When Will Walt Finally Turn Over In His Grave?

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Dec 20, 2002

by Enoch Allen

I suppose that I'm whining about something that I can do absolutely nothing about. Nevertheless, I tell myself whine on, whine on.

Treasure Planet, still hanging on for dear life (it won't be after Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers gets done with it), recently crawled past the $28 million mark at the box office. Nice. Now, they are only about $112 million away from recouping their disastrous investment.

Oh, I forgot. Studios get only 55% of the proceeds from their film--the rest, I believe, has to come from home video sales. So, I can guesstimate that Disney has made a little more than $15 million, thus far, from Planet. Which is not to say that this is the end of the road for Disney's Planet campaign, since they have yet to release Treasure Planet in international markets. However, even if the film does good box office abroad, the costs of making the film still will not be fully recouped when you consider the international currency exchange rate.

And yet, Spirited Away awaits the wide release that it might never get.

I believe that Walt knew a good animated film when he saw one, and he would have noticed something fantastically special about Spirited Away. If Mr. Disney were still alive and kicking (and in charge), he would have restructured the entire upper-level management of Disney (not to mention its distribution arm) for shoddily treating a masterwork like Spirited Away. Alas, Spirited remains lodged in Disney's corporate sleeve, like a card that the player didn't see and never bothered to pull out. When the players at Disney collectively pull the Spirited Away card from their sleeve, they will see that the card was not the joker that they believed it was; rather, it was indeed an ace. By the time that they realize this, they would have lost the entire game.

Questions/comments? E-mail me at eaabrooks@hotmail.com.

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