Disney Renaissance and its successful cartoons Essay

During the Disney Renaissance Pixar gained major success, with the release of Toy Story in 1995. It was produced for Disney by Pixar and directed by John Lasseter, former Disney animator, and was both critic and commercial success. The success led Pixar to sign a five-film contract with Disney that included A Bug's life, Toy Story 2, and Monsters, Inc. The mid-Disney Renaissance successes include Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan.
After the Disney Renaissance, the studio was competing with other studios that began to produce movies similar to the Disney formula. During this time, the studio had mix batch of films with some successes and some failures. Successes including The Emperor's New Groove, and Lilo & Stitch, and a decent amount of failures that includes Fantasia 2000, Treasure Planet, Home on the Range, and Brother Bear. The studio produced many direct-to-video sequels and television series, which included lower-budgeted sequels to earlier films.
On January 24, 2006 Disney announced that they would purchase Pixar for $ 7.4 billion. Pixar executives Edwin Catmull and John Lasseter would take management of Walt Disney Feature Animation. The company wanted to maintain some separation with Disney and Pixar management tried to draw a hard line, making each studio would be responsible for their own projects. The two changed the model of the company to a filmmaker-driven studio instead of an executive-driven studio, which means instead of directors responding to executive's notes the filmmakers would have personnel meetings delivering feedback immediately. Lasseter renamed Walt Disney Feature Animation to its current name, Walt Disney Animation Studios. The studio would be responsible for both traditional and computer-animated films. Hand-drawn productions, animation, design and layout were all done in-house while clean-up animation and digital ink-and-paint were send out to vendors and outworkers.
The studio was going stronger than ever with major box office and critical successes. Meet the Robinsons, in 2007, earning $169.3 million and Bolt, in 2008, with the best critical response of any Disney animated feature since Lilo & Stitch and financial success. The Princess and the Frog, returning to the musical-comedy format of the 1990s Disney Renaissance, was nominated for three Academy Awards including two for Best Song after its release in 2009. The studio continued this movie formula with Tangled in 2010 and Frozen in 2013, both huge successes making triple their budget. Frozen earning over 1 billion making it the highest grossing animated film of all time, and receiving the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. The studio created many comedy-adventure films including Wreck-It Ralph, Big Hero 6, and Zootopia. All of these films were huge successes both commercially and critical and each film won multiple awards Wreck-It Ralph won the Annie for Best Animated Feature, Critics' Choice, and Kid's Choice Awards for Best Animated Feature and received both a Golden Globe and Academy Award nominations. Big Hero 6 won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature, and Zootopia being released in March 2016 has not yet been nominated.