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Steve Hulett recounts his role in the the confusing and chaotic production of Disney's most un-Disney-like feature, "The Black Cauldron."

New chapters of Mouse in Transition will be published every Friday on Cartoon Brew. It is the story of Disney Feature Animation—from the Nine Old Men to the coming of Jeffrey Katzenberg. Ten lost years of Walt Disney Production’s animation studio, through the eyes of a green animation writer. Steve Hulett spent a decade in Disney Feature Animation’s story department writing animated features, first under the tutelage and supervision of Disney veterans Woolie Reitherman and Larry Clemmons, then under the watchful eye of young Jeffrey Katzenberg. Since 1989, Hulett has served as the business representative of the Animation Guild, Local 839 IATSE, a labor organization which represents Los Angeles-based animation artists, writers and technicians. Read Chapter 1: Disney’s Newest Hire Read Chapter 2: Larry Clemmons Read Chapter 3: The Disney Animation Story Crew Read Chapter 4: And Then There Was…Ken! Read Chapter 5: The Marathon Meetings of Woolie Reitherman Read Chapter 6: Detour into Disney History Read Chapter 7: When Everyone Left Disney Read Chapter 8: Mickey Rooney, Pearl Bailey and Kurt Russell “Chief has to DIE,” Ron Clements said. “The picture doesn’t work if he just breaks his LEG. Copper doesn’t have enough motivation to hate the fox.” Ron looked at me intently, shaking his head. He was a supervising animator on The Fox and the Hound, and was just then in the process of making a jump into the story department. He was something of a perfectionist and (for some reason) wanted the story to be better. Ron had worked for a season at Hanna-Barbera and then entered the Disney training program, apprenticing with veteran animator Frank Thomas. Within a decade he would be co-directing Disney’s breakout blockbuster The Little Mermaid, but at this moment he was unhappy with the story arc of The Fox and the Hound. “I agree with you, Ron,” I said. “Agree completely. But do you think Art Stevens will buy a change like that?” “I don’t know. But we have to try. The picture needs to be stronger.” The Fox and the Hound had a three-act structure. The second act had the fox, Tod, involved with a railroad accident. The old dog Chief gets knocked off a tall bridge by a thundering locomotive, and Tod gets unfairly blamed for the accident. Chief dies in the book on which the movie is based, but in the Disney version, the elderly dog only suffers a broken leg. Even so, Copper (the young bloodhound) angrily vows revenge against his friend Tod. Ron and most of the younger story crew thought Copper’s anger and lust for revenge was several clicks over the top, considering Tod’s minor sin. So Ron and the rest of us pleaded the case to the lead director: “Please let’s have Chief DIE.” Art was skittish about it, and said no. No surprise there. So the same argument was hauled upstairs to Disney’s management, with the same reaction: “You can’t kill off a lovable central character! Children will FREAK OUT! Parents will hate us! WE’LL GET LETTERS!!” Neither tearful pleas nor the example of Bambi’s mother catching a bullet could change the directors’ or the top brass’s minds. They wouldn’t kill Chief, and that was final. Ron Clements was not a guy who easily took “No” for an answer, but after a protracted campaign, he dropped the issue. Arguing was as pointless as jousting with windmills. (I had dropped the issue earlier. I am not a big believer in banging my head against hard, thick walls.) But it was one more point of dissatisfaction between the recently-arrived Young Turks and the Disney Animation establishment. The old timers from the 1930s were gone, but the generation that had rolled in during the 1940s and 1950s was finally holding the tiller, and they were bound and determined not to cede their newly acquired power and leverage to a bunch of goddamn kids in their goddamn twenties. Many of the “kids” were from California Institute of the Arts, the Disney-funded college in Valencia, California that served as a training ground for a lot of the animation industry. Walt Disney Productions had, in recent years, skimmed off the cream of the CalArts crop, and recent grads like John Musker, Henry Selick, Brian McEntee, Bruce Morris, Joe Ranft, Mikes Cedeno, Mike Giamo, Tim Burton, Jerry Rees, and an ebullient CalArts star named John Lasseter (among numerous others) populated the animation building. A 1980 volleyball game between the Disney producers and artists. The color commentary and play-by-play by John Musker reveals the underlying tensions between the two camps. Video by Randy Cartwright. Most of the CalArts group groused about the old-timers’ stodgy, moldy fig attitudes, and the stodgy, moldy fig product that resulted therefrom. They had been against the Bluth forces; now they chafed against the veterans’ tightly-held reins. Brad Bird had already gotten his ass fired for making his gripes too loud and too public, but the general mood of frustration and desire to try something fresh, new, and different continued. Even with the bad feelings, various CalArts graduates were being groomed for better things. Early on, John Musker jumped on a career track pointed toward director. John Lasseter was assigned to different projects in development. Bruce Morris and Joe Ranft quickly worked their way into story development. But the veterans remained territorial…and a touch paranoid. I remember Art Stevens saying, “Who do these pipsqueaks think they ARE?! They’re not geniuses. They can’t come in here and have their way after fifteen minutes!” (Another old-timer told me: “Art spent years in John Lounsbery’s unit as his key assistant. And Art would get furious if artists in their group tried to move up and out. He always wanted everybody to stay where they were, to not change anything. He’d get offended if anybody tried to jump ship.”) Tim Burton, bent over a light board down on the first floor, was becoming known for his very un-Disney character sketches. Joe Ranft, Darrell van Citters, Brian McEntee, Mike Giamo, Jim Mitchell, and …

IDW Publishing will release a comic adaptation of the 1990 hit movie, Edward Scissorhands.

Author Kate Leth has been brought on as the writer. Illustrator Drew Rausch has been hired to create the interior art. Artist Gabriel Rodriguez designed the cover for the first issue.

The story of this series takes place twenty years after the ending of Burton’s beloved film. According to the press release, “Kim’s granddaughter, Meg, grows up with Edward Scissorhands only being a legend, a bedtime story. But when weird things start to happen in her sleepy little town, it reawakens her curiously and she decides to search out for the mysterious Edward Scissorhands.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

A look at the work of Rustam Hasanov, Cartoon Brew’s Artist of the Day.

Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie debuted weakly last weekend in fifth place with $11.4 million. The opening is significantly lower than Burton’s last stop motion feature, The Corpse Bride, which debuted with $19.1M in 2005.

The opening of Frankenweenie concludes this year’s great stop motion experiment. It was the third major stop motion feature this year, following Aardman’s The Pirates!: Band of Misfits and Laika’s ParaNorman. None of the three films were able to crack a $15 million opening. In fact, no stop motion feature has ever had an opening north of $20 million. It begs the question, Are stop motion films simply incapable of grossing as much as CG or has no one ever made a stop motion film with mass audience appeal? In a year with more stop motion features than usual, it’s a question worth considering.

Meanwhile, Genndy Tartakovsky’s Hotel Transylvania is on its way to becoming one of Sony’s biggest animated hits. The film dipped a modest 36% in its second weekend, grossing $27.1M and pushing its U.S. total to $76.7M.

I’ll be seeing Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie on Saturday afternoon with my Asifa-Hollywood peeps at a screening on the Disney lot. Looking forward to it – especailly as Betsy Sharkey in The Los Angeles Times says “the artistry reaches absolute perfection… and Burton has never done it better” (though she notes, “it’s the story that poses some problems”). A.O. Scott in The New York Times simply calls it “a sweet and creepy homage to classic monster movies”.

It’s out today and you can see it yourself. How does it compare to The Corpse Bride or Nightmare Before Christmas? Where does it stack on the list next to ParaNorman and Hotel Transyvania? Give your opinions here (and, as usual, this discussion is only open to those who have actually seen the film).

A newer trailer with footage we haven’t seen before for Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie. Between ParaNorman, Hotel Transylvania and this, it’s monsters, monsters, monsters… (and I mean that in a good way):

Cartoon Brew | Permalink | 2 comments | Post tags: Frankenweenie, Tim Burton

Monstrous cake animation from Alexandre Dubosc, via Colossal. An homage to Tim Burton.

A new trailer has been released for the adaptation of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, a big screen adaptation of a mash-up novel by Seth Grahame-Smith.

Produced by the great Tim Burton, the film comes out in June–what do you think? Here is a concise plot summary: “Abraham Lincoln, the 16th President of the United States, discovers vampires are planning to take over the United States. He makes it his mission to eliminate them.”

Way back in 2010, we interviewed Grahame-Smith about his Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter novel, exploring how the bestselling monster mash-up Pride and Prejudice and Zombies had changed his life. Click here to listen to the interview.

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Dr. Seuss’ ‘The Lorax’ nabbed the top spot at the box office this weekend (garnering $70.7 million — the best opening of the year so far — and becoming the best debut ever for a non-sequel animated film! Although the movie didn’t... Read the rest of this post

“Sparky” lives – Tim Burton’s stop-mo feature will open October 5th, 2012. Here’s our first look at the animation:

Cartoon Brew: Leading the Animation Conversation | Permalink | No comment | Post tags: Frankenweenie, Tim Burton

Dark Shadows director Tim Burton may direct a film adaptation of Ransom Riggs‘ Miss Peregrine’s Home For Peculiar Children.

According to Deadline, Peter Chernin, Dylan Clark and Jenno Topping will produce the film. Riggs released his YA novel back in June and has since gone on a “whirlwind trip around the country” in search of more peculiar photos for a planned sequel.

Here’s more from the article: “[The book stars] Jacob, a 16-year-old whose childhood was filled with stories his grandfather told him about an orphanage for unusual children. Among the residents: a girl who could hold fire in her hands, another whose feet never touched the ground, and twins who communicated without speaking.”

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I finally made it to LACMA's Tim Burton exhibit, which was all the awesome that I was expecting. No one is allowed to take a camera into the exhibit, but people are permitted to take a photo of the entrance, which is suitably twisted. I am a huge Tim Burton fan, although I acknowledge that his work has been uneven (Planet of the Apes, anyone?). But in the spirit of Halloween, I thought I'd

Gen Y’s lifeline is their phone, and it’s one of marketers’ (best tools to reach them. More than just mobile ads, brands need to build mobile experiences for consumers; that means a mobile website, a mobile marketing plan, and... Read the rest of this post

Writer Kathryn Leigh Scott recently hosted a lunch in New York City to celebrate her new novel, Dark Passages. The author starred in Dark Shadows, and called her novel a “love letter” to the vampire soap opera from the late 1960s.

Here’s more from FishbowlNY: “Set in the swinging ’60s, it tells the tale of an actress moonlighting as a Playboy bunny who just happens to be vampire and is determined to make it in New York City without her supernatural powers. While working on the cult hit Dark Passages, she meets her nemesis, a 300-year-old witch.”

The author had just returned from London after shooting a cameo for Tim Burton‘s Dark Shadows film.

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Oscar-winner T Bone Burnett and Grammy-winner Danny Elfman will create the music for The Hunger Games film adaptation. According to the release, this project is “an unprecedented film music collaboration.”

The two composers will work together on the film score. Additionally, Burnett will serve as the executive music producer for both the score and the soundtrack. Many Hunger Games fans have reacted happily to the announcement on Facebook.

Lionsgate’s head of film music Tracy McKnight explained: “The Hunger Games is such a special property – it has worldwide mass appeal, but it’s also sophisticated, cerebral, soulful, and rebellious. We needed a composer who can translate these qualities musically, and we have not one but two incredible artists in an absolutely thrilling first time ever collaboration.”

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New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Scissorhands 20th

If you’re an Edward Scissorfan, you’ll enjoy this blog featuring illustrated tributes to Tim Burton’s film. This piece by Ken Turner.