Hacker Cinema
Dumbo
2019 · Film · 112 min
Directed by Tim Burton
A young elephant, whose oversized ears enable him to fly, helps save a struggling circus, but when the circus plans a new venture, Dumbo and his friends discover dark secrets beneath its shiny veneer.
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5 comments on Hacker News
Disney used to have an official Crap Sequels Division: DisneyToons. Wikipedia has a list of their direct-to-DVD movies, which could usually found at the bargain bin near the checkout counter.[1] When Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, somehow John Lassiter ended up in charge of Disneytoons. He didn't like running the crap sequels business. After a decade of cancellations and missteps, DisneyToons was shut down in 2018 and the animators were laid off.
Disneytoons movies only cost about $15M to make and usually made over $100M.
Dumbo (2019) was not a Disneytoons movie. It cost $170 million to make. The problem Disney now faces is that classic low-end animation won't sell, and photorealistic with live action is very expensive to produce. So they now lack a low-end product line.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disneytoon_Studios
> did not involve characters where their race was either important to
I think the appearances of a character is quite important if the author took the time to describe it, don't you think?
Would a Little women adaptation where the three women are two trans gender people, one Black, one Asian and one South American person that identifies as woman, be a good idea?
We all know what "Little women" is about, we all expect that, not something else completely unrelated to the original IP.
Why isn't Jay Gatsby black in the movies and only black people in the book are also black in the movie?
Want my opinion?
People are making a big fuss about the ethnicity of actors, but I'm more inclined to think that Disney's worried about another failure like Tim Burton's Dumbo (the original Dumbo is considered unacceptable by today's standards and people staid away from the new one) and is playing it safe with a story (Pinocchio) that has no such bad legacy attached. it's so safe that there's even a "project Pinocchio" in my country against racism in schools.
> If you made him Dutch and portrayed by Chris Hemsworth you'd have to include in your movie all kinds of extra exposition and world building to set the background for the story.
That's exactly my point.
A black fairy is not an issue because she is black, but because it's a plot hole that the original story don't have.
You are right in regards to building on stuff that they already own. All the movies this year that have grossed over $100 Million have been based on older content.
1 Avengers: Endgame
2 The Lion King (2019)
3 Captain Marvel
4 Toy Story 4
5 Aladdin (2019)
6 Dumbo (2019)
They're pretty much everyone else. New releases of these "same games" bring better graphics, or animations, or gameplay, or story, or any combination of the previous. FIFA, in addition I assume they also include the new players and trades that happened since the last version (but I don't play FIFA so I could be wrong here).
Nostalgia is also a big factor, with so many reboots and adaptations of source material to new media, today's adults will pay to see all the Marvel blockbusters because they read the comics or saw the TV show as kids. I'd bet many people that bought MK9 - which rebooted the saga - did it for nostalgia. The same probably happened with the new Tomb Raiders, also a reboot of the series. Have you heard of the new The Lion King? Or Dumbo? Or Aladdin? Or any of the 500 new remakes Disney wants to make? Same thing.
"Those movies — including “Captain Marvel,” “Dumbo,” “Toy Story 4,” “The Lion King,” “Frozen 2” and a new “Star Wars” installment — will now be key selling points for the new service Iger has referred to as “Disney Play.”
Sounds like the successor to DisneyToons, the crap sequel division of Disney. Should be called "Disney Replay".
Meanwhile, Amazon is coming out with new stories.