>Methinks the re-release of The Lion King on the same day had a lot
>to do with this :) And the Turner animated title is "Cats Can't
>Dance" I think. Anyhow, I saw a conceptual painting from it, and it
>looks satisfyingly furry.
Mmm...it's still "Cat's Don't.." on everything I've got, but I guess they
could've changed it. If there were a "SwatKats" movie released, I
*certainly* hope Mouse doesn't pull any shenanigans like the TLK
release - or the extra dose of "Toy Story" hype during the "Balto"
run - or the manufactured "coincidence" of having "Oliver and Company"
re-released just in time for "All Dogs Go To Heaven Pt. II". 'Course,
Mikey Eisner would have to retire, but that's another story.
>Well there were ads on the various Turner cable stations. Even CNN.
>I guess the fool assumed that only his stations are worth watching.
Yeah, there's that promotion, and the fuzzy logic of having trailers for
the Kats videos *ON* the Kats videos, but I suppose "fool" adequately
covers this as well (not to mention Razor's white nose).
>Major fear here. One of the drivers for new feature animation, even
>mediocre efforts like The Pagemaster and The Princess and the
>Goblin, is the seemingly insatiable demand for inoffensive kidvid. A
>Kats film that we'd enjoy would not sell to this market, which is
>absolutely staggering in size.
That is still *the* market when planning an animated feature release.
'Batman: Mask of the Phantasm" tried for an up-market audience, and
likely would've set a better precedent for "older" target features had
bloody WB not released it on Christmas Day - dooming it to the
"kid" label irrespective of content. What I think producers like Tedco and
the rest are slow to grasp is that there are actually *two* major markets
for feature animation (just ask any anime fan), one of which stays away
from "Pretty Princess" epics in droves. Nobody's convinced the feature
people that a more mature audience may be going to these things for
reasons other than to be kid-chaperones, and as a result everyone keeps
betting on the 'sure-thing'; the audience that will always be there - the
littl'uns spending their allowances on cute, flyweight and fuzzy. The first
mature-themed anime flick in wide release that doesn't scream "Japanese
Culture" with every frame should just *rake* it in. That feature could
be Kats - with the mecha appetites of the traditionalists catered to - the
furry-fans catered to, and the marketeers with enough stuff to turn into
PVC icons for Christmas to keep Jane in Thigh-masters 'till the cows
come home. 3 mil doesn't sound like that bad a bet to me.
_____________________________________________________
"Dedicated to the indomitable spirit of the sled dogs that relayed
antitoxin six hundred miles over rough ice, across treacherous waters,
through Arctic blizzards from Nenana to the relief of stricken Nome in
the winter of 1925. Endurance, Fidelity, Intelligence." -- "Balto"
_____________________________________________________
Received on Wed Apr 03 1996 - 21:57:06 PST
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