Don Bluth Still Believes 2D Animated Films Can Return

[wonderfly]

From the front page of AnimeSuperhero.com:

"Don Bluth Still Believes 2D Animated Films Can Return"​

"Like most respectable animation fans, we love ourselves some Don Bluth, at least when the material he’s been given is decent. But the sad truth is, it’s now been 24 years since his last theatrical film, Titan AE, and he hasn’t been given a major job since. This, however, has not dampened his optimism: all these decades later, he’s still waiting by the phone.

Over the weekend, during MegaCon in Orlando, ComicBook.com hosted a panel with Bluth where he talked about his past and his hopes for the future. As ComicBook is wont to do, they split up the reporting of this panel into five or six mini-articles for maximum clickage profits, but we’re going to be more kind and bundle it all into one post."

Read the full article here.

Anyone here hoping Don Bluth somehow returns to direct one more animated film?

 

[Elijah Abrams]

I believe Donny B should make one more film before going fully going into retirement. Maybe he could revive one of his cancelled projects, or do something new?

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I know it will probably never happen, but I think it would be cool if he did East of the Sun, West of the Moon. Out of all the cancelled Don Bluth movies that one sounded the best to me.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

Maybe do a Land Before Time sequel but this time he actually is involved in it. And have it just regard the entire rest of the sequels as non-canon.

 

[CookieS]

Studio Ghibli's "The Boy and the Heron," a 2D animated film, grossed $106.1 million worldwide box office. A 2D feature film can be supported in theaters, but there are a few factors to consider:

1. The growing cost of theater tickets compared to the streaming costs. Many people opt to stick to their streaming, which contains a majority of exclusive animated series/movies in 2D.
2. The demographic of the audiences that go to theaters. Today families with younger children opt to stick to streaming platforms for various reasons. These families were the core audiences for many of the 2D theatrical films. Titan A.E. was specifically targeted to a slightly older audience and only made $36.8 million worldwide, with a budget of over $75 million.

I think Bluth's sentiment is correct, in that 2D-style animation will likely return to theaters, but I'm not sold that it will return in the way we think. Many animated series present as 2D, but are 3D rendered and styled with an illustrative effect. Traditional hand-drawn cel animation (like the kind Bluth made in his films) doesn't seem to fit the business model of the current Hollywood system.

 

[CNNickFan]

Don Bluth...

I'm taking his sentiments with a grain of salt.

 

[thisithis]

I remember Titan AE, It bombed so bad and killed Don Bluth's career. And to make things sadder, it's now owned by Disney now. Mostly the film wasn't that bad, but Fox really screwed up that last zoom-out scene of the Planet. Sometimes a single scene can kill your whole film, and a low-rendered zoom-out of a Planet pretty much did the film in.

 

[Dr.Pepper]

I remember Titan AE, It bombed so bad and killed Don Bluth's career. And to make things sadder, it's now owned by Disney now. Mostly the film wasn't that bad, but Fox really screwed up that last zoom-out scene of the Planet. Sometimes a single scene can kill your whole film, and a low-rendered zoom-out of a Planet pretty much did the film in.

I’m thinking the movie’s marketing hurt it more than a single scene did. But then again, I haven’t seen the movie in a long, long time.

 

[Rick Jones]

Traditional cel animation was always my preference but I love animation in general. As a kid, it always took me a long time to warm up to CGI (Toy Story, Beast Wars, etc) before I started accepting it (The Incredibles, Finding Nemo) as much as hand drawn. I never expected theatrical 2D to go away in the way that it did. I don't know what it would take for a Hollywood studio to take a chance on 2D again, or if it would even be successful, but I still hope it's a possibility some day.

As much as I loved The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh, it does feel silly that those movies would have been expected to get the wheel turning again. I feel certain that those movies might have fared the same if they were CG. Maybe Tangled and Frozen would have been similar hits in 2D... I don't know.

 

[cheril59]

Well, Bluth's belief is about to come true. There's a new Looney Tunes movie coming out, you know: The Day the Earth Blew Up.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

It'll be the 2030s at the earliest before Disney ever makes another 2D animated theatrical movie.

 

[thisithis]

After Exosquad was canceled for no reason by MCA/Universal back then, the Titan AE commercials gave me hope. And then the movie came out, and all hope for a good serious, sci-fi, animated film or TV show was pretty much dead after that. Even though Iron Giant was good it still sadly flopped, Exosquad was gone, and Heavy Metal 2 was a joke. We wouldn't see anything until Voltron on Netflix. It is just sad to watch and with that zoom-out scene, we could see green sticks with green arrowheads on top and double more arrowheads until we could see that they were supposed to be trees.

 

[CassieTheDragon]

Well, Bluth's belief is about to come true. There's a new Looney Tunes movie coming out, you know: The Day the Earth Blew Up.

That's if Zaslav decides not to shelve it...

 

[Elijah Abrams]

That's if Zaslav decides not to shelve it...

Zaslav does not have control over that film.