Written by steet :

- Recently I was talking about the cancelled "King of elves" and "Snow Queen" at Disney. Well one of the previously announced Pixar project, "Newt", seems to be cancelled too. Which makes us wondering even more : what's going on out there?

- Enchanted 2 is on its way  : I really didn't think that one to be the kind to get a sequel...seemed like the story was complete, to me. But I kinda liked the first one. (though a bit "girlish") But : will it be partly animated like the original?

- I found a page which explains more about the closure of the Universal Animation Studios.

"... I don't think Universal is making any announcements about closing Universal Animation Studio. They're just not going to have any shows, or do any productions, or have any executives. Recently they haven't had much interest in doing animation. They want to pick up produced projects, but they aren't going to be creating anything here ..."

I guess we're not going to see any more Balto or Land before time before a veeerrrry long time.In any case, this is the end of the "Direct-To-Video" sequels, something that seemed unimaginable only a few years ago.

- Expect to see many, many CGI animated films to be released in this decade. Avatar has opened the way for 3D, and CGI films have the natural advantage of being "natively 3D", while adding a 3D effect on hand drawn films is more difficult and needs an additional process (meaning higher costs...)

- Talking about that : Beauty & The Beast will be remade in 3D (meaning : the original film will be re-released in theaters with a 3D effect to work with glasses - it's still the hand drawn film, thank god). Originally slated for february 2010, it has been pushed back to 2011. (probably because they want to make money with the Blu-ray edition coming fall 2010 before releasing it in 3D) The few people who got the chance to see it said that "it was amazing". A shame we won't be able to see that next year...The simple fact that it's going to be re-released to theaters makes it a "must-see" to me.

- The Princess & The Frog may not have been a huge it in the USA, but it's doing very fine in France, better than any other Disney animated films in 5 years! (that's rare, but for once, I'm proud of my country!)
Currently, the US box office is around 103M$ and the international box office is 131M$. Considering it requires 2 to 3 times the production budget for a film to be profitable, which was 105M$ for The Princess & The Frog, I guess we can say that with the merchandise and upcoming home-video DVD sales, they're "Almost there" and the film will become a long-term success.
I certainly wouldn't understand if they stopped making 2D films while their CGI ones weren't as much profitable...But we'll still have to be very patient for the next one.