Lots of films go straight to VOD in light of the COVID pandemic, but Disney made a point of upcharging for the latest blockbuster releases. With new Pixar films being released without an upcharge, some employees are upset at their apparent downgrade in status.
Aeons ago (OK, five years ago), I wrote a somewhat incendiary post for Jerry Beck’s Animation Scoop where I argued that Pixar’s films were not the stellar, unimpeachable magnificence they are marketed as. My argument was they while their initial films were, the industry soon caught up. With a rash of sequels [then] scheduled to be released, I pointed out that Pixar’s films were, for all intents and purposes, average films designed to appeal to the broadest of audiences and make the most money.
The responses were, well, not in agreement to say the least.
Fast forward a few years later, and Disney announce that the soon-to-be-released ‘Luca’ will be released on Disney+ but crucially, will not command an additional fee on top of normal subscription charges.
This isn’t sitting well with Pixar employees:
Just talked to a Pixar friend who says Luca and Soul moves to Disney+ have been demoralizing for employees: “Forget theaters, we’re not even good enough for an upcharge?”
In many ways, this tweet speaks to the ego of cinematic filmmaking. When only a select few films got made let alone receive a cinematic release, those films are seemingly ‘better’ than ever other.
With times a changing, Pixar’s latest and greatest find themselves on the same playing field as every foreign, independent, and two-bit animation studio out there. Does this devalue their work? No, but it clearly stings to realise that you’re not creating superior films based on some grand, artistic purpose that the cinema ordains upon its releases. Instead you’re creating a film that’s just a flash-in-the-pan along with a million others. Vying for attention down in the televisual muck in a dogged, scrappy fight that will never end.
Such feelings are also somewhat disingenuous. Feeling ‘demoralised’ is one thing, but to be so at a time when many of Pixar’s former colleagues at Blue Sky are out of a job and looking for work?
It’s no secret that FOX has long been the dominant player of all the mainstream networks when it comes to animation but with audiences slipping away to the internet, what are they to do? Well, the apparent answer is to open up a new studio and attempt to compete with the likes of Frederator’s Cartoon Hangover.
The Gist of It
The Animation Guildis reporting that the new studio is currently in full swing and has about a hundred people working there at the moment. As part of the previously-announced extension of the Animation Domination block of shows into Saturday nights, the network also took the extra step of setting up a dedicated production house. (Non-union of course, hence TAG’s gripe.)
The studio is producing not only the content for the programming block (as in, Axe Cop and High School USA!) but is also busy cranking out animated GIFs such as the wonderful specimen you see below.
Although this could be just another run-of-the-mill story about a new development in animation, where it takes an interesting turn is not where you would expect. Namely, FOX purposely kept production close to home:
Fast reaction time is another key to the ADHD approach. Instead of farming out animation work to Asian firms, with a lag time of at least six weeks, the team in Hollywood can shoot out topical spoofs to stay in the social conversation.
Fox’s toons prepare episodes well over a year in advance, said Reilly. “With ADHD, I can say something today and we can have something tomorrow.”
It’s nice in a way to see FOX accepting the need for speed in the online youth media market, and addressing it by employing talent close to home. It marks a potential bright spot in the otherwise gloomy animation industry that has had too many stories of layoffs over the past few months. Although pay is obviously not the highest, there is still potential for that to change if demand heats up thanks to a success or two.
That said, in contrast, Cartoon Hangover, instead of maintaining a studio for quick stuff, instead hires freelancers. Granted it isn’t as steady as regular employment, but if FOX did the same, they could pay animators more since the overhead of a studio wouldn’t exist.
The other interesting thing is how FOX sees the money streams:
Reilly declined to discuss specifically what kind of coin Fox is pumping into ADHD, saying that it’s not insignificant. The project will run at a “very mild deficit” for about three years before it gains ad traction, he said.
What I would like to know is why it will run a deficit for all those years. Online content has proven to be profitable already; surely it shouldn’t take an established player like FOX three whole years to make money. Of course, I’m also curious why ads are being given such weight; again, there are plenty of other revenue sources available that could suffice.
Lastly…
Before we reach the thrilling conclusion to this post; it really says something about animation as a form of entertainment that FOX sees it as the least risky way to get a foot in the door of online streaming. Can it really be that the ease of creating [quality] animation combined with its popularity among the key 18-34 demographic? It would certainly appear that way:
That noted, Reilly is convinced the model is an efficient way to develop quality content, and he’s eyeing other genres Fox might choose to replicate ADHD. “The cost structure of this stuff by its nature is different from TV,” he said. “The digital world continues to explode. It’s fun. And it has promise.”
Let’s see how this pans out. If it works, expect others to follow.
PS. Notice how FOX is about a year behind online-native efforts? Yeah, me too.
The deal is an important one for a number of reasons but the chief one to take away is that this is a serious investment in terms of both audience and talent on the part of DreamWorks.
On the talent side, AwesomenessTV has a subscriber base of 14 million 500,000 up from a comparatively paltry 11,000 in just 9 months. That’s truly explosive growth and it’s natural that DWA will want to have a front row seat in that. Secondly, acquiring the team behind the channel will ensure that its growth is imbued with the same hands that have guided it so far. A wise decision on the part of DreamWorks.
The audience side is where the real investment is though. With 14 million consumers and a direct line to them, DreamWorks stands to exponentially increase its exposure. The hidden fact is that you can expect a lot of data to flow up from those subscribers which leads us nicely to the truly intriguing (and overlooked) aspect to the deal.
Teenagers!
Yes, teenagers! AwesomenessTV is aimed directly at them and I will eat my hat if the vast majority of their subscriber base aren’t in their awkward years or damned close to them. You know which other animation studios actively court teenagers? None! Disney tends to ignore teens in favour of the more moldable tweens, Nickelodeon doesn’t put a profound effort into anybody above the age of 12, Cartoon Network is just about the only network that has a presence in the teen market thanks to [Adult Swim], but they have no theatrical film division. Oother large-scale animation studios like Sony, Blue Sky, etc. play similar games; they all cater to younger audiences only.
Is Jeffrey Katzenberg subtly attempting a coup d’état of sorts of the teen market with animation? It’s certainly possible. AwesomenessTV has a history of animated content and animation is what DWA is good at, so it would seem reasonable to see the former leverage the high quality content of the latter and for both to grow their audiences as a result.
Going even further, you could parlay those teenage animation fans into adult animation fans. That’s not a far stretch especially given that the animation age ghetto currently occupies the very age group that AwesomenessTV caters to.
How will it pan out? It’s hard to say, but I was right before so can only hope that I’m right again 🙂
Back in October 2011, I took a look at four indicators that appeared to demonstrate that we were in a theatrical animation bubble. While those four factors are still very much relevant in 2013, let’s focus on one of them, namely the number of players involved. That factor alone should be cause for concern that we’re getting ever closer to a theatrical animation bubble.
The Current Players
For years, Disney pretty much had the theatrical animation market to itself. Sure there were a few minor players now and again (Don Bluth, Steven Spielberg, etc.) but for the best part of the last century, animated feature film = Disney.
That all began to change in the 90s as more studios latched on to the profitability and longevity of animated films. That period continues through to today with the studios below planning to release films in 2013:
Pixar
DreamWorks
Sony
Blue Sky (FOX)
Disney Feature Animation
DisneyToon
Illumination (Universal)
That’s a fair number of studios simply producing films. On top of that, they are actually releasing nine films. Now that’s just your large American studios, on top of that, there are films being released around the world that may or may not make it to these shores (although yours truly hopes that Song of the Sea certainly does.)
Nine Films? Can that be considered crowded? That’s a good question and the answer is, maybe. Animated films have shown remarkable resilience in the market but only if their perceived quality is high. CGI was a bulletproof format until it became ubiquitous. Today, mediocre CGI films can have a tough time just breaking even. DreamWorks’ recent Legend of the Guardians is proof of that.
The Current Signs of a Bubble
What prompted today’s post was the announcement that Warner Bros. has made a move to explore feature films again by tapping a number of talented individuals to operate as a sort of think tank for ideas. While Warner did have a theatrical division at the turn of the millennium, it has decided not to go that route again (a tacit admission that they screwed it up last time), opting instead to use an outside studio for actual production.
While the Warner move should be welcomed, it does make cause for concern that at this point, there will be eight entities vying for a similar number of young eyeballs that there was 10 years ago when only half those studios were in the marketplace.
With more players comes more competition, and with that comes the possibility of spiraling costs and compromises on quality. I don’t mean to engage in fear-mongering, far from it, but we should be considering these things while times are good, because they will help prepare us for when those times when the chips are down.
Poorly performing films already result in layoffs, what happens when that affects more than one studio at the same time?
The Deciding Factors
The first thing to consider is that the amount of free time people have isn’t rapidly changing. It is gradually increasing, but there hasn’t been any massive changes over the last 40 years or so (at least in the US.)
Secondly, theatrical films, or more accurately, feature films, must contend with lots of other competitors at multiple stages of their commercial lives. At the cinema, they must compete with other uses of people’s time. At the store, they are competing against other DVDs, and when they finally make it to TV, they could be up against the latest reality TV show. Cinema’s themselves, though long used to competing with the likes of television, must now also grapple with the fact they they are no longer the sole place to see the latest films.
Lastly, quality will have a massive bearing on whether we are in a bubble or not. The year 2012 was a good one for the the north American box office but it was driven by only a few large hits, a worrying sign that smaller films aren’t picking up the slack when it comes to dropping cinema attendance.
On a related note, we should keep in mind that the box office is far from the only thing affecting the profits of feature films. Things like home video as well as TV and streaming rights all have a role in how animated feature films perform. However, history indicates that Hollywood studios remain inexplicably fixated with box office grosses and continue to measure a film’s success by that yardstick more than any other.
The Mitigating Factors
Managing the bubble is tough. Profits are being made, wages are relatively decent and consumers continue to watch animated films. As far as the indicators go, it’s a good time to be getting into the market. However, as we all know, the housing market was also a great thing to get into, until it suddenly collapsed in 2008.
Ideally, we need to see either less output on the part of the studios, or more opportunities to watch them. Seeing as the number of screens and the amount of free time consumers have aren’t changing as rapidly as the market is rising, we’re eventually going to see a crunch. That means output is going to have to be reduced.
“But Charles,” I hear you say, “Pixar, Disney, Sony, Blue Sky and Illumination only release one film a year, how can they cut back?” That’s true, but remember, in the 60s and 70s, Disney only put out an animated feature once every three years. Dark times they were, but economics dictated such a schedule and the studio survived (barely.)
That leaves DreamWorks as the only large studio pumping out more than one film a year. Although that’s all part of Jeffrey Katzenberg’s current strategy, there’s a good chance we’ll see that number dropping in the near future as that studio’s library gets up to an acceptable size.
Will The Theatrical Animation Bubble Pop?
I sincerely hope not, and audiences have shown a remarkable fondness for animated features on a level that they have never enjoyed before. It would be devastating in plenty of ways if the [good] momentum that has built up over the last 20+ years was lost. For now, keep an eye on the numbers, and hope that they remain good.
Do you think the bubble will pop? What can be done to ensure it won’t? Let us know with a comment!
