Culturebox: The Black Cauldron

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dvd extras The Black Cauldron Is the movie that almost killed Disney animation really that bad? By Dan Kois Updated Tuesday, Oct. 19, 2010, at 11:24 AM ET In 1985, a single movie almost killed Disney animation. With an announced budget of $25 million--later accounts place it closer to $40 million--The Black Cauldron was at the time the most expensive animated film ever made. Based on Lloyd Alexander's fantasy series The Chronicles of Prydain, Cauldron's scary villain and dark themes earned it Disney animation's first-ever PG rating. In its opening weekend it made only $4 million at the box office, good for fourth place--behind an E.T. re-release, the month-old Back to the Future, and, at No. 1, National Lampoon's European Vacation. Its final domestic gross was just over $21 million. Recognized by animation fans as the nadir of Disney's post-Walt dark days, The Black Cauldron's flop marked the end of the studio's old way of making animated features. A new regime, led by Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg, did away with the robust budgets and production schedules that had allowed, for example, animators to airbrush every single cel of Pinocchio by hand. Instead, Disney moved the animation department out of its cushy digs in Burbank, Calif., into a warehouse in Glendale and focused on pushing out features faster and cheaper. The result was a series of classics (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast) in the next decade--and a long stretch of non-classics (Treasure Planet, Chicken Little) since. To continue reading, click here. Dan Kois is the author of Facing Future and writes regularly for New York, the Washington Post, Slate, the Awl, and Village Voice. Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum What did you think of this article? POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES Also In Slate Hitchens: How Hezbollah Has Taken Over Lebanon and Ruined It The Corporate Tigress, the Emasculator, and the Three Other Types of Female Candidates Michael Bloomberg's New Weapon in His War on Soda: Food Stamps	Advertisement
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