Hell hath frozen under Disney's spot.

[strredwolf]

Disney is scrapping direct-to-DVD sequels. (AP/MercuryNews)

Which means after "The Little Mermaid 3" we can stop hearing about these crappy sequels.  About time!

How did this come about?  Well, Apple CEO Steve Jobs also ran Pixar, and Disney bought Pixar.  Steve thus became Disney's largest shareholder and a spot on the Disney board...

...and used it for good, because in 2003 Jobs said "We feel sick about Disney doing sequels.  If you look at the quality of their sequels... it's pretty embarrassing."

Thank you Steve!

Comments

[rhanlav.livejournal.com]

Holy dook! Hehe. You sure you didn't just threaten to crush the board of directors under your massive massiveness? ;) Hehe. Glad to see Steve Jobs putting his foot down on those Sequels though. Maybe now we won't get another Air Bud sequel.

--Salen

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

Now if we can just get them to stop making shows like 101 Dalmatians the Animated Series, which was about 3 dalmatians and a bird...

The sequels are almost never of the same quality as the originals. Lilo and stitch was a decent enough movie, but the TV show and the rest of the movies were just painful to watch. Them trying to capitalize on the Pokemon trend...

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

As long as they keep themselves to the numerous Disney channels, I don't care.

[kazriko.livejournal.com]

"As long as they stick to the kiddie shelves at the retail stores and I can just not buy them and not watch them, I don't care." ;)

I might complain that they suck, but it really doesn't affect me one way or the other anymore since I just don't buy their direct-dvd movies after seeing the later Lilo and Stitch movies. If you don't like them, you can just ignore them and hopefully they'll lose audience and go away. (Not like that helped with the Land Before Time sequels... or the Spyro games after the first 3. Series milkers suck, but as long as you are aware of the fact that they're milking the series, it's not any big deal.)

[strredwolf.livejournal.com]

I'm not on the board. :(

[elric-dewisant.livejournal.com]

This is the second thing we have to thank Steve Jobs for. Without his supporting Roy Disney, they would have NEVER gotten rid of Michael Eisner, the jackass responsible for the current sad state of Disney. To bad it seems like its gonna take forever to clean up his mess.

[bibliophage.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the Disney corporation has been around over 75 years, and thanks to Congress, they have all their copyrights for at least another 75 years. It took 30 years to go down this far, so hopefully it won't take 30 years to go back up. (Although it might take another Disney as CEO to kick and smash his way back to the previous family ethics)

[elric-dewisant.livejournal.com]

We can only hope. Still, I don't entirely support the Bono-Disney Act, but one does have to face facts. Without Mickey Mouse, the Disney Corporation would be dead. MM is their most recognized commodity world-wide and without MM, they are nothing. This current era, that doesn't sound like to much of a bad thing, but if they can get back to the old ethics, that would be a bad thing.

[bibliophage.livejournal.com]

Actually, I support none of the various copyright extension acts. Explicit rather than Implicit copyright was fine, but the absurd lengths they're going to are nuts. 17 years. Period. (It was established in the 1780's, when it could take two years to get something to publication, or more - and they felt it was appropriate, and it stayed there until the 1900's. )

Disney would _not_ have lost control of Mickey Mouse, or any of their other icons. Those are trademarks, not copyrights, which have never had an expiration date. (they can also not be sold, only given)

All Disney would lose was the right to deny someone to _copy_ an old, existing copy of a movie, for example, or modify it - unless said modification distorted their trademark (you couldn't whack up Cinderella into a porn movie, for example, even if you used footage from a copyright expired reel. All you could do is convert it, then sell copies. That's where all those dollar store DVD's are coming from - copies of old movies and shows that did not have explicit copyrights, and were older than 1951, as I recall. Some later than that, but for similar reasons)