In Contention

Tag: Disney

  • A home for Miramax

    Okay, for “home,” read “resting place.” Scrap those sweet-but-always-unlikely reports that the high-end company would be returning to the warm embrace of its parents, the finally outbiddenBrothers Weinstein. The story has a less sentimental ending, but an ending nonetheless — Disney has sold Miramax to one Filmyard Holdings Llc, run by non-film businessmen Ronald Tutor and Tom Barrack.

    The price? A cool $660 million.

    Though details are few, The Hollywood Reporter states that Filmyard plans to launch a new production company that will both cover the Miramax library (consisting of 700+ titles) and make the occasional new feature. The Miramax you know, in other words, is history, reduced to a name-only warehouse of sorts. But you saw that coming. You can read the business-y nuts and bolts of the deal here, if you so wish; I’ll leave you with Disney chief Robert Iger’s parting shot…

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  • Taymor’s ‘Tempest’ to bookend Venice fest

    Days after naming Darren Aronofsky’s “Black Swan” as the festival’s curtain-raiser, the Venice Film Festival’s have picked another not-entirely-expected title to close the fest on September 11: Julie Taymor’s long-delayed Shakespeare adaptation, “The Tempest.”

    The decision to bookend proceedings with highly anticipated U.S. productions suggests the Venice brass are aiming for higher star wattage on the Lido than at last year’s low-key edition, which opened with Giuseppe Tornatore’s misfire “Baaria” and closed with the little-seen Chinese portmanteau pic “Chengdu, I Love You.” More strategically, this choice of closer seems calculated to compel journalists to stay for the full duration of the fest — something of a challenge when Toronto begins but a few days earlier.

    I admit I hadn’t counted on seeing Taymor’s film, which stars Helen Mirren as a gender-switched Prospero in the director’s typically loose interpretation of the Shakespeare standard, in the fall festival pack — though distributor Disney (picking up where Miramax left off) had already confirmed a December release date.

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  • Weinstein teams with Disney/ABC for ‘Nine’ attack

    Penelope Cruz in NineHarvey Weinstein’s publicity campaign for “Nine” was never going to be a subtle affair, was it?

    Variety reports that The Weinstein Company has turned to Disney/ABC Unlimited for a cross-platform promotional pact that will see the Oscar-baiting musical saturating ABC’s programming, from “Dancing With the Stars” to daytime soap operas:

    Under the arrangement, a themed dance number on the Nov. 17 episode of “Stars” will be set to the “Nine” song “Be Italian.” Dancers will also wear outfits from the movie.

    Meanwhile, throughout the month of December, “Nine” will be written into episodes of “All My Children,” “One Life to Live” and “General Hospital.”

    Also, on Nov. 22, a two-minute “Nine” trailer will run simultaneously “road-block” style on Lifetime, ABC Family, SoapNet, A&E and Bio. That same night, the trailer is set to run on ABC during the “American Music Awards.”

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  • 9/15 Web Round-up

    Jason Reitman on the set of Up in the Air• James Rocchi sits down with Jason Reitman to talk “Up in the Air.” [AMC TV]

    • Jeffrey Wells bangs the Best Picture drum for Rodrigo Garcia’s as-of-yet un-acquired “Mother and Child.” [Hollywood Elsewhere]

    • Michael Douglas talks “Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.” [Empire]

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  • Lasseter on reviving 2-D animation and Pixar’s “failures”

    The Princess and the FrogJohn Lasseter certainly gives good interview. We linked back in June to a candid and very thorough piece in which the Pixar maven talked through his up-and-down (and up again) history with Disney. Now Variety carries a worthwhile profile of the man, in anticipation of the lifetime-achievement Golden Lion he is due to receive at the Venice Film Festival next week.

    In it, he reveals the supposed secret behind Pixar’s unbroken run of hits (not to mention their enviable critical track record) to be a collaborative “creative brain trust,” whereby an in-progress project is screened every three months, then critiqued and workshopped by Lasseter and the studio’s leading creatives.

    It’s a process designed to nip potential story problems in the bud, while Lasseter and his collaborators would have you believe that such problems emerge more often than not:

    “We fail a lot,” admits “Toy Story 3” director Lee Unkrich. “We just don’t fail by the time the movie comes out. John would be the first to tell you that every movie we’ve made has been at one point the biggest piece of garbage we’ve ever worked on.”

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  • Five new docs added to Toronto slate

    The Little MermaidindieWIRE’s Peter Knegt reports on a few new developments on the documentary side of things at the upcoming Toronto fest, chief of which is the addition of a further five titles to the feature doc lineup.

    Three of the five will be having their world premiere at Toronto, including Bob Richman’s “Ahead of Time,” a study of the life of venerable Brooklyn-born intellectural Ruth Gruber, and Icelandic production “The Sunshine Boy,” which details a mother’s coming to terms with her son’s autism.

    The film, however, that I suspect most eyes will be on is “Waking Sleeping Beauty,” the directorial debut from esteemed, Oscar-nominated Disney producer Don Hahn (“The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast”), which covers a section of recent cinematic history held dear by many:

    This isn’t a fairy tale, but rather the true story of how the Disney animation team went from stagnation in the mid-1980s to a startling rebirth with a staggering output of hits – Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and more – over a ten year period. Director Don Hahn, who was a key contributor on many of these works, brings an insider’s perspective to the film.

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  • Rob Marshall and ‘Pirates’ … why not?

    Rob Marshall It seems I’m one of the few people who isn’t particularly bothered by the admittedly surprising prospect of Rob Marshall directing the fourth go-round of “Pirates of the Caribbean.”

    Variety first floated the news yesterday that the Oscar-nominated choreographer-turned-filmmaker is in talks to take the reins of Disney’s megabucks franchise from Gore Verbinski, prompting a stream of “what is he thinking” remarks around the web.

    While sideswiping Marshall’s upcoming “Nine” as a “problem movie,” David Poland rather melodramatically suggests that it might be “the single worst idea in history.”

    Jeff Wells, meanwhile, foresees this damaging Marshall’s Oscar prospects for “Nine.” (Not that the stench of the “Da Vinci Code” franchise turned the Academy off Ron Howard. And I doubt Marshall will be a contender for the win anyway, but that’s another discussion.)

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  • Lasseter on his Disney ups and downs

    John LasseterTotal Film has done a notably thorough interview with John Lasseter, which takes the form of a chronological tour through the animation maven and “Toy Story” director’s career. It’s a fascinating read, particularly if you, like me, are not entirely au fait with the early history of Pixar and computer animation. I hadn’t realized how the dots all joined between Lasseter and such diverse figures as Steve Jobs, Tim Burton, George Lucas and Chris Wedge. Small world, and all that.

    The overarching narrative that emerges from the interview is Lasseter’s complicated history with Disney Animation Studios. He may run the place now, but getting fired by them decades ago has clearly left its mark. He’s too genial a guy to remain bitter, but he’s still frank about how unpleasant his early Disney days were:

    When I got there I found it was led by people who felt threatened by young talent. I kept suggesting stuff but I remember being told by one of them, ‘Look we don’t want to hear your ideas, just do what you’re told. There are plenty of guys who’d be happy to take your place.’

    In two sentences some guy made me not care about the studio; he made me not care about the project I was working on. And I thought to myself, ‘One day if ever I’m in charge I’m never going to say to a young person what that guy just said to me’. But it didn’t stop me, I just kept trying to push and make things better.

    When we showed the test and gave a pitch (for “The Brave Little Toaster”), the head of the film studio just said, ‘The only reason to produce this by computer is if it makes it cheaper and faster.’And he walked out. Within five minutes I get a call: ‘Your project is incomplete and your employment with the Disney Animation Studios is now terminated.’

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  • The balcony is closed

    (from left) Gene Siskel and Roger EbertI’ve stayed away from the news of Disney-ABC canceling “At the Movies” throughout the week because I wanted to collect my thoughts in a post-Batman environment. As you know, it’s been very difficult to get around to discussing much beyond “The Dark Knight” for two weeks now.

    By now I’m sure you’ve read the initial AP story, quoting Roger Ebert as saying he “won’t be a part” of the “new direction” company brass are taking the daily film review show. You can also read perspective on the matter in any number of places, from Anne Thompson (who has taken a stab at filling in for Ebert across from Richard Roeper during the show’s string of guest critics) to David Poland (roots in Chicago, worked on the show eight or nine years ago, vocal about the show’s decline over the years).

    Thompson also reported on the duo’s replacement by the two Bens, Lyons and Mankiewicz. Poland, who posted a statement from Ebert on Monday, was livid at the news.

    With all the behind-the-scenes train-wrecking going on, I can’t help think back to the mid-to-late 1980s when I first discovered and really grew to enjoy Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert’s tussling over the cinema. It wasn’t until maybe 10 years later that I felt I could really stake an opinion on the proceedings, but those early years were an interesting sort of primer for the cinematic passion that would grab me later in life.

    I think Poland may have said it best:

    If you want to engage people who love movies enough to watch a show like this, you need people on the show who REALLY care. We all remember the fighting between Roger & Gene. But in retrospect, it was more than fighting…it was real arguing over different ideas of what made a good or bad movie. And we, as an audience, were invited to take sides…if, someday, the Ebert & Siskel chemistry is found again, it will be a real pleasure.

    He’s referring to a potential Roeper/Michael Phillips (of the Chicago Tribune) rival show in the last line. Roeper left “At the Movies” the day before the cancellation announcement.

    I don’t know if that old feeling will ever be felt again. And I don’t know if, in this Internet-driven age of egos and knee-jerk reactions, real chemistry and true discussions about films can take place between two “in the business” talking heads. It is a very different world, an opinion-based, personality-driven Web era of singular assessments.

    But I’d like to be wrong. In the meantime, it is relaxing to look back and remember…at the very least.

    Here’s one of my favorite vintage clips, Siskel and Ebert’s review of Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket,” which sparked one of the duo’s many disputes. Ebert thought it was cliched, Siskel thought it was a near masterpiece:

    httpv://youtube.com/watch?v=BFiQ1YVJ9js

    There are, of course, dozens of clips available on YouTube. Just a handful of the highlights:

    “Schindler’s List”
    “Pulp Fiction” (Ebert’s #2 film of the 90s)
    “Goodfellas”
    “Full Metal Jacket” (big split of opinion here)
    “Die Hard 2: Die Harder” (one of Siskel’s top 10 films of 1990)