Ever since The Lion King broke box office records and won a plethora of awards, pundits have predicted the rebirth of America’s love with animation. Indeed where we had 1 major studio with an animation department (well 1.5 if you include Don Bluth Animation) we now have 3 (Disney, Dreamworks, Pixar (and maybe Fox, but that used to be Don Bluth studios and I don’t think they have anything in production anyway)). But it took the break up of the world’s most famous animation studio (none other than Walt Disney Feature Animation) for the rebirth to really begin.
Okay. That’s a paragraph I hope to be able to write in about 18 months. It’s been about 12 months since the first major round of lay offs at WDFA. Now lots of little studios are popping up everywhere and it’s about that point in the development cycle where some films from ex-mousehouse artists are beginning to be previewed.
There was the Jim Hill Media story I linked to yesterday and now Orlando Sentinel reports on a studio made up of ex-WDFA-Orlando employees.