Mouse House sees the value of sequels in post-pandemic Hollywood
Fig. 1 - Tim Allen announces his return as Buzz Lightyear for Toy Story 5.
Recently returned Disney CEO Bob Iger – reappointed to the company following the abrupt dismissal of his successor, Bob Chapek in November 2022 – confirmed late last week that the celebrated animation studio would be producing a slate of sequels to three of its blockbuster films. News of Zootopia 2 within Disney’s upcoming roster of features was a welcome, if not entirely unexpected, surprise given both the box office success of the 2016 original (the film took $1.02 billion and won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature) and the recent arrival of spin-off web television series Zootopia+ (Trent Correy & Josie Trinidad 2022), which premiered on Disney+ the same month as Chapek’s acrimonious exit. The sight of Frozen 3 on Disney’s revised production schedule felt, however, even more predictable. The 2013 monster musical Frozen (Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, 2013) remains the third highest-grossing animated film of all time at the global box office, bettered only by Disney’s cel-animated The Lion King (Roger Allers & Rob Minkoff, 1994) in first place, and 2019 sequel Frozen II (Chris Buck & Jennifer Lee, 2019) at #2, all of which made another trip to the Kingdom of Arendelle somewhat inevitable. Yet it was the shock inclusion of Toy Story 5 that caused perhaps the biggest stir among animation fans, not least given Toy Story 3 (Lee Unkrich, 2010) and, then, Toy Story 4 (Josh Cooley, 2019), seemed to provide a fitting – if slightly protracted end – to the successful film series. While critics were divided over the unforeseen return of Woody and Buzz for a fifth instalment, voice actor Tim Allen failed to share in the scepticism, enthusiastically tweeting “off we go to a number 5!”, before signing off with his character’s famous motto “to infinity and beyond!” (Fig. 1).
In the wake of recent updates to its investors that Disney were cutting 7,000 jobs as part of a broader corporate ‘reorganization,’ Iger’s press release on the franchise future of the studio appeared to lean heavily on the Mouse House’s cartoon pedigree, celebrating the upcoming sequels as a “great example” of how the studio was “leaning into our unrivalled brands and franchises.” However, Disney’s relationship with follow-up features has not always been so favourable, or as frequent. After the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (David Hand, 1937), it took over 50 years for the studio to produce its first full-length animated sequel The Rescuers Down Under (Hendel Butoy & Mike Gabriel, 1990) during its so-called Disney Renaissance period, and then another two decades for its second, the animated musical anthology Fantasia 2000 (Don Hahn et al, 1999) released in the winter of 1999. Disney’s next foray into big-screen sequels came another twenty years after that with Ralph Breaks the Internet (Rich Moore & Phil Johnston, 2018) in 2018, and Frozen II the following year.
Fig. 2 - The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (Jim Kammerud, 2000).
But away from the throes of theatrical exhibition, and despite resistance to Iger’s latest sequel-heavy company plan, Disney’s cartoon history (well, since the mid-1990s anyway) has always been marked by sequels, prequels, and spinoffs to its theatrical features. A steady stream of feature-length sequels to its popular animated films appeared direct-to-video thanks to the efforts of the Disneytoon Studios (DTS) division, a subsidiary intended to capitalise on the expanding home video rental market. With overseas facilities in Australia, Japan, Canada, and France, the Disneytoons Studios arm of the company produced numerous direct-to-video sequels among its 47 feature films, including The Return of Jafar (Toby Shelton, Tad Stones & Alan Zaslove, 1994) released the same year as The Lion King, and other forgettable fare The Lion King II: Simba’s Pride (Darrell Rooney, 1998), The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea (Jim Kammerud, 2000) (Fig. 2), and Cinderella II: Dreams Come True (John Kafka, 2002). There were even ‘midquels’ like Hercules: Zero to Hero (Bob Kline, Tad Stones & Phil Wenstein, 1999) – edited from four episodes of the first two seasons of Hercules: The Animated Series (Tad Stones, 1998-) – The Lion King 1 1/2 (Bradley Raymond, 2004), and Tarzan II (Bradley Smith, 2005), which all sought to ‘fill-in’ plot ellipses and character backstories by setting their narratives before, between, and/or during the main events of the canonical feature length films and their sequels. Such cartoons, while all released direct-to-video, fully reflected the “sequel paradigm” as a business strategy “which defined Hollywood film production from the 1980s to the early 2000s), while equally anticipating what Terence McSweeney terms the growing “universe” model of storytelling largely ushered in by the superhero genre (McSweeney 2020, 8). As McSweeney notes, “Prior to the 2000s the word “sequel” seemed to be just about enough to describe what came after a financially successful film […] but now audiences have become increasingly familiar with terms like reboot, reimaging, sidequel, midquel, interquel, paraquel, circumquel, and even stealth sequel!” (2020, 8). In the case of the Disneytoon Studios, the ability to exploit narrative material and character relations across such ancillary media properties were central to Disney’s own home video enterprise and the sustained commercial value of the feature-length sequel form.
Hercules: Zero to Hero (Bob Kline, Tad Stones & Phil Wenstein, 1999).
The Lion King 1 1/2 (Bradley Raymond, 2004).
With legitimate questions about the lower quality animation and derivative storylines of Disney’s home video efforts, Disneytoons was formally closed in 2018, its demise quickened by the arrival of John Lasseter, who took over as Disney’s Chief Creative Officer following its $7.4 billion acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios in 2006 while staying on as head of Pixar too. As part of his joint stewardship, not only did Lasseter reinstate the fairy-tale narratives increasingly absent from early 2000s Disney features (see Holliday 2018), he also cancelled all the studio’s direct-to-video sequels in various stages of production, claiming that such projects undermined the quality of the original (read ‘Classic’) animated films. Even the short-lived Circle Seven Animation studio – created in 2004 by Disney as an ‘in-house’ CG film unit intended to create sequels to Pixar properties still owned by the Mouse House – was also shut-down immediately once the Disney/Pixar deal was signed, sealed, and delivered. As Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull tellingly wrote in his 2014 business memoir Creativity, Inc., sequels were, for him, nothing short of “creative bankruptcy” (2014, 146).
Yet no sooner was the ink was dry on the very same merger than Pixar themselves started to lean on sequels for its theatrical features in ways not dissimilar from its parent company’s now defunct direct-to-video division. Pixar’s first 10 films had contained only one sequel – Toy Story 2 (John Lasseter, 1999) – yet perhaps steered behind-the-scenes by the Mouse House, half of its next sixteen films were either sequels or spin-offs, including last year’s Toy Story prequel Lightyear (Angus MacLane, 2022) starring Chris Evans. While Pixar has become more amenable to a big-screen future in franchises despite Lightyear’s low box-office showing (grossing only $226 million worldwide against a $200 million budget), by contrast Disney had in the same period still largely steered clear of theatrical sequels in favour of lavish original stories like Moana (Ron Clements & John Musker, 2016) and Encanto (Jared Bush & Byron Howard, 2021). That was, of course, until Iger’s announcement exactly a week ago.
Fig. 3 - Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022).
The poor commercial and critical reception of Disney’s latest original animated feature Strange World (Don Hall, 2022), which coincided with news of its management reshuffle last November, has perhaps forced Iger’s hand, though during his first tenure over a decade ago the CEO had already teased the growing business potential of multimedia productions while celebrating the pull of “leverageable” franchises. But the surprise announcement of Zootopia, Frozen II, and Toy Story 5 is the clearest indication yet that the Disney/Pixar behemoth is fully embracing the brand power of franchise storytelling for its theatrical features. This business strategy may have its roots in the still-shifting demands of post-pandemic Hollywood – whose defining hits so far Top Gun: Maverick (Joseph Kosinski, 2022) (Fig. 3) and Avatar: The Way of Water (James Cameron, 2022) are, of course, both sequels years in the making – and a hint to audiences of what to expect from a U.S. animation industry pinning their hopes of a resurgence in cycles of repetition. After all, Classical Hollywood achieved a similar feat in the years following the Great Depression, with genres like the musical offering a “ritualistic rededication to the ideal of the American dream” across collective narratives of unity, optimism, and pride (Roth 1981, 46). But given Disney’s sustained ability as an entertainment giant to gain extra mileage out of its cartoon features, it is perhaps no surprise that it is turning once again to its most beloved and lucrative animated properties for its big-screen blockbusters to bring in the crowds.
**Article published: February 17, 2023**
References
Catmull, Ed. 2014. Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. London: Bantam Press.
Holliday, Christopher. 2018. “From Buzz to Business: Hollywood, Fantasy, and the Computer-Animated Film Industry.” In Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres, eds. Christopher Holliday and Alexander Sergeant, 210-226. London & New York: Routledge.
McSweeney, Terence. 2020. The Contemporary Superhero Film: Projections of Power and Identity. New York: Wallflower.
Roth, Mark. 1981. “Some Warners Musicals and the Spirit of the New Deal.” In Genre: The Musical: A Reader, ed. Rick Altman, 41-56. London: Routledge.
Biography
Christopher Holliday is Lecturer in Liberal Arts and Visual Cultures Education at King’s College London, where he teaches Film Studies and Liberal Arts and specializes in Hollywood cinema, animation history and contemporary digital media. He has published several book chapters and articles on digital technology and computer animation, including work in Animation Practice, Process & Production and animation: an interdisciplinary journal (where is also Associate Editor). He is the author of The Computer-Animated Film: Industry, Style and Genre (Edinburgh University Press, 2018), and co-editor of the collections Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (Routledge, 2018) and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: New Perspectives on Production, Reception, Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2021). Christopher is currently researching the relationship between identity politics and digital technologies in popular cinema, and co-editing two books: one on the multimedia performativity of animation (with Annabelle Honess Roe), and another (with David McGowan) on characters and aesthetics for the forthcoming Bloomsbury series The Encyclopedia of Animation Studies. He can also be found as the curator and creator of www.fantasy-animation.org.