Disney shuts down "A Few Good Ghosts"

[lokheed]

Yesterday Disney made the decision to shut down production of "A Few Good Ghosts", which was being produced out of the Orlando animation facility. A few weeks ago they laid off 50 animators here in Orlando, and with the cancellation of "A Few Good Ghosts" there are no active projects for the Florida studio. As a mater of fact, the only 2-D animated film that Disney has left in the pipeline is next year's "Home on the Range". Disney has wandered so far away from their core competency it is terrifying. The sad truth is that the culture that sparked off the new golden era ("Little Mermaid", "Beauty and the Beast", etc.) has been completely dismantled. The only bright spot in recent years has been Pixar, and let's face it -- now that "Finding Nemo" has surpassed "The Lion King" as the highest grossing animated film of all time, one way or another Disney is going to lose that cash cow. Either the negotiations with Pixar will fail completely, or else Pixar will get to keep a significantly larger chunk of the profits than they have been. Either way, we have clearly slipped into a dark era of Disney animation. Odds are it will be at least a decade before the studio finds itself again. If it ever does.

A quick Farscape update: still no official word, but that should be forthcoming very very soon. Look for a 4-6 episode mini-series with all of the original cast and crew to tie up dangling plot threads.

Meanwhile, I am pretty much set to leave for Seattle on Monday morning. My suitcase is already packed and my clothes for Monday are already set aside. I just have to toss in the power cords for my cell phone and PDA and I am ready to hit the airport.

Not that I am excited or anything.