No More Disney Fairy Tales?
Back in 2004 or so, I started toying with the idea for a different kind of fairy tale retelling, one which went back to the original stories and put the princesses squarely in charge of their own stories, kicking ass and saving princes and all of that. This was, in part, a response to the princess phase my daughter went through, wherein the house was invaded by Disney princess merchandise.
I’m currently finishing up final revisions on the fourth book in my series, and I just learned that Disney is getting out of the fairy tale game.
I’m not sure, but I think this means I win!
ETA: Or maybe not. According to a quote from Ed Catmull on the Disney Animation Studios Facebook Page, the LA Times is wrong, and Disney has a number of (unnamed) projects in development. Hm … I think they’re bluffing. But hey, if anyone at Disney is looking for new fairy tale twists for upcoming movies, give my agent a call!
Anubis
December 4, 2010 @ 10:03 am
Congratulations! Given that Disney did to fairy tales what Rome did to Carthage, I assure you this is most heartfelt.
I definitely will have to take a look in some of those fairy tale retellings one day.
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Jim C. Hines
December 4, 2010 @ 10:57 am
Thanks! Though apparently my declaration of victory might be premature. Disney’s announcement is oddly phrased, though. Makes me wonder what’s going on behind the scenes.
A few friends over on LJ suggested that maybe they’re just steering away from princess-themed movies, given what happened with Princess & the Frog, and with
RapunzelTangled…Jeff Linder
December 4, 2010 @ 10:32 pm
I don’t think Princess and the Frog was the underperformer people seem to think. Just came back from Disneyland this fall and to call Tiana popular would be an understatement at best. Her merchandise was doing very very well.
But I think its a valid point that the Princess target market has shrunk in age, so it makes sense that Disney may not put as many resources into those films, or look to skew them a little differently like they did with Tangled (or if you go back, look at Enchanted). But that’s different than saying no fairy tale movies, ever. If someone there comes up with a good concept, it will get made.
I’m guessing here, but I’ll assume that Disney operates like most major houses, they have a number of projects in various stages of development and those constantly get reshuffled based on market research, economics, time and budget, etc. So when they say they have many projects in development, that’s probably true if a bit disingenious, as ‘in development’ could mean that someone has made a pitch and it wasn’t rejected yet.
Hel
December 5, 2010 @ 12:40 am
Aww, I like the Disney fairy tales. Granted, I like them largely for the fact that they expose a larger segment of the population to fairy tales and thus you can use them as a stepping stone into related material.
Dwagginz
December 5, 2010 @ 5:24 am
Aww, that’s a bit of a shame if it’s true. Maybe it’s just a case of girls not being as interested in it as they were? Disney don’t seem to be putting out the same sort of titles that they used to (It’s now seemingly endless sequels and prequels) and it doesn’t help that the price of Disney DVDs is horrifying. Your average Disney DVD is a good £5 more expensive than a DVD from any other company, and the reduction in popularity could be that parents are moving away from Disney and towards Dreamworks (And similar) because the DVDs are cheaper and they’re just as good – if not better – than Disney products.
OK, that came across as really weird considering I’m (almost) 21. And male. And I really want to see Tangled.
Dwagginz
December 5, 2010 @ 5:27 am
Actually, just had a thought. Tangled looks suspiciously like a Pixar film, to the point where it looks like a Pixar film. I was surprised to find out that it was by Disney, not Pixar (I know Pixar are owned by Disney, but they seem to be treated separately). Maybe what Disney will do is put more resources into Pixar and Pixar-esque films? They tend to be much better, in my opinion, and the quality is always mind-blowingly high. I was still surprised by how good A Bug’s Life looked the other day, despite it being positively ancient by film standards.
Hel
December 5, 2010 @ 2:54 pm
Dwagginz: Actually you’re a lot closer than you think. John Lasseter started at Disney. He then ran off and made Pixar. Then Disney bought Pixar, but instead of taking over, they put John Lasseter in charge of them. It’s almost like Pixar is the magical, good-movie-making parasite and Disney is the host.
Dwagginz
December 5, 2010 @ 4:33 pm
Thanks for the snipped history, Hel, I’d no idea they were that closely linked. I thought it was simply a case of Disney buying out Pixar after working with them for so long or something to that degree.
Stephen Watkins
December 6, 2010 @ 11:14 am
Why the hate-on for Disney’s Fairy-tale movies? Yeah I’m a totally heterosexual middle-aged male, but I was also totally raised on that stuff, and Disney movies and fairy-tales figure very heavily into my development as a major modern consumer of fantasy fiction. I missed both Princess & the Frog and, thusfar, Tangled… but both will be seen by me eventually, I promise you that.
Jim C. Hines
December 6, 2010 @ 11:16 am
Where did I say that I hated Disney or their movies? Or were you responding to someone in the comments?
Stephen Watkins
December 6, 2010 @ 11:22 am
I guess it was a response to the glee (quote: “I’m not sure, but I think this means I win!”) that I read into the tenor of the post. It kind of came off as a “HA! Take that foul Disney Fairy Tale” reaction to me…
Considering that your own Princess books can sort of be understood as counter-reactions against the Disney Princess stereotype, I couldn’t help but see a sort of antagonistic rivalry built into that statement. Which I didn’t think was fair, because the counter-reaction couldn’t really exist without the Disney stereotype to react against in the first place.
Jim C. Hines
December 6, 2010 @ 11:40 am
I find a lot of what they’ve produced to be problematic, in a number of different ways, and yes my books were written at least in part as a response to the princess phenomenon put forth by Disney and other companies.
For any real rivalry to exist, there would need to be a situation wherein I was in any way a serious rival for Disney. Sorry, but that’s rather silly. Compared to the Disney empire, I’m basically a gnat.
Stephen Watkins
December 6, 2010 @ 12:16 pm
Perhaps technically true from the standpoint of Disney’s general awareness of you*… that’s irrespective to your own perspective of your relationship with them, which is what I saw as the fuel of the post. Which is to say, considering that your latest books were reactions against the Disney stereotype, it was reasonable to conclude that you disagreed with something in the way Disney went about adapting fairytales. Disney doesn’t have to be aware of you for you to disagree with them (so perhaps my use of the word “rivalry” was inappropriate). It was then not too far a leap of logic and reading to find, between the lines, a certain satisfaction on your part that Disney was “getting out of the game”, so to speak, even if not really for anything you had done so much as external market contingencies. So, basically I read this post as schadenfreude. Ergo, a “hate-on”.
If that wasn’t a correct interpretation of your comments, my apologies. But if I detected that schadenfreude correctly… why so? I’m not saying that there hasn’t been a certain amount of chauvanism inherrent in some of Disney’s fare in the past, but quite frankly Disney Princesses have been a fairly liberated bunch for quite a long time. Belle, for instance, doesn’t cotton with Gaston’s chauvanistic piggishness. And Ariel is pretty head-strong, and gets what she wants in the end because of it. When Jasmine discovers that Aladdin’s been lying to her, he has to go through a hell of a lot of hoops to earn her forgiveness. And she was the first to see through Jafar’s false pretenses and stand up against him. Each of these, and more, were pretty damn active in their own destinies.
That’s pretty recent history, perhaps… if you go back farther you get Briar Rose and Cinderella and Snow White, etc…. each of whom were perhaps a little less directly active in their own stories. But they form part of a tapestry that gave rise to a lot more feminism in later entries (and were, after all, products of a more conservative time; Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty, respectively, bookend the 50s). So celebrating the end of that particular era is coming a little late to the party. Disney itself has already long-since danced on that grave, in their own way. (Or, if you prefer, evolved to a higher order of intelligence, to use a different metahpor.) And even so, there’s a lot of good to be said of those entries (for instance, the subtley subversive influence in helping to create the first full generation of fantasy aficianadoes).
*Note that I’m entirely incapable of commenting on the anything Disney knows or thinks, being merely an outside consumer and observer, not privvy to the thoughts and ideas thereof.