I think that there's some misunderstanding here. While Disney does make lots of films with other production companies (check out Pirates of the Caribbean for example which is made with Jerry Bruckheimer Films, or the Pixar films) these films were all
commissioned by Walt Disney (or Buena Vista if you prefer) and had substantial financial input by Disney. As a result Buena Vista still owns the distribution rights for the films worldwide (or at least the option - for some reason Buena Vista has chosen to let Sony distribute Finding Nemo in India).
However, there are also a number of films where Buena Vista shares the worldwide distribution rights with other companies. This is either due to substantial co-production deals, where other companies put up equal or greater sums of money than Buena Vista (such as
James and the Giant Peach, which is
not as Buena Vista film in the UK, despite Buena Vista having some financial inventment in the film) or films where Buena Vista simply picks up the US (and beyond) distribution and Buena Vista has had
no financial involvement in the making of the film at all - examples include (only?) the first
Brave Little Toaster film and
Mr Toad's Wild Ride (which is a renamed
Wind in the Willows which I can categorically state had no financial input from Buena Vista during it's filming or distribution in the UK). Even
Lizzie McQuire is not a Buena Vista property in the UK as the intellectual property rights actually belong to a UK (!) production company who negotiated keeping international home video distribution rights for the programme even though it was comissioned and mostly financed by Buena Vista through The Disney Channel. Incidently, the
Lizzie McQuire Movie is distributed by Buena Vista in the UK, and so will the home videos.
I'm not sure if
Flight of the Navigator had Buena Vista involved in it's actual production or not. IMDB does list Walt Disney Pictures [us] as one of the Production companies, but I'm sure I have read elsewhere that they didn't and only picked up the American distribution rights after seeing the completed film (like they did for
The Brave Little Toaster).
Hollywood Pictures is owned by Buena Vista, but part of it's "mission" when being set up was to release smaller, independent films. As such, some of the films released by Hollywood Pictures were finished films with no Buena Vista involvement which were only distributed by Buena Vista.
As the budget for films gets bigger and bigger, ownership is getting more and more complicated. For example
Die Hard 3 is actually distributed by Buena Vista in the UK, but Buena Vista had no financial involvement in the film's production at all. I'm also fairly sure that Miramax still has some small financial holding in the
Lord of the Rings Trilogy, but it would never be classed as a Miramax film.
Either way, I'm pretty sure Disney's involvement with the film Flight of the Navigator was miminal - as previously stated you only need to watch the final credits to see the companies involved in its filming and then check out all the overseas distributors on the web. No other Buena Vista films made at that time (that I can think of) have a similar convoluted multi-company history.
I'm sure Chernabog will correct any errors that may be in this "War and Peace" length post.
Why do you think that?