Lidsville- The Movie (in 3D)

[LotsoA113]

In yet another project announcement Dreamworks Animation will be making a Lidsville movie. Follow the Peabody and Sherman movie, I'm starting to wonder if this vast amount of projects announcements is being done to make any possible distributor feel Dreamworks can do more than just Shreks.. Fascinating. What do you think,

[EricJ]

Again, like P&S, this is another rights holder doing their OWN selling to Dreamworks, and Jeffrey grabbing every opportunity he can see, because until the numbers come in he still thinks "three movies a year" is a good thing--
I could've seen a real Land of the Lost movie without Will Ferrell, but I'm geezer enough to remember when Lidsville was on TV, and we didn't even like it back then.
(It's been hard times for the Kroffts ever since Rhino broke up. )

Fortunately, I don't think Jeff's thinking actual canon (apart from maybe having the villain sound like Charles Nelson Reilly), think he just read the description and thought "Pixar's 'Hat Story'" (or more accurately, "HatTale" with celebrity voices)...And you know what happened THEN.

[American_dog_2008]

I did not know what Lidsville was about before now.

[LotsoA113]

I myself had only heard it previously in an Enterainmen Weekly when Land of the Lost came out. Spossedly it had some controversy because, like H.R. Pufnstuf, they thought its title was drug related. Odd. Wonder if they'll alter the title a bit for this adaptation.

[EricJ]

EVERYBODY thinks the Kroffts were "on drugs", because their stuff was so loopy.
They weren't: It was just the 70's, and live-action was cheaper. (And at least they weren't Filmation's Shazam/Isis, or the two Sherwood Schwartz sitcoms we got on NBC Saturday morning...)



And even for those who can still put Pufnstuf in a nostalgic context (it's pretty difficult, even for us 70's-Saturday vets), Lidsville ranks a few places below "Electra Woman and Dyna Girl" for sentimentality. (With Land/Lost on top, naturally, and "Sigmund & the Sea Monsters" still to contend with.)

[Czarine]

I think Dreamworks went on a recruiting spree to realise all this! Damn, did anyone see the list of upcoming Dreamworks projects? The officially announced ones are already an impressive amount, but there's also about 10 unannounced projects on there!!!

EDIT: And again, I can't post links... Sigh.

[LotsoA113]

I think only a few of these I think will really happen. Many is The time they just announce it and nothing happens (like Route 66 or It Came From Earth!) I do think stuff like Me and My Shadow, Peaody and Sherman and Trollhunters will happen, though I'm not sure about this one.

[Darkblade]

It sounds that Dreamworks are on something, Oh yeah its called greed. How is it humanly possible that they can work on so many movies at once? Like just WHAT are they working on right now?

[EricJ]

Jeff tends to believe DW's own publicity--Especially from business journals that don't know any better, and rave "Look how prolific they were they were last year...They had Dragon AND Megamind!"
Naturally, with this rush of attention, Jeffrey assumes this is the secret to success, and that more is better--"That's nothing, we've got THREE in production this year...Think we can get all the way to five? Just look at Pixar; big deal, they only do one!"

(So, I'm guessing he left Disney before analysts started realizing what killed off the 90's Disney era...)

[Randall]

They had three last year, right? You forgot Shrek.

And, I did actually like all three. Son of a gun.

[Czarine]

Yeah, but Shrek Forever After isn't really worth mentioning imo...

Anyway, if they have the capacity, why not? The only thing to worry about is that people might not have enough money to go to all of their movies!

Also, the one movie Pixar has in stock for us this year... might as well be the animated feature I'm looking forward to the LEAST. Pixar is awesome and my top 10 of the last decade has quite some of their titles, but this isn't going to be a very Pixar year, so I hope some other studios get to score.

[Randall]

Yeah, but Shrek Forever After isn't really worth mentioning imo...

I know what you're meaning, but aside from it being a pretty decent movie, it also made DW almost $240 million domestically, and was their biggest hit of the year, as well as #8 for 2010. I'm pretty sure that means we have to include it.

[Czarine]

Hey, as long as they can keep funding more serious movies like How To Train Your Dragon with the profit of the more 'commercial' releases, I'm completely fine with it.

[estefan]

And I have now problem with DreamWorks making many films per year. We get a gazillion live-action films floooding the marketplace a year. Why do animated films have to be restricted to one every month? I'm always in support of more animated films being greenlit as long as it's not something stupid like Cinderella II. Frankly, all of the fully-animated films coming out this year sound promising. And the Madagascar sequels aside, I find all of DreamWorks' upcoming projects interesting.

[EricJ]

Anyway, if they have the capacity, why not? The only thing to worry about is that people might not have enough money to go to all of their movies!

The problem, as we found out with late-90's Disney and its many, many imitators, is that Familiarity Breeds Contempt.
The audience thought the "formula" of unappreciated-hero/villain/heroine/musical got so bogged down between Pocahontas and Swan Princess, that they started knowing a movie's licks before the movie made them.
That's a PARTICULAR problem with Dreamworks' non-Sanders movies, as we're already thinking they look too danged alike....And more sampling in concentrated amounts to take that opinion from isn't going to do their image any help.
(I remember the jokes about audiences coming out of Dragon after seeing the first trailer to Megamind: "That was the best Pixar movie I've seen, but that Dreamworks trailer looked awful!" )

Also, Pixar hits it on the head with one movie a year: Not only does it allow them to spend more time letting the entire studio pitch ideas to it, it also makes the one release more of a brand-name "event".
One of the biggest factors that sank Disney's Treasure Planet in '03 was that Lilo & Stitch was just enjoying its breakout audience-love word of mouth all throughout late summer and September, the time when Disney was trying to shift marketing attention to the November title--Could be that half the audience didn't even notice there was a second movie that year.