Okay so boom. I wanted to know why Disney has so many home movie animations in the early 2000s and I fell into a very deep rabbit hole. Here’s a thread of my conclusions

Aight so the early 2000s was not the best time for Disney’s animation. There stuck in the 2D animation world meanwhile Pixar and Dreamworks were working with CGI

Now Disney has a little bit of experience with CGI. The infamous ballroom scene from beauty and the beast is CGI. There are also pockets of scenes throughout their sequels that are CGI. Disney was practicing but..

Disney just couldn’t keep up. Dreamworks came out with Shrek, a box office hit and Pixar came out with Nemo. two box office hits from other companies all while Disney was making home video sequels..which were still good movies but cmon which are you picking Shrek or Cinderella 3?

Disney understood that they had a responsibility to the reputation of the company to get the horse back on the road. So the Disney-Pixar merger happened(again) in 2006. Still seen as one of the most successful mergers in history Disney acquired over $7 billlion in Pixar shares.

Was that going to stop Dreamworks? Nope! They just released the box office hit Madagascar (532m) in 2005. In 2006 Dreamworks released Over The Hedge (336m)which is an underrated good movie and did well at the box office but the attention of the people were going somewhere else.

Disney and Pixar released their first box office hit since 1995 with Toy Story. The reason Disney and Pixar split up in the first place is for another thread. The partnership was once again a hit. Cars was the animation film of 2006. Gaining 462m at the box office.

Years went on but the next big comparison happened in 2010. Disney’s Tangled was a hit( 200m) but not as much as Dreamwork’s How to Train your Dragon(494m). So you telling me even with the merger Disney couldn’t keep up? It was a back and forth race for years.

But then in 2013...Frozen shook the Table. That Disney Magic was back. The animation + the story line + the music earned Disney a whopping 1.28 billion at the box office. Dreamworks most successful movie was Shrek 2 (935m) in 2004.

Disney was now in the billion dolllar club with The the most successful animation movie of all time. Frozen was only dethroned by its sequel Frozen 2(1.45b) in 2019. Now Disney has a whopping 7 animated movies that have grossed more over $1b.

Now I can’t talk about billion dollar grossing animated movies when Dreamworks has none and another company we haven’t even brought up has 2. That’s right. Illumination has entered the chat. This company started in 2010 and literally has been

putting out Bangers ever since. In only a decade they’ve given us the Despicable Me trilogy, Sing(634m), Secret Life of Pets(875m), The Grinch (511m) and The Lorax(348m) and more. Their billion dollar movies are Minions (1.16b) and Despicable Me 3(1.03b). Very impressive.

Illumination has a very impressive resume for a company that’s only been around for 10 years. It is definitely a contender in the “animation greats” conversation.

I understand I didn’t bring up ALOT of movies. Im not about to have a Pixar vs Dreamworks vs Illumination vs Any Other animation company debate.
SN: One of my favorite animated movies is Anastasia and they were animated by Fox Animation Studios

This concludes my thread. I enjoyed making it.