Progress City, U.S.A.

It’s been a while since things went rather quiet at Walt Disney Animation Studios in the wake of several canceled projects, awkward renamings, and general confusion and lack of direction. All that remained on the studio’s animated slate were this year’s Tangled, next year’s Winnie-the-Pooh, and Reboot Ralph – the computer animated film that has mutated from ex-Disney artist Sam Levine’s Joe Jump. It left the animation community wondering… what’s next?

Word has started to emerge that the gears are turning at Disney once more. King of the Elves, a fantasy based on a story by Philip K. Dick, was originally scheduled for a 2012 release before development was scrapped. Happily, allegations have recently emerged that work has resumed on this project. Even better is the recurring rumor that the film has been retooled as a traditionally animated feature, giving Disney’s artists something meaty to work on after Pooh.

Animation fans were further intrigued recently when word emerged, most notably on the Animation Guild blog, that a new project had been greenlighted for development. Note that this is only a go for development, not production, and that innumerable projects have traveled that road without making it to theaters. But if this is a project new to development, and not a revived concept like Elves or the still-dormant Snow Queen, what could it be?

Would you believe… Jack and the Beanstalk? That’s what I’m hearing, at least. As part of Disney marketing’s panicked flight from all things female in the wake of Princess and the Frog’s underperformance, the next animated film to go into development at Disney is a “boy” film.

Haven’t we seen that before? Some dude with mouse ears? In Fun and Fancy Free? Ah, well.

You should consider this information ultra-dicey at the moment, but some rumors are too good not to share. And remember – while I definitely trust my source, things change on the ground all the time. Is that CYA? You bet, but it’s also true.

Have you heard anything about Jack and the Beanstalk? If so, shoot me an email…

UPDATE: This is apparently director Chris Buck’s new project, following the cancellation of Snow Queen. Again, please remember that being greenlighted for development is not the same as getting the go-ahead for production.

UPDATE THE SECOND: Sources report that Chris Williams (Bolt) is now in the director’s seat for the revived King of the Elves. Also, I have some doubt as to the earlier rumors that it would be traditionally animated; it’s looking more likely that it will be another CG production. This leaves only Winnie the Pooh on the hand-drawn slate, although Ron Clements and John Musker are said to have a few new proposals in the pipeline.

Well, I didn’t intend for this week to become the animation apocalypse, but something seems to really be poking the hornets’ nest in Burbank and Emeryville. Snow Queen is back on the shelf, newt is dead, Rapunzel has been ridiculously rebranded as Tangled, and King of the Elves is either in turnaround or abandoned depending on who you talk to.

Then there are the more insidious whispers. Whispers that the Walt Disney Animation Studios will be severely downsized, going to a model similar to the one that has occasionally been pushed on Imagineering – that of a small, centralized core of managers and key creatives still working at Disney, with the production work farmed out to contractors. When Michael Eisner arrived at Disney in 1984, Jeff Katzenberg and Frank Wells originally wanted to go to this television model; if TV animation could be completed so cheaply in Korea or China, why couldn’t this be used for expensive theatrical animation too? Thankfully, Roy Disney and others were able to appeal to Eisner’s desire for prestige and keep animation at the Disney Studios, but who knows what the future holds.

But wait, there’s more – lots of rumbles of internecine squabbling at Pixar, possible troubles with Cars 2, the studio’s noticeable new reliance on sequels, and then today I hear the following words for the first time:

Toy Story 4.

Whenever I’m at some Disney event handing out my silly little business cards to people in Imagineering or Animation, I often tell them, “Feel free to read and yell at me when I get it wrong.” I don’t expect them to be ringing me up and giving me the top-secret scoop on their new projects; I’m hoping, instead, that they’ll set me straight when I’ve really messed up. Because despite what some might think, I do not relish disseminating bad news. I’ve had no happier day in reporting on animation than when Disney and Pixar released their very ambitious production slate in 2008. And while I’ve been talking about these recent rumors and events, no one hopes more than I that I’m completely wrong.

Just keep your eyes open and your ears to the ground, in the off chance that I’m unfortunately not wrong about this. Hopefully the suits are just in panic mode right now, and things will level off like they usually do. We’ve been on the cusp of disaster before only to be pulled out of the fire, so this could just the cycle of executive indecision at work. I’ll bet that if Rapunzel is a hit, the suits will be shoving each other out of the way to see who can take the most credit for it.

Well, the bodies sure are stacking up.

First, King of the Elves gets whacked. The computer-animated fantasy based on a short story by Philip K. Dick would have been released in 2012.

Then, in all the marketing-driven panic following Princess and the Frog’s lukewarm box office, Disney shelves the long-anticipated and traditionally animated The Snow Queen. Who’s up next on the hit list?

It looks like it’s newt.

Actually, I’ve been worried about this one for a long time. I’d heard a few things hinting at this, but nothing definitive enough that I’d be comfortable writing about it. Then, today in a comment thread on the Animation Guild Blog, Disney vet Floyd Norman stated that the film is dead.

newt was first announced in April of 2008 as part of Disney and Pixar’s ambitious new animation slate. It was to be directed by long-time sound engineer and guru Gary Rydstrom, from a script by Rydstrom and Leslie Caveny. Michael Giacchino was slated to write the score.

According to the press at the time, the film would have followed Newt and Brooke, the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet. Forced together by science to save their species, the only problem was that they can’t stand each other. According to the press release, “Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science.”

So, that’s out. But hey, at least we get Winnie-the-Pooh and Cars 2. Who wants to bet that newt’s summer 2012 release spot goes to another Pixar rehash, Monsters, Inc. 2?

UPDATE: I’ve had a couple of people tell me that King of the Elves has not actually been completely abandoned, but that it’s still in turnaround for retooling. I know this had been the fact at one point, but other informed sources have said that it’s no longer actively being worked on. If anyone can clarify this, drop me a line. In stranger news, I’ve had two sources independently hint to me that Cars 2 is actually having production problems, and I’ve seen that rumor posted anonymously today on the Animation Guild’s blog. Whispering campaign or fact, I don’t know, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.

It hasn’t been long since word emerged that one of the directors had been removed from King of the Elves, the computer animated film from Walt Disney Animation Studios that had been publicly announced for release in 2012. Since then, I’ve received lots of visitors to the site from Google searches about the film being canceled. On many animation sites, it seems that the conventional wisdom is that the film’s production has been halted. I was uncertain about this – after all, animated films go back for retooling all the time – but I noticed with sadness today that the film had been removed from the official Disney Animation site. Previously, there had been a link and a blurb for the film right beneath the one for Rapunzel.

So, is it in turnaround or has it gone the way of Fraidy Cat, My Peoples, and Wild Life? I certainly hope not. A Disney animated film based on a story by Philip K. Dick is too good to turn down. It would also be a break from fairy tales before Snow Queen hits, so that would be nice.

So what’s the story? Does anyone know?

Story sketch for King of the Elves by Ralph Zontag, circa 2007

Steve Hulett from the Animation Guild spent his day at Disney feature animation and has a few tidbits of note.

First, and unsurprising when you consider recent reports, is the fact that merchandise from The Princess and the Frog is selling like gangbusters well before the film even premieres. Disney’s Consumer Products division is usually far, far from my field of interest, but for those of us who love traditional animation and hope to see it spring back to life, this is nothing but good news. This film isn’t a sequel, or franchise, so the fact that millions of little kids already know and love these characters enough to clear shelves of the film’s merchandise means that they’ll be lining up when Princess hits theaters. The fact that the film, by all accounts, appears to be quite good makes the situation just about as perfect as it can get.

Next up is Joe Jump, the previously-abandoned computer animated project that is recently said to have staged a comeback from production limbo. Hulett reiterates that the film has, indeed, been moved from the back burner and has returned to active development.

Sadly, Hulett also reports that King of the Elves is being “retooled”. The long-in-development project, based on the 1953 short story by Philip K. Dick, seems to have gone into turnaround once more. Recent reports indicated that one of the film’s directors had departed the project, and the TAG Blog now confirms that it was director Robert Walker. It’s rumored that a new co-director has joined remaining original director Aaron Blaise on the project. It’s unknown how deep these story problems run or how it might affect the film’s previously-announced 2012 release date. The animation process is indeed a confusing and mysterious one, but hopefully the project will re-emerge from these troubles even stronger than before.