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Fox Tooning Out, Closing Phoenix Studio
In
the wake of the disappointing box-office results for the space cartoon
film Titan A.E., 20th Century Fox said it will close its six-year-old
animation facility in Phoenix, Ariz. Titan A.E collected a meagre $16.9
million in the States in two weeks, while the animation feature, aimed
at male teenagers, cost a reported $100 million to make.
In February, Fox laid off about two-thirds of the 320 employees at the
Phoenix unit, but now the studio is shuttering the outpost entirely. The
move is a further sign that the animated world, while full of cuddly creatures,
is also highly treacherous for pretenders to the Disney throne. “It
clearly is a tough marketplace,” said Fox Animation president Chris
Meledandri. The studio had started the animation wing with the intention
of displacing Disney as the cartoon king.
Fox isn’t abandoning animation entirely — it has computer animation
and projects that mix live action and animation in the works — but
it is exiting the traditional cell animation business it tried to get
into, starting with 1997’s Anastasia.
In its six years in business, the Phoenix unit produced only two films,
Anastasia and Titan A.E.. Anastasia won respectful reviews, but earned
a middling $58.4 million at the domestic box-office. Titan A.E. has pulled
in a paltry $16.9 million after two weekends, and the $80 million plus
picture looks to be on its way to becoming a significant money loser for
Fox.
The weakness of Titan A.E. — and more generally, the millions of
dollars the studio surely lost in its overall investment in Phoenix —
was probably a factor in the abrupt exit last week of studio chairman
Bill Mechanic.
Like other studios, such as DreamWorks, which have tried to encroach upon
Disney’s lucrative hold on animated films aimed at kids and families,
Fox found the competition intense and Disney fierce. For instance, in
what was widely viewed as an aggressive move to protect its territory,
the Mouse House re-released its 1989 opus The Little Mermaid in theatres
just a week before Fox bowed Anastasia.
Both Titan A.E. and Anastasia were directed by the animation team of Don
Bluth and Gary Goldman, who ran the Phoenix facility. Meledandri said
he couldn’t comment on what sort of end had been negotiated in the
duo’s contracts. “At this time we don’t have any plans
to make any more movies with them,” Meledandri said.
The surviving animation operations include the studio’s computer
animation facility in Harrison, N.Y., Blue Sky Studios, which has been
increasing staff recently as it prepares to start production on Ice Age,
a comedy-adventure about a woolly mammoth, a saber-toothed tiger and a
sloth. Fox is also in post-production on Monkeybone, a comedy that mixes
live-action and stop-motion animation. It stars Brendan Fraser, Bridget
Fonda and Whoopi Goldberg. The animation division is also overseeing The
Dubbed Action Movie: Enter The Fist by writer-director Steve Oedekerk
(Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls). The spoof mixes digital effects into
a 1970s Asian martial arts film. The division also has a Farrelly brothers
animated pic, Frisco Pigeon Mambo, in development. Also under consideration
are five other feature projects to be made at Blue Sky.
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