Chris Sanders talks about what happened with Disney

[Patrick]

Chris Sanders: One of the things we've found at DreamWorks that’s a strength is that they don’t really have a “house style” per se, and if you've seen a lot of DreamWorks movies, you've seen that they’re very different from one another. And that’s really neat. Because if you’re working on an existing project or are pitching a new project, you have a great deal of latitude to set the course.

This is exactly what I dislike about Dreamworks. I agree that they're extremely inconsistent with no real vision for what their company should be. Dreamworks - if it has slapstick and potty humor, we'll take it.

[PatrickvD]

Chris Sanders: One of the things we've found at DreamWorks that’s a strength is that they don’t really have a “house style” per se, and if you've seen a lot of DreamWorks movies, you've seen that they’re very different from one another. And that’s really neat. Because if you’re working on an existing project or are pitching a new project, you have a great deal of latitude to set the course.

This is exactly what I dislike about Dreamworks. I agree that they're extremely inconsistent with no real vision for what their company should be. Dreamworks - if it has slapstick and potty humor, we'll take it.

It's my issue as well.

To me, the quintessential Dreamworks film is Kung Fu Panda. A comedy with heart. That's how they all should be.

[disneyboy20022]

To me, the quintessential Dreamworks film is Kung Fu Panda. A comedy with heart. That's how they all should be.

And How to Train Your Dragon

[PatrickvD]

To me, the quintessential Dreamworks film is Kung Fu Panda. A comedy with heart. That's how they all should be.

And How to Train Your Dragon

How to Train Your Dragon is a better film than Kung Fu Panda, but it's not the quintessential Dreamworks film.

[pap64]

Here are my thoughts on this whole situation...

Do you guys remember when Pixar sent their first version of Toy Story, and Disney outright rejected it because they felt it was too cynical and mean spirited for its own good? To me, that is an example of a major studio telling the newer studio to improve upon their work if they hope to have it mass distributed around the world under their name. For many years, DreamWorks operated independently (and in a way, they still are), without any major studios telling them how to construct their films and what type of films they green light, so they had tons of creative freedom, but no real direction. Pixar would have been the same had it not been for Disney's strict guidelines. Then working for Disney for their first films allowed them to grow and become just as beloved as Disney.

It is clear the problem at DreamWorks is that they don't really have a direction as to who they want to be. At first, they seemed to have an idea: create animated films that are far from the Disney mold with lots of talent and star power (Road to El Dorado, Prince of Egypt, Chicken Run etc.). But after the mega success of Shrek, then their focus lied on pop culture heavy films with extra dossage of snark and self awareness on the side (the Shrek sequels, Bee Movie, Madagascar). But once Kung Fu Panda came out, their focus became even more uneven when they added pop culture heavy films along with well written fantasy films and odd projects (seriously, this year we got the visually stunning Croods, and then we will get... Turbo, the racing snail movie). And last year, we got the super crowd pleaser but still cartoony Madagascar 3 against the epic and visually stunning Rise of the Guardians. Heck, even Sony Pictures Animation, which is still relatively new in the business, has a better idea of who they want to be: an animation studio that creates film heavy on the cartoony humor to contrast the hip self awareness of a DreamWorks film and the story output of a Pixar film.

Pixar's direction seems to be to create original animated films that inspire the same kind of emotions a Disney film would do, hence why their films are balanced (at times not so much) when it comes to their emotional content: they delight, they inspire and they tickle the emotional senses. They also have the huge plus in that Disney being their distributor they get more exposure than any other studio out there, even DreamWorks.

I think DreamWorks should be given more credit when it comes to their animated output as they have been improving for years now, especially now that they have left the anti-Disney stigma behind. But I do definitely see how some would consider them to be a studio without any real direction, despite animators claiming to give them creative freedom, and creative freedom doesn't always equal quality.

[Lnds500]

Here are my thoughts on this whole situation...

Do you guys remember when Pixar sent their first version of Toy Story, and Disney outright rejected it because they felt it was too cynical and mean spirited for its own good? To me, that is an example of a major studio telling the newer studio to improve upon their work if they hope to have it mass distributed around the world under their name. [...].

Actually your argument is flawed because you missed the most important point. The first version of Toy Story was terrible, spiteful and boring because Disney had had their hands on it (namely Katzenberg). It was only after they let them do what they wanted that TS turned out like the masterpiece it is.

[PatrickvD]

I think we're all looking too much into this whole thing.

Chris Sanders' vision didn't work out because Lasseter, as executive producer and creative head of the studio wanted a different kind of film. I think that's really all there is to it.

And I don't even think there's any bad blood, seeing as how Lasseter went through some trouble handing Sanders the rights to a character he created for American Dog. That goes against studio policy. Every drawing made within the walls of WDAS is property of Disney.

I'm kind of over this whole Sanders/Lasseter/Disney/Dreamworks debate. What's really left to say?

[estefan]

Plus, people think of these as studios, but the films are made by different people who jump from studio to studio. Both David Silverman and Brenda Chapman have directed films at DreamWorks and Pixar. In fact, quite a number of Disney folks are now at DreamWorks. In addition to Chapman and Sanders, there's also Dean DeBlois, Rob Minkoff and Gary Trousdale and even animators like Kathy Zielinski, Ed Gombert and James Baxter.

Early on, the comedic films from the studio had an anti-Disney edge to them, but that's also because Jeffrey Katzenberg's feud with Eisner and the board was so recent. He also appeared to be more in control of the projects in the early days. I know he still has a bit of input now, but on the creative side, he appears to now let the directors and story artists run loose.

[dollover]

Kung Fu Panda was great up until Po who had trained for like a week singlehandedly and easily defeated a foe that the 5 best warriors who have trained all their lives got their @$$es kicked by. That was just way too much of a stretch and pretty much ruined the movie for me. The only dreamworks movie I loved was How to Train Your Dragon.

[Sotiris]

Chris Sanders' vision didn't work out because Lasseter, as executive producer and creative head of the studio wanted a different kind of film. I think that's really all there is to it.

Yeah, pretty much. I wonder if that rumor that Lasseter hated Lilo & Stitch is true though.

[FlyingPiggy]

Basically, exactly what we've heard all along.

I hate that Disney has adopted this fear of being different.

[Sotiris]

Following the success of “Lilo & Stitch,” Sanders began developing another original idea at Disney – “American Dog.” “The body of it was this road trip,” Sanders said. “This dog who does not know what the real world really is, because he was born and raised on a movie set, so his understanding of the world is that everything is easy, and he is amazing at everything, because he’s been so fooled by all this stuff. He thinks he can drive a car, he can do all these different things that he cannot do. When he’s accidentally released into the outside world, it’s devastating for him, and he’s extremely depressed and confused.”

At this point Schumacher had left and Eisner was not thrilled with the script. At one point in the story the dog, Henry, is responsible for destroying a large stockpile of money that some of the other characters had stockpiled for their future. That’s when the other characters come up with an idea: take him back to the studio and ransom him to replace the money that Henry destroyed. “Eisner said it is completely unbelievable that a movie studio would spend a million dollars for just one shot in a film. And then he paused and said, ‘Well, we would do it, but other people wouldn’t believe it.”

The movie shared the same DNA as “Lilo & Stitch,” according to Sanders. The story reels were legendary; they were set to John Williams’ score to “1941,” with another big moment set to The Sylver’s 1975 single “Boogie Fever.” There was a radioactive rabbit and a cat with one eye that Disney actually allowed Sanders to leave the building with. The art style was inspired by American painter Edward Hopper.

One day, Sanders was called into an office with producer Clark Spencer and studio heads John Lasseter and Ed Catmull. “I knew. I was like, I’m going to get taken off my own movie,” Sanders said. “And sure enough, I went to their office and they said, ‘Thank you very much for your time, and we’ll be changing leadership on this. Were going to go in a different direction.’ It had been difficult that entire time. Nothing on that film was easy. It wasn’t a huge surprise, but it was the hardest thing, career-wise, I have ever experienced. I just drove out to the desert for several days, not sitting on a cactus or anything, but I found a place to stay and just had to deal with it.”

Back in California, without Schumacher’s guardianship, “American Dog” couldn’t survive the corporate gauntlet. (It was eventually reconfigured as “Bolt.”) “We had gotten to a place where I was supposed to be running Disney Theatrical and Disney Feature Animation and Disney TV Animation at the same time. And I felt like a giant failure doing all of them at the same time. And it was silly to be trying to that and living on airplanes,” Schumacher said. He said he doesn’t talk a lot about “American Dog.” “I understand what happened and I couldn’t fix that at some point. I’m not some hero or here but my respect and affection and admiration for what Chris has done, but also how his brain works, is boundless. I feel badly that his Disney time ended badly.”

Ironically, soon after, Sanders was pulled back into Catmull’s office. Catmull, who had co-founded Pixar and had also orchestrated an industry-wide wage-fixing conspiracy, wanted to talk about Sanders’ future. “I said, ‘Will I be able to direct again?’” Sanders said. “And he said, ‘What about art directing?’” Sanders told Catmull, just as he had told Don Hahn years earlier on “The Lion King,” that he wasn’t an art director. “That was the horrible moment that I realized I can’t be here. If I’m ever going to direct again, I have to leave,” Sanders said about Disney at that time.

Source: https://www.thewrap.com/chris-sanders-m ... nd-stitch/

[PatchofBlue]

Sanders is genuinely one of the best voices in animation today. Disney would have been far better off to keep him around.

I do find his earlier statement about Dreamworks not having a specific "style" really weird, though. Like, the Dreamworks films from 2001-2010 had a VERY rigid aesthetic and tone, at least as much as what we think of with the "Disney" or "Pixar" style. It's only been in recent years that they've started to go off-book, and I still feel like I could pick out a Dreamworks film from a crowd.

It's you, Chris. YOU were the genetic diversity.

[The Disneynerd]

What a shame! I like Bolt, but American Dog surely would have left a more striking impression! Especially since it would have been greatly weird in the veins of Lilo and Stitch.
There was Literally no reason for them to feel concerned about that, Stitch was their biggest commercial success at the time!...

Sanders is genuinely one of the best voices in animation today. Disney would have been far better off to keep him around.

Agreed. Most of his filmography no matter which studio is so charming and still beloved. I STILL had no opportunity to watch The Wild Robot but would love to.