Here we go again. Last month, I wrote about Disney's new animation director, David Stainton, saying that Disney will move away from traditional animation and concentrate more of its efforts toward computer-generated films. If that weren't bad enough for 2-D fans, now DreamWorks is also kissing hand-drawn animation goodbye.
Because its latest traditionally-animated feature, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas tanked at the box office, (who didn't see that coming?), DreamWorks is giving up on the once-thriving 2-D animation market.
Ann Daly, chief of animation at DreamWorks, expressed disappointment at Sinbad's dismal performance—a mere $23.4 million with nearly three weeks in theaters.
"I think the idea of a traditional story being told using traditional animation is likely a thing of the past," Daly said.
Many others share the same sentiments.
"I think the immediate future is in the realm of CGI," the head of Fox animation, Chris Meledandri, said to the Wall Street Journal a few months ago. He claimed "non-families" made up 25 percent of the audience for Ice Age's opening weekend, something that "wouldn't have happened with a traditionally-animated film."
Another factor for studios kicking 2-D to the curb is that hand-drawn movies take longer to make, cost bigger bank and in today's market, don't have the same box-office potential.
John Lasseter—who as head of Pixar Animation Studios played a large role in bringing about the CG renaissance—disagrees that 2-D is dying simply because of the art form.
He told the L.A. Times: "For me, it's the story that holds the audience, it's not the technology, it's not the look of the film. We concentrate—and we always have—on the story."
That's why the idea that movies such as Shrek and Ice Age were successful merely because they used CGI—and not because of the story—is flawed. Computer-generated animation may be riding high right now, but isn't that because virtually all of the releases in the past few years have been entertaining? What happens when the market is soon flooded and watered down with horrible CGI movies from people who jumped in to cash in after Monsters, Inc. and Shrek kicked all sorts of ass?
It can happen. And if it does, it will throw a monkey wrench into the money-making machine that CG movies have become. Traditionally-animated feature films were a big craze in the early 1990s after Disney released the instant (and consecutive) classics The Little Mermaid ($109.8 million), Beauty and the Beast ($145.9 million), Aladdin ($217.4 million) and The Lion King ($312.9 million). But after inferior movies such as Fern Gully: The Last Rain Forest and Rock-A-Doodle began bombarding theaters, consumers soured on traditional animation entirely.
How soon people seem to forget about We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Quest for Camelot and Freddie as F.R.0.7, which combined didn't even come close to half of The Little Mermaid's gross.
David Kirschner, who produced Cats Don't Dance for Warner Bros. told the L.A. Times that, "Every time an animated film does well, studios jump in, thinking they can be part of the 'animation business.' You have to have a good script, good storyboards and a talented crew."
So as Finding Nemo works its way toward breaking The Lion King's record (but when adjusted for inflation/higher ticket prices, Nemo still can't touch Lion King), and the once-thriving 2-D business dries out, the market looks to be on pace for extreme saturation of the CG variety. But you needn't worry. By the time that happens, perhaps anime will have finally burst through to mainstream, and the cycle will begin all over again with an entirely different art form.
