attracting power. Disney used to have this.
To me this is a key problem with much of Hollywood. If they built their companies as quality brands they wouldn't have to hire hugely expensive actors. Its like this. Harrison Ford is paid $20 million per film because he has built up the Harrison Ford brand. Everytime the audience sees his name we know based on his track record that it will be of X quality. So he attracts the audience. A production company could do this as well if they consistently created the highest quality films. Then they could hire actors at regular salaries, but since their brand is so strong, people would still come. It would take years of consistent quality filmmaking (and probably losing money along the way) before this brand could be established, but it would be worth it in the long run.
This is probably not the only issue Pixar has with Disney, but I think it is one of them. Uncertainty is a big thing for movie goers. We need a reason to know that my $10 + (if you are a parent) babysitting money, and popcorn etc... will be worth it. A strong brand gives you this certainty. If Pixar became known for crap, even if it was just a few times, they would dilute that certainty the public has built into them.