The Lion King Trailer Excites Movie Fans

Written by Jon Williams

When Disney released The Lion King into theaters in 1994, it was an instant hit. Using animation to bring the classic tale of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to the animal kingdom, the movie featured a star-studded voice cast including James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Whoopi Goldberg, and Matthew Broderick, to name just a few. It made more than $300 million during its initial theatrical run, won Academy Awards for its music, and spawned two direct-to-video sequels, The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride and The Lion King 1½, not to mention a Broadway play.

Now, as we approach the movie’s 25^th anniversary, Disney is preparing to release a live-action (or photorealistic CGI, at least) remake of The Lion King. Coming in July of 2019, it is set to feature even more famous voices, if that’s possible, than the original. James Earl Jones will once again lend his iconic voice to Mufasa, and he’ll be joined by Chiwetel Ejiofor, Donald Glover, Alfre Woodard, Keegan-Michael Key, Seth Rogen, and John Oliver. Oh, and Beyoncé. The first teaser trailer for the movie dropped last week during the NFL games on Thanksgiving Day and has already been viewed hundreds of millions of times online.

The new movie is being directed by Jon Favreau, who is no stranger to this type of project, having brought the 2016 live-action version of The Jungle Book following the 1967 animated classic, which is currently in Disney’s Vault. Other recent live-action updates of Disney’s animated classics include 2017’s Beauty and the Beast (from 1991’s animated version), 2015’s Cinderella (1950’s animated version, currently in the Vault), and 2010’s Alice in Wonderland (from 1951’s animated version). Lest anyone think this is a new concept, however, please recall the 1996 live-action version of 101 Dalmatians, adapted from the 1961 animated original (both of which are currently unavailable).

Of course, Disney’s lineup of animated classics is a rich vein to mine, and there are a number of other live-action adaptations in the works. 2019 will be a big year for them, with Dumbo (from director Tim Burton, who also did Alice in Wonderland) in March and Aladdin (starring Will Smith as the Genie) in May. Lady and the Tramp is also on the agenda for some point during the year, while 2020 will see an adaptation of Mulan. A remake of Pinocchio is still further out on the horizon, but has been in the news in the past couple of days due to the possibility of Tom Hanks joining the cast in the key role of Geppetto.

These live-action remakes have proved to be incredibly popular, and the original animated versions have proven to be all-time classics for generations. Make sure you have both versions of all these wonderful movies on your shelves for patrons to enjoy.

Cars 3 Expands Pixar’s Legacy

Written by Jon Williams

Cars 3 is out this week on DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K UHD. No doubt your young patrons have already cultivated quite a hold list for the latest installment in the adventures of Lightning McQueen. The series began in 2006 with Cars, which introduced Owen Wilson as the voice of the race car who learns about friendship during an unintended pit stop. The movie also featured voice work from Bonnie Hunt and Larry the Cable Guy, not to mention Paul Newman (in his final role), George Carlin, and, of course, John Ratzenberger. Cars 2 followed in 2011, and in 2013 the series spun off into Planes (which got its own sequel, Planes: Fire & Rescue, in 2014).

Cars 3 is just the latest in a long line of high-quality, very popular animated films from Disney-Pixar. Pixar began as a division of Lucasfilm before breaking off into its own company in 1986, with Steve Jobs as chairman. In 1991, the company agreed to produce three feature-length animated movies for Disney. That resulted in the first fully computer-animated film, 1995’s classic Toy Story, and the rest is history. They finished out the 1990s with A Bug’s Life (1998) and Toy Story 2 (1999).

Pixar had a contentious relationship with Disney during the first half of the 2000s, but you wouldn’t know it from the quality of their output. They began the decade in 2001 with Monsters, Inc., starring Billy Crystal and John Goodman. That was followed in 2003 by Finding Nemo, an underwater adventure that is currently Pixar’s highest-grossing non-sequel with over $380 million at the domestic box office, good for #30 of all time. Then in 2004 came The Incredibles, about a family who (some more reluctantly than others) must use their superpowers to save each other and their city.

In 2006, Disney cemented their partnership with Pixar by purchasing the company. The first Cars movie was the first released after the sale, although it was developed and made independently. Going forward together, the two companies finished out the 2000s with Ratatouille (about a rat who learns how to be a chef), WALL-E (about a robot who finds love), and Up (about a man who attaches balloons to his house to go on a wonderful adventure).

Up to that point, Pixar had traditionally not produced sequels, with Toy Story 2 being the lone exception. That changed in 2010 with a third installment, Toy Story 3, and then Cars 2 the year after. They’ve since followed up both Monsters, Inc. (with Monsters University in 2013) and Finding Nemo (with 2016’s Finding Dory, the #9 highest-grossing film of all time with over $486 million). They’ve also continued to make quality original films, with Brave in 2012 and both Inside Out and The Good Dinosaur in 2015.

Pixar makes wonderful, timeless movies that will continue to be popular with young patrons, and that their parents will enjoy just as well. With Cars 3 now available, and with their next movie, Coco, releasing in theaters on November 22, now is a great time to make sure your Pixar collection is complete.

The Lion King Roars Out of Disney’s Vault

Written by Jon Williams

Disney’s The Lion King was released in theaters in June of 1994 and immediately became a smash success. It would go on to be the second-highest earning film of the year (behind Forrest Gump), and its domestic box office gross of more than $420 million is currently good for #18 of all time. It won Academy Awards for Best Score and Best Original Song, and it was also awarded the Golden Globe for Best Picture – Musical or Comedy.

Now the original animated movie hit is being released from the Disney vault in new DVD and Blu-ray editions, and it’s not coming alone. Capitalizing on the success of the film, Disney released The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride as a direct-to-video offering in 1998 with most of the voice cast returning. It was followed in 2004 by The Lion King 1 1/2, a “sequel” that takes place at the same time as the original film, but from the perspectives of Timon and Pumbaa, the movie’s popular meerkat and warthog sidekicks. All three movies will be released on DVD and Blu-ray on August 29, the first time they’ve been available since 2011.

More than twenty-three years since the film’s original release, fans are still enthralled by the timeless story and characters of The Lion King. In 1997, it was adapted into a musical that has enjoyed a very long run and is the highest-grossing Broadway production of all time. It has also been kept alive on television, starting with an animated series featuring Timon and Pumbaa that aired from 1995 through 1999. In 2015, the TV movie Return of the Roar kicked off a new series called The Lion Guard that centers on the cub Kion and a new group of friends that protect the pridelands. In addition, Timon and Pumbaa star in a number of Wild About Safety shorts that aim to teach young viewers about how to be safe in a variety of situations. And all of this will culminate in 2019 with a new live-action version, much like what Disney did with Beauty and the Beast earlier this year.

With The Lion King and its sequels being released on DVD and Blu-ray for the first time since 2011, make sure you get copies now. When it goes back into the vault, it will be several years before it’s available again. If you have questions about the Disney vault’s origins or which Disney movies are subject to the process, make sure you revisit our blog post on the topic.

The Simple Bare Necessities – On Broadway!

Written by Kyle Slagley

Disney Theatrical Productions is at it again, this time in the jungles of India with Mowgli, Bagheera, and Baloo in tow. I read in Variety not too long ago that the 1967 animated film The Jungle Book has made its debut as a main-stage production this year.

Most folks are familiar with the Rudyard Kipling classic story of a boy raised by wolves in the jungle, the animated film having been a staple for parents for nearly 50 years. With classic songs like “Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You,” it’s unsurprising that Disney Animation decided to transport the story from the screen to the stage.

According to Variety, the show is a partnership between Disney Theatrical Prods and two different theatres, Chicago’s Goodman Theater and Boston’s Huntington Theater. It premiered at the Goodman in June and has just extended its run for the third time; the Huntington responded by extending their run as well, even though the show doesn’t premiere until September 7.

Founded in 1993, Disney Theatrical Prods (like every other arm of the Mouse House) is no stranger to wildly successful shows, and since Disney has that annoying habit of sending movie favorites back into the Disney Vault, the stage shows are a great way to tide fans over between releases.

Beauty and the Beast – Premiering in 1993 in Houston, Texas, the Broadway production began previews in April of 1994. Based on the 1991 animated film (now “in the vault”), the show finally closed in 2007 after more than 5,400 performances. Touring productions have hit over 14 countries. Not bad for being the first stage show Disney ever produced.

The Lion King – Following the huge success of the 1994 animated film (in the vault), the musical debuted in Minneapolis in July of 1997; three months later, in October, it was a smash success on Broadway. Expanding on the music of the film, and putting some of the most majestic costumes ever seen on stage (and in the audience!) have ensured that even now, more than fifteen years later, the show is still running and consistently one of the highest grossing shows on Broadway. If you consider yourself a theatre fan and haven’t seen this show, shame on you.

Mary Poppins – The infamous British nanny, immortalized by Julie Andrews on the silver screen in the 1964 film (in the vault), made her debut on the Great White Way in 2006 after finding success in the UK. The first of the Disney Live Action films to be adapted to the stage, it ran until March of this year when it closed after 2,619 performances. This story makes it back to the movie theaters this fall in “Saving Mr. Banks,” a biopic starring Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson about Walt Disney and P. L. Travers, author of the original book.

Newsies – One of the hottest new musicals on Broadway right now, the show was supposed to have a limited run beginning in late March of 2012. After being extended to mid-August, Disney announced on May 16 that the show will continue indefinitely. Based on the 1992 film starring Christian Bale, which chronicles the real-life Newsboys Strike of 1899, the show was written by Broadway legend Harvey Fierstein. It was reported in May that producers are trying to find a theater in London’s West-End to host a production for the spring of 2014.

Aladdin – Having already premiered in Seattle in 2011, the show bounced to St. Louis in 2012, and will land on Broadway at the New Amsterdam Theater (home of Mary Poppins before it closed) sometime in 2014. Residents and visitors to Toronto will have a short window from November 13 to January 12 to catch a performance at the Ed Mirvish Theater before it lands for good in New York.

The Rescuers and Its Sequel Showcase Disney's Evolution

Written by Kirk Baird

Released in 1977, The Rescuers is a nearly forgotten film from the waning days of Disney’s “silver age” of animation, and proved to be the last big hit for the studio in a decade-plus to come.

Also overlooked is The Rescuers’ sequel, The Rescuers Down Under, from 1990 as part of the early renaissance days of the Disney, beginning with 1989’s The Little Mermaid. The Rescuers Down Under’s marriage of computer and hand-drawn animation also marked the first project in the partnership between Disney and Pixar.

Both films were recently released in a single Blu-ray combo-film package that also features a few nice extras, most notably a making-of featurette on The Rescuers.

The Rescuers is the story of two mice, brave Miss Bianca (Eva Gabor) and timid Bernard (Bob Newhart), who are members of the international Rescue Aid Society. When the society learns of a young orphan’s desperate pleas for help after being kidnapped, Miss Bianca volunteers to lead the rescue mission. She requests that Bernard, the Rescue Aid Society’s janitor, accompany her. The two mice fly via albatross to the swamp where 6-year-old Penny is being kept by the wicked Madame Medusa (Geraldine Page) and her business partner Mr. Snoops (Joe Flynn). The villainous pair is after the Devil’s Eye, the world’s largest diamond, and they need someone small and slender — like Penny — to retrieve it from a cave.

The film is clever, funny, and offers a nice message of bravery and friendship. There’s also a nostalgic charm to its animation, with the sketches and outlines of characters often still visible frame to frame; in today’s animation, if the characters were even hand-drawn, such early penciled remnants by the artists surely would be digitally erased. Even the songs, performed by Shelby Flint, bring a 1970s vibe.

Watching the films back to back is also a great segue from classic to the new style of animation.

And while The Rescuers Down Under holds up well when compared to its more modern CG brethren, its story and scope also make this a sequel on par with its predecessor. Miss Bianca (Gabor) and Bernard (Newhart) are back, this time on a rescue mission to the Australian Outback to rescue a young boy named Cody abducted by the villainous poacher Percival McLeach (George C. Scott). Cody has befriended a rare golden eagle, which Percival covets as a means to make him rich.

Everything is bigger about The Rescuers Down Under when compared to The Rescuers, including a collection of helpful animals to aid in the rescue: Wilbur the albatross with his aching back (John Candy, who steals the film), the derring-do of Jake the kangaroo mouse, and manic Frank, the frill-necked lizard. The spectacular animation is bigger in scope and depth of field than anything Disney had attempted previously, and certainly pushing the boundaries of what was possible two decades ago.

While neither film is a true animated classic by the Mouse House, they’re excellent second-tier Disney works. And packaged together they make for a fascinating glance back at once was, and what was to come.

John Carter Blu-Ray/DVD Review

Written by Kirk Baird

John Carter is now out on Blu-ray and DVD. The film is best known for being perhaps the year’s biggest flop, an honor more dubious perhaps than merited.

I didn’t care for the film on the big screen. But movies in theaters are bigger than life, which tends to magnify any flaws (like putting a magnifying glass over someone’s face).

On the new Disney Blu-ray release, though, John Carter wasn’t half-bad. Which is a polite way of saying it was only half good.

The trouble with John Carter has a lot to do with redundancy. The film is based on a series of pulp novels from Edgar Rice Burroughs’ written roughly a century ago. The story concerns a Civil War vet named John Carter who finds himself teleported to the dying surface of Mars, where he helps lead the resistance against a war-minded nation.

The book series was popular among the science-fiction crowd, which means a lot of current directors read them growing up and were, in turn, influenced by them. Pixar’s Andrew Stanton, who ultimately directed John Carter, being one of them. These filmmakers also copied from Burroughs’ work – or, at least, borrowed liberally.

 That’s a point of praise for Burroughs. It’s also a serious flaw in the John Carter film. We’ve seen so much of its imaginative settings and sequences before in the Star Wars movies, Stargate, Avatar, to name a few, that John Carter feels stale and old – even though the movie was released only in late March. There’s very little wow factor at play in the two-hour-plus film, which is not what you expect of a movie budgeted at $250 million. 

Perhaps that’s why it grossed less than $75 million of that domestically. If you account for worldwide revenue, John Carter at least did respectably with nearly $210 million – which would push the film past the break-even point, in theory.

The film is also hindered by the rather unimpressive feature-film debut of Taylor Kitsch. Nice kid, good actor in small doses and certainly on the small screen on Friday Night Lights, which is what he’s known for. But as the centerpiece to a big-budget effects and action-driven film, he lacks the requisite charisma. Kitsch is like a pretty vase placed on a football field: he is swallowed up by the surroundings.

Lynn Collins, who plays his love interest Dejah Thoris, the princess of Mars, isn’t much better. Lovely actress, but she cannot carry the role.

And these problems are amplified on the big screen. In the comfort of a living room, though, these flaws seem less significant; it’s easy to dismiss the criticism of John Carter as overblown and another instance of a film snobbery pile-on. And that’s not incorrect. We critics can harp on a film. And when there’s blood in the water (meaning a film is dying at the box office), we become even more vicious.

While I believe the collective dismissal of the film was correct for the theatrical release of John Carter, on Blu-ray/DVD the new format and smaller screen merits a do-over.

John Carter isn’t a great film. But it’s not a bad either. And certainly not worthy of the “box-office bomb to end all bombs” tag it’s been saddled with. It is worth checking out, if only to see what all the criticism and bad press was about. And then decide if it’s true.  

Shedding Light on Disney's Vault

The animated films from the Walt Disney Company are some of the best known and beloved of all time. These timeless classics are often shared with children by parents who originally saw and fell in love with the films as children themselves. Sales and rentals of Disney DVDs and Blu-rays are generally robust. However, finding Disney films on DVD and Blu-ray isn’t always a simple matter.

The Vault’s History
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs made its theatrical debut in 1937. As an effort to raise profits during World War II, the company rereleased the film into theaters again in 1944. The success of this venture led to Disney’s policy of rereleasing their films to theaters every seven to ten years.¹

This process continued through the mid-1980s, when the burgeoning home video market offered another potential outlet for Disney films. With the release of Sleeping Beauty on VHS in 1986, Disney switched its efforts from theatrical releases to home video releases.² As the home video market has evolved from VHS to DVD and now Blu-ray, Disney has sought to replicate their strategy by limiting the length of time films are available for sale or rental, and keeping their titles on a rerelease schedule.

So What’s in There?
Films subject to Disney’s vault process are their “animated classics.” This includes a whole list of titles; notables include: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi, Cinderella, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians, The Jungle Book, The Fox and the Hound, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King.³ Note that Pixar films (such as the Toy Story films and Finding Nemo) are not part of the vault program.

The most recent Disney releases from the vault are Beauty and the Beast and Bambi, both of which are now available on both DVD and Blu-ray.⁴ As for upcoming releases, look for a 70th Anniversary Edition of Dumbo in September, and The Lion King will be available again in October. Both titles will be available on Blu-ray for the first time in addition to their DVD versions.

Double-Edged Sword for Libraries
When a Disney film goes into the vault, it means it will be unavailable for sale or retail rental for several years. However, due to the films’ classic nature, there is always a certain level of demand, especially as parents want to show the movies to their children before their interest wanes. The library is a perfect solution to this conundrum. While Disney films are unavailable from other outlets, libraries can continue to circulate their copies during the moratorium period.

Of course, on the flip side, any copies that are lost or damaged while the film is in the vault will be unavailable for replacement. So it never hurts to keep an extra copy or two on hand in case of emergencies.

Midwest Tape will do our best to keep you informed of titles that are going into or coming out of the Disney vault. For example, in the April DVD Buyer’s Guide, we advertised three Disney titles that were about to be discontinued, along with the last date they could be ordered.

What Do You Think?
What do you think of Disney’s policy of placing films in the vault for several years? Have you noticed an increase in lending when these titles are discontinued? Give us your thoughts in the comments section below.

¹ http://www.xtimeline.com/evt/view.aspx?id=23706
² http://www.pophistorydig.com/?p=45
³ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Vault
⁴ http://disney-blog.com/?p=719

Disney Offers Product Exchanges and Refunds for Baby Einstein™ DVDs

Focusing on ensuring the satisfaction of their customers, Disney is offering product exchanges and retail value refunds for Baby Einstein™ DVD titles.  From now until March 4, 2010, customers who purchased Baby Einstein DVD products between June 5, 2004 and September 4, 2009 and are looking to exchange or receive a refund for their products may do so by visiting http://www.babyeinstein.com/parentsguide/satisfaction/upgrade_us.html.  This link also provides complete details on Disney’s Baby Einstein™ DVD Guarantee/Upgrade Offer, including participation guidelines.