"Princess Movies" not as dead as Disney thought?

[merlinjones]

Now can it be re-titled Disney's "Rapunzel" for DVD/Blu-Ray, non-theatrical and future reissues?

[sunhuntin]

Now can it be re-titled Disney's "Rapunzel" for DVD/Blu-Ray, non-theatrical and future reissues?

i think a lot of people will be making their own covers with the title they want.

[disdis]

Disney Animated films with "Princesses" in them,

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937
Cinderella 1950
Sleeping Beauty 1959
The Black Cauldron 1985
The Little Mermaid 1989
Beauty and the Beast 1991
Pocahontas 1995
Mulan 1998
Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
The Princess and the Frog 2009
Tangled 2010

11 films out of 50. Some of which are considered Disney's best, others as their worst.

My point is quality films should be made based on story and quality. (Up, Wall-E, Bolt, The Lion King, Peter Pan, The Rescuers). If you have the right story to be told with the right medium the film will do well. Say what you will about Princess and the Frog under performing, but it was far from Disney's best efforts.

I'd agree that Disney shouldn't be focusing on PRINCESS stories. Perhaps they should just be focusing on telling GOOD stories.

[eralkfang]

Disney Animated films with "Princesses" in them,

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs 1937
Cinderella 1950
Sleeping Beauty 1959
The Black Cauldron 1985
The Little Mermaid 1989
Beauty and the Beast 1991
Pocahontas 1995
Mulan 1998
Atlantis: The Lost Empire 2001
The Princess and the Frog 2009
Tangled 2010

11 films out of 50. Some of which are considered Disney's best, others as their worst.

My point is quality films should be made based on story and quality. (Up, Wall-E, Bolt, The Lion King, Peter Pan, The Rescuers). If you have the right story to be told with the right medium the film will do well. Say what you will about Princess and the Frog under performing, but it was far from Disney's best efforts.

I'd agree that Disney shouldn't be focusing on PRINCESS stories. Perhaps they should just be focusing on telling GOOD stories.

Um, Mulan is just as much of a princess film as Tarzan is. If you're talking about the Disney Princess merch, then you need to include Alice as well.

But I agree. The focus should be on a good story–if the fairy tale has a princess in it, it'll probably be a princess film. I think fairy tales–and especially really deft adaptations of fairy tales, like The Princess and the Frog–are ripe material, although I wouldn't be adverse to original material or even wider-ranging material, such as Mort and other books. While The Princess and the Frog isn't my favorite, the fresh setting was lovely.

[Disney Duster]

Do the DVD/Blu-ray sales count as part of the profits for the first release of the film? Or just the box office?

How did The Princess and the Frog do in home video sales?

Now can it be re-titled Disney's "Rapunzel" for DVD/Blu-Ray, non-theatrical and future reissues?

Why don't we try to campaign for that to happen? Once the movie has made either enough money or not enough money, Disney may be more okay with the title changing back.

Wonderlicious why do I feel like you are hypocritical saying The Snow Queen needs to be more like the original story but you don't feel Rapunzel needed to be? Or did you think Rapunzel needed to be (I hope you did).

I wouldn't be adverse to original material or even wider-ranging material, such as Mort and other books.

Mort has a princess in it too! I want Disney to lay off the princesses for a long, long time, but maybe they can't escape them because so many fantasies have them!

I kind of wanted Rapunzel to be the last princess story for a very long time.

[merlinjones]

>>i think a lot of people will be making their own covers with the title they want.<<

No doubt. But maybe they should include a branching alternate title option on the video itself.

[merlinjones]

In terms of Disney fairy tale adaptations, I'd still like to see "The Snow Queen" and "Hansel and Gretel" at least...

[Wonderlicious]

Do the DVD/Blu-ray sales count as part of the profits for the first release of the film? Or just the box office?

How did The Princess and the Frog do in home video sales?

Although they're not included in the theatrical grosses, I believe that home video sales are taken into account quite a bit by studios. Many films initially unsuccessful have become popular because of their presence video/DVD, and even popular films have become more popular due to a home video presence.

As for The Princess and the Frog, it has done reasonably well on DVD from the looks of things. It has so far sold over 4 million DVD copies in the US (the chart I have doesn't include Blu-Ray, which I'm sure could push the exact number over the 5 million mark), and it's currently at Number 5 on the 2010 DVD charts, with really the only things beating it this year have been the big blockbusters (and it beat How to Train Your Dragon and Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland, for the record).

Wonderlicious why do I feel like you are hypocritical saying The Snow Queen needs to be more like the original story but you don't feel Rapunzel needed to be? Or did you think Rapunzel needed to be (I hope you did).

I don't feel that a story necessarily has to be a literal adaptation to be faithful in tone. Now, I haven't seen Tangled yet, but from everything people seem to have said, and everything I have seen, it at least keeps the theme of transition from insular, protected childhood to independent and romantically aware womanhood, and the struggle between protective mother and her defiant child, as well as key aspects of the story (a pretty blonde girl with stupidly long hair, the tower, kidnapped baby). As a similar example (yes, I'm going to pull out my typical show-and-tell film ), Pinocchio is a reasonably loose adaptation of the original book (reordering elements, changing characters' roles, taking loose ideas and then redeveloping them into distinct set pieces etc), but it still keeps the story's key messages. The same could be said for The Jungle Book, Aladdin and Mary Poppins (just to bring a live-action film into the frame ).

What really has put me on edge with The Snow Queen was a proposed version from around 2003 (chronicled in the book Disney War), where the Snow Queen was a beautiful yet wicked lady who has thousands of men trying to woo her, all of whom she freezes, until one guy comes along and changes all that (sort of like The Taming of the Shrew in Lapland). The problem for me is that this basic premise basically goes completely against what the story is about, as it turns the story into much more of a romance than it should have been, and essentially ditches the original protagonists. The original Snow Queen is basically as much about the Snow Queen as The Wizard of Oz is about the Wizard. It's really the story of a girl whose best friend is kidnapped by the title character after being placed under a curse, and a test of her love and friendship for him for her to dare travel through the dangerous icy wilderness to find him. I also came across some artwork from circa 2003, and was a bit uninspired by a decision to add clichéd Christmas characters (polar bears, penguins, snowmen) as comic side characters when the original story has enough in the way of potentially more interesting incidental characters (I will add that the blog post has a song Alan Menken wrote for that version, which is pretty good, I'll admit). Granted, I could be wrong, and new developments may have ditched most stuff from the early 2000s version. So long as the spirit and the same protagonists are still there, then I'd be fine.

And let's not get this thread as off topic as the last one.

[Super Aurora]

What really has put me on edge with The Snow Queen was a proposed version from around 2003 (chronicled in the book Disney War), where the Snow Queen was a beautiful yet wicked lady who has thousands of men trying to woo her, all of whom she freezes, until one guy comes along and changes all that (sort of like The Taming of the Shrew in Lapland).

from that story board with her talking to a snowman dude, She look pretty fugly. Nothing like an elegant and graceful character like most media portray her as.

[Wonderlicious]

from that story board with her talking to a snowman dude, She look pretty fugly. Nothing like an elegant and graceful character like most media portray her as.

Bear in mind as well that the film probably went through a hundred million changes; most concept art pieces do show the Snow Queen as beautiful, at least in the same way as the Queen from Snow White. No doubt the film probably went through a sorta Shrek/Rapunzel Unbraided phase, where everything was made too ridiculous for its own good.

[Goliath]

Disney Animated films with "Princesses" in them,

You forgot to mention Aladdin, which of course has princess Jasmine. Mulan is not a princess.

[...] As for The Princess and the Frog, it has done reasonably well on DVD from the looks of things. It has so far sold over 4 million DVD copies in the US (the chart I have doesn't include Blu-Ray, which I'm sure could push the exact number over the 5 million mark), [...]

You're sure those are the right numbers? 'Cause those don't sound spectacular at all. Consider Little Mermaid:

Mermaid became that year's top-selling title on home video, with over 10 million units sold (including 7 million in its first month).[14] This success led future Disney films to be released soon after the end of their theatrical runs, rather than delayed for several years.[8]

Following Mermaid's 1997 re-release in theaters, a new VHS version of the film was released in March 1998 as part of the Masterpiece Collection. The VHS sold 13 million units and ranked as the third best-selling video of the year.[15][16]

Or The Lion King:

edition did not have, on a total of four double sided disks. The VHS tape quickly became one of the best-selling videotapes of all time: 4.5 million tapes were sold on the first day[45] and ultimately sales totaled more than 30 million[46] before these home video versions went into moratorium in 1997.[47]

TLK sold more copies on its first day than PatF in all those months.

[Super Aurora]

from that story board with her talking to a snowman dude, She look pretty fugly. Nothing like an elegant and graceful character like most media portray her as.

Bear in mind as well that the film probably went through a hundred million changes; most concept art pieces do show the Snow Queen as beautiful, at least in the same way as the Queen from Snow White. No doubt the film probably went through a sorta Shrek/Rapunzel Unbraided phase, where everything was made too ridiculous for its own good.

yeah I know which ones you're referring to there. I love those two concept arts as well.

[johns]

I haven't seen the movie yet, but if Flynn Rider is as featured a character as he is in the trailer, I think "Tangled" is a better title for the film than "Rapunzel" and more clever than its given credit for. The story isn't only about her. It's really about the duo.

[merlinjones]

After hundreds of years and adaptations, "Rapunzel" is "Rapunzel".

[Disney Duster]

johns, sorry, no, the film is not about Flynn as much as it is about Rapunzel. We know a lot less about him than about her, and the story is from Rapunzel's point of view.

So, let's have it, is The Princess and the Frog doing well on home video? Because if it is, Disney still saw thought people didn't want to see princess films anymore, so they made Rapunzel's title Tangled. So the answer on how well it's doing will put things in perspective.

If it's doing better tha How to Train Your Dragon and the amazingly grossing Alice in Wonderland, that that is rather strange that they would still change Rapunzel's title, and would indicate they do not care about home video sales as much as box office.

What do you think?

Wonderlicious, okay, now I get ya. However, I still want to point out what I have always pointed out and I hope no one gets mad at me, I just want to explain again my specific problems with Tangled. They can be summed up as this is the most they have ever changed the story of a fairy tale (except The Princess and the Frog which was more like a brand new story, not supposed to be the original story), and the main characters' backgrounds were extremely changed. The peasant Rapunzel was changed to a lost princess, the romantic prince to a snarky, wanted bandit, and the witch who wanted to shield her child to an ordinary woman who wants to hide magic hair.

So she wasn't so much an over-protective mother. Also, in the original story she wasn't kidnapped, she was traded in a bargain made with her father (and a good bargain, his daughter raised by her in exchange for his and his wife's life, essentially).

Mother Gothel means "godmother" in German. In the Disney film...I don't even know why she's called that. My guess is...just cause she's old...?

But you can see how things were changed a lot more than just Pinocchio, eh?

That Snow Queen song was really great though! With perhaps some tinkering of the tune before the perfect finish, it could have been a big classic. Maybe even without any tinkering!

[DancingCrab]

I'm pretty sure the title was changed to "Tangled" BEFORE PatF was released on dvd/br. They had the title-less trailer on it with just the caption "the secret will be revealed" or some such, but by the time the video was released, they had already settled on "Tangled".

My personal opinion is that they just need to leave the title "Tangled". I can't believe I am saying that, as I was so adamantly against the title change, and still wish the film had been called Rapunzel, but at this point releasing the film under two titles would just confuse the general public and be inconsistent.

I do think having a special branching title option for die hard traditionalists though would be a nice little special feature, but they need to stick to their guns here.

[ajmrowland]

If it's doing better tha How to Train Your Dragon and the amazingly grossing Alice in Wonderland, that that is rather strange that they would still change Rapunzel's title, and would indicate they do not care about home video sales as much as box office.

*cough*narnia*cough*

[Super Aurora]

I'm pretty sure the title was changed to "Tangled" BEFORE PatF was released on dvd/br. They had the title-less trailer on it with just the caption "the secret will be revealed" or some such, but by the time the video was released, they had already settled on "Tangled".

My personal opinion is that they just need to leave the title "Tangled". I can't believe I am saying that, as I was so adamantly against the title change, and still wish the film had been called Rapunzel, but at this point releasing the film under two titles would just confuse the general public and be inconsistent.

Not really considering that the merchandise is still title as Rapunzel as oppose to Tangled.

I mean if people see a really really long hair blonde girl on the cover, they'll going to know it's Rapunzel regardless.

[Disney Duster]

What about Narnia? In addition to all the other things I asked/talked about.

[ajmrowland]

Prince Caspian was one of the top-selling DVDs of 2008, but didnt recoup its costs at the B.O.

aka, evidence to the case that Disney doesnt care about DVD sales.