For myself, I am conflicted about this move; I thought the arrangement of American animated feature films currently has been rather ideal with each of the major studios being comfortably staked out in their own niche in the animated feature film. For most part, all of the major players have been able to co-exist and tap into a ready market with films that have been general profitable for all.
Furthermore, although the newer players like Blue Sky (Ice Age, Horton Hears a Who) and Illumination Entertainment (Despicable Me and The Lorax) have been wildly inconsistent in their film quality while Pixar has regrettably declined themselves in recent years with Cars 2 and Brave, it has been beautiful seeing DreamWorks Animation firm itself up as a pillar in this artistic golden age while new players like ILM (Rango) and Sony getting the hang of it.
Now, Fox is going to have DreamWorks and Blue Sky, the 2nd and 3rd biggest North American players in the field while Paramount has been encourage with Rango's commercial and critical enters the field with its own animation department. As it Fox is going to have to juggle two proven animation studios to distribute and promote them both fairly and adequately. I just hope each will be able to strive for their own vision, I do not want DA to compromise on its hard won artistic excellence, nor do I want Blue Sky to be subsumed themselves, even if the Ice Age series is running out of artistic steam.
Furthermore, I hope Paramount will be willing to look at its own history and learn from it so they don’t repeat its abysmal treatment of the Fleischer Brothers when it forced them to imitate Disney when they were making their own mark with sexy urbane fair like Betty Boop. This when they were pushed into making features like Gulliver's Travels when they were far from ready, only to have them ultimately fail and close the door for everyone outside of Disney for decades.
All that eventually accomplished was to frustrate and drive a wedge between them, destroying a superb studio and force Paramount to take it over as Famous Studios.
Furthermore, all that came out of that effort was an animation studio that drove into its grandfathered properties like Popeye into the ground and created nothing but repetitious childish piffle like Casper the Friendly Ghost and Baby Huey. Heck, their Tom and Jerry knock-off series, Herman and Katnip has been derided as the most sadistic cartoon series of the Golden Age of American Animation and the main inspiration of the comically gory parody, "Itchy and Scratchy" in The Simpsons franchise. Just see an example of the former and one of the latter and decide if in content they are really any different in spirit.
Now, the rest of this year feels so promising with Hotel Transylvania’s trailer feeling so charming while DA’s The Rise of the Guardians and Disney’s Wreck-It Ralph trailers seem to be carving out their own niches for so much fun. Meanwhile, Tim Burton will get a chance to recover his artistic reputation with his animated remake of his Frankenweenie, even though I agree with some critics that the stellar Paranorman could have taken it on.
All I can say is that there is a welcome feeling equalibrium so that has even allowed Studio Ghibli through Disney to improve their market presence with the Secret World of Arietity. I just hope as DreamWorks, the company that helped make this flowering possible, prepares to change its partners that this realignment will be allowed to continue for the foreseeable future.
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