Last week, The Weinstein Company announced that their newest animated movie Leap! (that's hitting theaters this Friday) would be the start of a new animation division at the studio called Mizchief, so named because that's how the son of Weinstein Company head Harvey Weinstein pronounces mischief. It's the newest chapter in the story of The Weinstein Company's extensive saga of trying to become a formidable force in the world of animated family fare and finding more struggles than success in the process. When did such a quest begin? Well, to answer that question, you have to go all the way back to when The Weinstein Company started.....
2005. The year Harvey and Bob Weinstein departed Miramax, the movie studio they started nearly thirty years, due to constant disagreements with the heads of Disney, the company that owned Miramax. Their new studio would be called The Weinstein Company and, as told by Hoodwinked director Cory Edwards, they wanted to get back at their old employers by getting their own pipeline of animated family fare going. It didn't hurt that Harvey and Bob Weinstein had had recent success in the family movie game with the Spy Kids trilogy that had, combined, grossed over $310 million domestically. Considering how much Disney was struggling at the time with their in-house animated movie efforts, the timing seemed fortuitous for the two brothers to start their own family movie empire and make some major money for their newly created studio in the process.
Hoodwinked! would be the first such title for The Weinstein Company but it wouldn't be the last. A few weeks after Hoodwinked! premiered to better than expected box office in January 2006, an announcement that the studio had secured distribution rights to a film called Igor revealed a wide assortment of animated family movies The Weinstein Company had in development, which included a Hoodwinked sequel entitled Hood vs. Evil set for release in January 2010, a new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie set for release in March 2007, a movie starring Opus the Penguin from the Bloom County comic strip and a film adaptation of the classic children's book A Cricket In Times Square.
It was an ambitious slate that suggested real promise, especially in the wake of Hoodwinked! doing better than expected at the box office. But only a few weeks after that announcement, trouble reared its head as Doogal, The Weinstein Company's second foray into animated family fare, bombed badly at the domestic box office. Making only $7.4 million at the domestic box office, making it the first computer-animated movie given a wide release to make under $10 million domestically, it was clear that the box office performance of Hoodwinked! would not be the default outcome for future animated family features.
Further difficulties were encountered by wonky distribution deals that limited or even outright eliminated The Weinstein Company's ownership of certain animated family films. Their new Ninja Turtles movie, later titled TMNT, ended up being distributed domestically and in the majority of key foreign territories by Warner Bros. while Igor eventually became a wholly MGM film. Other ambitious plans for further family fare, such as a deal with the Jim Henson company for The Weinstein Company and the director of Hoodwinked! to make a Fraggle Rock movie, didn't even come to fruition. Because of this, as well as numerous production delays and even outright cancellations on animated films in development, The Weinstein Company wouldn't release another animated family movie a whopping five years after Doogal with Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil, itself a production nightmare plagued by lawsuits, behind-the-scenes drama involving the removal of the original movies creative team, delayed release dates and botched marketing (Burger King sold toys promoting the movie a whopping 14 months prior to its actual release).
Another two years would go by before The Weinstein Company would dip its toes into the waters of animated family fare again, this time with another long-delayed project, Escape From Planet Earth. This one ended up making an OK amount of money (it garnered a $57 million domestic gross that narrowly outpaced the domestic gross of the original Hoodwinked! film) but it wasn't nearly enough to compensate its $70 million budget. More worrisome was a massive lawsuit from the films original writer/director Tony Leech (another individual heavily involved with the original Hoodwinked! who ended up getting screwed over by the Weinstein Company brass) that was eventually settled on "...a motion of discontinuance in the case" but it showed once again the level of creative discourse happening behind the scenes on these movies that was preventing The Weinstein Company from getting a more consistent presence in the world of animation.
At least January 2015 brought a legitimate hit for the studio in the form of Paddington. Though not fully animated (it starred a computer-generated bear interacting with live-action environments), it did both make big bucks (it grossed $76 million domestically) and got glowing reviews from critics, two things the majority of The Weinstein Company's family fare had not received. Yet another multi-year break between Weinstein Company family movies followed that will be finally broken by this week's release of Leap! which, like many of The Weinstein Company's movies, has suffered multiple release date delays. The future slate for this new Mizchief label include an English version of the Chinese animated movie Xiao men shen that will be called The Guardian Brothers domestically (which stars Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman and Edward Norton, among others) as well as film adaptations of The Firework-Makers Daughter and that film version of The Cricket In Times Square they've been toiling away at for over a decade now.
One can't help but wonder if The Weinstein Company will finally find consistent success in Leap! and other future animated efforts under the Mizchief label that match the success of live-action family film Paddington. God only knows if that can happen given that this studio's track record in terms of handling animated family fare has been as unpredictable as it is erratic. Even if Leap! tumbles at the box office though, expect The Weinstein Company to keep on trying as the past twelve years show that no amount of lawsuits, production problems, box office failures and assorted issues keep The Weinstein Company from constantly trying to make themselves a notable name in the world of animated family movies, for better and for worse.
No comments:
Post a Comment