Friday, January 16, 1998
Who’ll draw more?
FILM
By Aimee Phan
Daily Bruin Staff
It has been over a month since the anticipated battle between
animated beauties "The Little Mermaid" and "Anastasia" took place
and now it’s time to see who’s left standing. The results show that
the war over animated features is far from over. And it will
certainly get more interesting.
To date, "Anastasia" has made 20th Century Fox over $50 million
domestically at the box office, something that many consider to be
a breakthrough for a non-Disney animated musical.
So will the success of "Anastasia" lead other studios to give
the once-mighty Disney a run for its money in the risky but highly
lucrative animation feature business? Or was this just a one-shot
deal with Disney continuing to dominate the ‘toon market?
Kevin Bannerman, vice president of production at Fox Family
Films does see "Anastasia" as an encouraging sign that profitable
animated features are not exclusively Disney’s domain anymore.
"It encourages us to continue in the animation business because
we have shown that other movies outside of Disney can succeed,"
Bannerman says. "It has, on a very strong level, given us a lot of
support and credibility in the artistic community because, over the
years, so many people have tried to do animated features and have
crashed and burned on their first effort. Now they will take us
much more seriously."
Although this animation trend has intensified this year, there
have been other non-Disney cartoons who have tried, but
unfortunately failed, to make an impression at the box office. The
public, for a while, couldn’t seem to buy an animated feature that
didn’t come from Mickey Mouse. Animated films such as "The Pebble
and the Penguin," "Fern Gully" and "Balto" failed to make a
large-