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It would also exact a little revenge on Disney, which is countering Anastasia with a 17-day rerelease of its 1989 hit The Little Mermaid as well as the kid-oriented Robin Williams comedy Flubber. "Disney is throwing the kitchen sink against Anastasia," says Daly. "They're doing everything to kill it. And I guess if you were in their shoes you'd do the same thing." One of the men in those shoes, Disney motion-pictures-group chairman Richard Cook, deems it business as usual. Disney has tried--and succeeded in--undercutting most of its rivals' big animated films. "Are we going to make it easy for them?" he asks. "No. Are we going to compete? You bet! And what will be, will be."
Daly also sees a proprietary arrogance in Disney's chairman. "Michael Eisner never tried to warn us off, but obviously he tried to make our life miserable," Daly says. "He thinks animation is Disney's birthright and that nobody has the right to be in animation but them."
Birthright? Well, yes. For 60 years, since its release of the cinema's first cartoon feature, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney has been the brand name for animation. Its chief rivals in the '40s and '50s, Warner Bros. and MGM, which were besting Disney in the quality and appeal of their animated shorts, never produced a feature-length cartoon. Only in the mid-'80s, when the studio taken over by Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg had yet to hint at a renaissance, did Disney lose its animation pre-eminence. An American Tail, produced in 1986 by Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment, took in $47 million at the North American box office, equal to the grosses of both the previous Disney effort, The Black Cauldron, and its follower, The Great Mouse Detective.
Under Katzenberg, Disney animation flourished with a new visual and musical verve. Nearly every film, from Oliver & Company (1988) to The Lion King (1994), outgrossed its predecessor by 40% to 50%. The Lion King, which Daly calls "the Star Wars of animation," earned about the same in domestic theaters as Forrest Gump did the same year. But that's chump change for animation. Toss in the video market, the merchandise and CD sales, and The Lion King has so far generated an estimated $1 billion--in profits.
Video is animation's private bank. Of the all-time leaders in video sales, the top three (The Lion King, Snow White, Aladdin) and 13 of the top 20 are Disney cartoons. "Disney's animated machine remains the most lucrative business in the filmed-entertainment mix," noted a Smith Barney report, Filmed Entertainment: It's a Small World, issued in July, "and virtually no live-action film can replicate the profit potential of this venue." The figures that movie moguls dream of have dollar signs in front, and Disney's were enough to goad any showman into finding his inner children's market. It was time for Disney rivals to wake up and smell the cash flow.
Is animation a market that will always expand? Or was the Simba spectacular the apogee of a trend? Or a glorious fluke? Disney's last three fully animated films to hit theaters--Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Hercules, all released after Katzenberg's rancorous departure from Disney and his start-up of DreamWorks--have earned together just a bit more than The Lion King.