DreamWorks Animation's existence is an Onion article

MissUtilis · 2015-01-31 12:31:32

It is

Tachyon · 2015-01-31 13:04:37

ok

but please elaborate

Tre · 2015-01-31 15:41:23

Because it's the kind of thing that simultaneously makes Anonus you laugh and cringe?

Section42L · 2015-01-31 20:41:41

I said this first, so I should be the one to elaborate.

I said it in response to realizing that DWA's stock price dropped after How To Train Your Dragon 2 came out. This was because it didn't make a sufficiently huge opening weekend, despite it being a massive hit in the long run.

The very fact that Wall Street reacted to a massive hit as if it was a flop because it didn't meet their pre-defined standards of success seemed pretty Onion-esque to me.

There are also more visible details like the Richie Rich clothing line and the Captain Underpants movie (yes, really) that strike me as pretty Onion-esque in their own right.

MissUtilis · 2015-01-31 20:43:25

i thought of this again after seeing some guy on deviantART with a Shrek avatar and realizing that Shrek is under common ownership with Underdog and Shrek is the de facto mascot of an aspiring Disney wannabe

Tachyon · 2015-01-31 21:21:46

if DWA really wants to be Disney they should try harder, their efforts so far have been pretty poor on that front

(although i don't think they should try to be Disney)

but Shrek of all characters being the mascot of an aspiring Disney wannabe is fairly ironic, yes

Obā-san · 2015-01-31 22:30:49

it's all ogre

MissUtilis · 2015-01-31 22:45:55

Tachyon said:
if DWA really wants to be Disney they should try harder, their efforts so far have been pretty poor on that front

(although i don't think they should try to be Disney)

but Shrek of all characters being the mascot of an aspiring Disney wannabe is fairly ironic, yes

By "Disney wannabe" I mean how Jeffrey Katzenberg has based the company on the Disney of the mid '90s (right down to we-have-to-make-series-out-of-every-successful-movie). He wants DreamWorks to be a beloved global brand, whose characters are ubiquitous in the form of merchandising and licensed products.

Vriska · 2015-01-31 22:46:30

Well, at least Onions have layers.

MissUtilis · 2015-01-31 22:48:08

The acquisition of Classic Media is kind of weird

They DID have more recognizable IP than DreamWorks had (in sheer numbers - Rocky & Bullwinkle, Underdog, Lassie, Mr. Magoo, Casper, VeggieTales, Where's Waldo, Olivia, and for you Brits, Postman Pat and Noddy) but most of it hasn't been widely exposed in ages and/or is too dated not to seem like an anachronism today

Aliroz · 2015-01-31 22:50:51

No, I love lassie, caspe, veggietales, where's Waldo, and Olivia.

Vriska · 2015-01-31 22:52:40

Lol like 10-11 years ago I had these friends and we'd get together and watch VeggieTales and laugh so hard at it.

MissUtilis · 2015-01-31 22:52:56

I'm not saying it's bad, I'm just saying a lot of it is old and not really up to the task of being huge (almost every CM property is one that had its day literally decades ago) like DreamWorks wants it to be.

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 13:22:59

R&B, Lassie, Casper, Noddy and Where's Waldo all seem like they have potential to be bigger if better handled, at least

But Disney hasn't been consistently successful; their worst slumps have been periods when they've been perceived as stale, and unless i'm mistaken, each time it was new properties that pulled them out of it, not the marketing of existing ones... i guess Who Framed Roger Rabbit needs to be acknowledged given its use of established characters, but contrast Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Tangled, also consider the huge phenomena that Toy Story and Pirates of the Caribbean became after their initial installments (while conceding that they only grew with subsequent releases)... i could be wrong on some of the details, i know a lot of people here know more about this than i do, but it's obvious that Disney's success definitely does NOT lie wholly in the management of familiar brands

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 13:25:21

for that matter, unless i'm very much mistaken, the original HTTYD outgrossed Madagascar 3, which again shows that innovation can pay off

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 21:56:16

honestly today's Disney is kind of creepy what with how hard they seem to lean on Marvel (which is an absolute goldmine of IP that the majority of which hasn't had much, if anything, done with beyond the comic books, but still) and, once Episode VII is out, Star Wars

also the Princess machine seems to be speeding up

w/r/t original HTTYD gross: it outgrossed Madagascar 3 domestically, but not overall

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 23:18:30

obviously i'm not denying that Disney is very successful at the marketing of established IPs

i would agree that most if not all the Classic Media properties you mentioned never have and never will have the kind of star power DWA needs if they want to compete with Disney

but i guess that's why i'm saying they need to innovate, Disney are at the point where they CAN lean on established brands because the brands they have are so strong... neither Shrek nor HTTYD is Marvel or Star Wars tier, and if Penguins of Madagascar is anything to judge by, the Madagascar franchise isn't even close

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:25:25

the thing about DWA though is that they aim straight for Disney just because Katzenberg wants to get back at them, the whole company is his revenge against Eisner that keeps on going because he doesn't know what else to do with his life

DWA has a lot of competitors - Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network/Warner Bros. (the two of them for whatever reason have separate licensing divisions, and the presence of their IP in merchandising pales in comparison to Disney or even Nickelodeon but still) - but they seem to lack the savvy of any of them (though calling today's Nickelodeon "savvy" is pretty ehh)

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 23:28:11

Aye, but in terms of American animated movies, aren't Disney kind of top?

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:34:35

Yeah, which is the result of nobody fucking else in Hollywood knowing how to make animated cinema properly, and nobody who does having the power to change this.

The thing is though that movies are just one cog in the Disney Machine. DWA wants to be like the Disney Machine. And the Disney Machine has through the years had to fend off challenges from others, both in television and cinema.

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 23:39:38

i feel like the Disney *Machine* is (a) not a realistic thing to aspire towards & (b) kind of creepy anyway

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:43:17

No, it's not a realistic thing to aspire to

It can't really be duplicated for an extended period of time (Nickelodeon managed to do it in the '90s and early 2000s, at least, and I'm not sure how well they managed it but reading enough of Yowp's blog indicates that Hanna-Barbera was, during its years of independence, modeled on Walt Disney Productions)

But no amount of creepiness changes the fact that the Disney Machine brings in the dosh

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-01 23:46:14

I feel like comparing DWA to Disney is kind of an apples and oranges situation. DWA is much smaller, for one thing.

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:46:23

direct emulation of Disney's model doesn't work really

there's a LOT of things Disney's managed to pull off that others can't so well (sheer grip on the popular psyche, the successful omnipresence)

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-01 23:48:18

direct emulation of Disney's model doesn't work really

Disney doesn't have a "model", it's a conglomerate. It has astonishingly little in common with other art and media companies, I think.

Also Madagascar stuff makes me think of SharkBoy & LavaGirl, as I saw the original Madagascar and that as a double-feature in a drive in theatre when I was younger.

What a pair of fuckawful movies. SB&LG is an order of magnitude worse, mind.

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 23:48:23

Miss Utilis said:
But no amount of creepiness changes the fact that the Disney Machine brings in the dosh

true

Katzenberg is weird... i recently learned that the changing of 'marrow' to 'melon' in the American release of Curse of the Were-Rabbit was something he personally insisted on

reminds me of Pokemon and the 'jelly donuts'

Tachyon · 2015-02-01 23:51:31

also with the Disney comparison, i initially assumed we were just referring to their animated movies, which i think it's fair to say DWA have consciously imitated, to varying but mostly severely limited degrees of success

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:53:05

Magic Jane said:
I feel like comparing DWA to Disney is kind of an apples and oranges situation. DWA is much smaller, for one thing.

Well DWA wants to be compared to Disney, and the press and masses do it...

Magic Jane said:
direct emulation of Disney's model doesn't work really
Disney doesn't have a "model", it's a conglomerate. It has astonishingly little in common with other art and media companies, I think.

They do, though those other art and media companies still envy Disney, and Disney has made moves that have made it resemble those companies, or make significant strides in their model (e.g. buying Capital Cities/ABC, which in addition to ABC, brought them their prized ESPN; also, it made Disney the first major movie and TV studio to own a Big Three broadcast network)

MissUtilis · 2015-02-01 23:54:32

Iger-era Disney does seem to emphasize intellectual property a lot more than the other media conglomerates do (e.g. buying Marvel and Star Wars, moves not really duplicated by others - closest we'd come is Nickelodeon buying Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles)

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:00:22

Miss Utilis said:

Magic Jane said:
I feel like comparing DWA to Disney is kind of an apples and oranges situation. DWA is much smaller, for one thing.
Well DWA wants to be compared to Disney, and the press and masses do it...
Magic Jane said:
direct emulation of Disney's model doesn't work really
Disney doesn't have a "model", it's a conglomerate. It has astonishingly little in common with other art and media companies, I think.
They do, though those other art and media companies still envy Disney, and Disney has made moves that have made it resemble those companies, or make significant strides in their model (e.g. buying Capital Cities/ABC, which in addition to ABC, brought them their prized ESPN; also, it made Disney the first major movie and TV studio to own a Big Three broadcast network)

See when I say "other art and media companies" I mean like, Brainfeeder. Not ABC.

The majority of companies like that are smaller ones, which have little to gain from trying to emulate that kind of overblown business model.

I think you are perhaps projecting by saying that Disney are "envied". I certainly don't envy Disney.

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:01:40

I thought by "art and media companies" you meant Time Warner and Viacom and such

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:01:45

like the big ones

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:02:33

Nope.

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:14:40

I most often see Disney directly compared to the big ones

The big guys envy a lot of things about Disney - the merchandising footprint, the vast hoard of evergreen IPs, ESPN...

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:17:26

Basically Disney is one giant PR campaign. No one can copy this, but they can at least copy elements thereof.

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:19:00

I'd argue it's more of a legal machine.

They're only able to do what they do by active exploitation (and in some cases simply rewriting) of intellectual property laws.

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:20:38

It's both

The rewriting of intellectual property laws benefits others too. Bugs Bunny has, commercially, seen better days, but do you think WB would ever want to give him up?

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:22:41

No, but it should not be a matter of 'wanting'.

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:24:15

Believe me, I wish the Hanna-Barbera and Classic Media stuff would hurry up and fall into the public domain so that, respectively, WB couldn't drag it through the mud anymore and we wouldn't have to be subjected to profiteering idiots trying to squeeze the last few pennies out of Underdog or whatever

Aliroz · 2015-02-02 00:25:50

Hey, Monsanto has also been involved in the patent stuffs, making copyrights last longer. Them and Disney, well Monsanto has sponsored some attractions at Disney parks in the past.

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:28:43

what a weird coincidence, right

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 00:30:57

but yeah, properties licensed by Disney Consumer Products generated over $40 billion in sales in 2013

who in the media business DOESN'T want a piece of that?

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:32:38

What do you even do with $40 Billion.

Just

at some point, money stops actually being useful, and its only use becomes either enormous vanity projects that don't give anyone--including the spender--anything of value, or reinvesting it to make more money.

At some point capitalism just breaks down and all that is left is a bizarre pissing contest.

Obā-san · 2015-02-02 00:36:58

40 billion dollars is like 22 million really baller leather jackets

Salix Babylonika · 2015-02-02 00:41:46

YOU CAN'T WEAR THAT MANY

Obā-san · 2015-02-02 00:44:39

things to do with 40 billion dollars:

* grey concrete square house

* dope furniture

* dope wardrobe

* kickass music making setup

* enough in the bank to live off the interest

then you give the rest away I guess

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 01:02:09

Magic Jane said:
What do you even do with $40 Billion.

Just

at some point, money stops actually being useful, and its only use becomes either enormous vanity projects that don't give anyone--including the spender--anything of value, or reinvesting it to make more money.

At some point capitalism just breaks down and all that is left is a bizarre pissing contest.

Disney doesn't get all of that money back, I should add

It's split between retailers and licensees and such

Obā-san · 2015-02-02 01:02:36

still though

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 01:02:51

Also, $40 billion is the last valuation I heard for the entire ESPN organization (which Disney doesn't own all of, by the way - the Hearst Corporation owns 20% of it)

Obā-san · 2015-02-02 01:04:13

you're kinda missing the point i think

MissUtilis · 2015-02-02 01:05:44

I'm not missing the point. I am just mentioning something I thought was interesting.

DreamWorks Animation's existence is an Onion article

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