Marshal Knight is a Disney lover, entertainment junkie, (impromptu) Country music singer and Root Beer connoisseur who really misses "Bunheads". He is very active on multiple social media sites, including twitter as @Marshal_Knight (twitter.com/Marshal_Knight) and Instagram as @MarshalKnight (instagram.com/MarshalKnight)
A couple months ago I gave my list of people who I believe deserve the honor of being a Disney Legend. With less than one year till the 3rd D23 Expo, I thought I would choose some more eligible Legends. WARNING! There are some that… Read More »Wishcasting the 2013 Disney Legends: Part Deux
Unless you are living under a rock (which would be incredibly uncomfortable), you realize the affect that The Wizarding World of Harry Potter has had on the Orlando tourism community. Everyone is filled to the brim with new projects that, they hope can match and/or topple Harry Potter in the themed and immersive environment category… or the bring in millions of people and billions of dollars category too! I thought, you can never look too far into the future… so here is a preview to what will, supposedly, make you travel to the Orlando area in the coming years!
Positive Coming Attractions:
John Frost wrote up a nice article a little while ago about the failed WDAS project “My Peoples” and how it was set to be animated in the Orlando animation department…until they closed the Orlando animation department. It never transferred over to CA, many Orlando animators left Disney all together, and after a ton of other set backs…the project was canned.
For those of you unfamiliar, the story was very short, it was about how three small kids and a ghost brought together a couple in the Appalachia area of the USA in the 1940’s. The thought process was taken from Walt’s head, for every big and grandiose film, you include a low-budget and simply sweet film to even things out (Bambi is to Tarzan and Dumbo is to My Peoples). After much deliberation and “fighting” between Barry Cook (the creator of the story and idea), Michael Eisner (the then CEO), and Thomas Schumacher (the then president of WDAS) over budget issues and such, the plan would be this: the couple would be done in hand-drawn animation while the rest of the characters were done, in the style of folk art, in CGI. It saved money and gave the film a distinct look. Dolly Parton, Lily Tomlin, Charles Durning, and more had already signed on to voice for the film and they had also already begun to write the bluegrass music for the film (which was supposed to evoke that sense of classic Appalachia).
In 1997, Michael Eisner issued a request to the team at ABC: create a Saturday morning block that is unique to all of its competitors. Peter Hastings, who had just left working for Animaniacs and Pinky and the Brain, pitched an idea that all the days of the week were represented by gloomy looking buildings, with Saturday being a grand and colorful skyscraper in the shape of a 1. The pitch was ok’ed, and more brainstorming started. Peter also brought up the idea of using virtual sets, which he was very unfamiliar with. After some test runs, they decided that the virtual sets were a great idea and were thus added to the show and its format.
The block premiered in September of 1997 and consisted of 4 shows in 2 hours. Between the shows and during commercials would be hosting interstitials coming from “inside” the Saturday building. In 1999, the block itself got a spin-off with Disney’s One Too premiering on UPN. This 2 hour block reran episodes from popular shows from the normal ABC block.
The shows that were featured on both channels covered a wide array of different topics, and in some cases, a wide array of controversy. In 1996, Jumbo Pictures was purchased by The Walt Disney Pictures, thus Nickelodeon’s hit show Doug became part of the Disney company. After a 3 year hiatus from Nick, Disney started making new episodes for One Saturday Morning. Though many people were against the idea of the “New Doug”, it quickly became the most popular show of the block and spawned tons of merchandise, video games, a full-length movie in theaters, and a musical show at the then MGM Studios. Another controversial tidbit came from the block airing the final season of Gargoyles, which many felt was too adult for a kids TV block.
Other shows included the short lived Hercules and Tarzan animated series, the hit Jungle Cubs, the surprise hit Lloyd In Space, Pepper Ann, Sabrina: The Animated Series, and the awesome The Weekenders. The most popular overall though was Recess. This show is still shown occasionally on Disney Channel, it will never go away…its just that popular! 4 films were made for the show, as well as the characters having a guest appearance on the Lilo and Stitch series.
Due to poor ratings, the interstitials were cancelled in 2000. In 2002, the block was cancelled and replaced with ABC Kids. It originally aired original shows, but eventually became the place for Disney Channel sitcom reruns. This past year, the block was cancelled and replaced with a series of educational and environmental programming.
Read More »Disney’s One Saturday Morning and why it needs to come back
As many of you know, I have become the unofficial Official Disney Channel reporter for the disney blog, so I have watched A LOT of DCOMs in my day. Radio Rebel was great, loved Geek Charming, Good Luck Charlie, It’s Christmas was fantastic, but Let… Read More »“Let It Shine” is…umm…not that good…
Recently some rumors (though some sources are calling it fact, but you can never tell with Pixar) came out stating that Finding Nemo 2 was being made under Andrew Stanton’s direction and that Toy Story 4 was in the works as well. After these two… Read More »Pixar Sequels and Why Fans Need to Calm Down
Throughout the 15 minute presentation given on July 10th at Busch Gardens Tampa, they emphasized how they wanted to make Christmas Town event a time for families to come together, and boy, do they have a plan to make that happen. Beginning on November 30th and running… Read More »Busch Gardens New “Christmas Town” event hopes to bring families together to celebrate
Back in the 1950’s up until the 1980’s, Friday night was THE night for television. ABC aired shows like “The Brady Bunch”, “The Flintstones”, and “Leave It To Beaver”, all which are now considered classics in their own right. Then, the 80’s came. All networks had trouble getting shows to pull in a large amount of viewers on a night that had become synonymous with social activity and being outside the house. ABC needed something to make them stand out.
So, in the late 80’s, the ABC team (specifically Jim Janicek) created a family friendly comedy block on Friday nights. Usually consisting of 4 half-hour sitcoms, these shows encouraged families to sit around the TV and relax after a long work/school week. During the 1989-1990 season, they started officially branding it as TGIF.
Read More »ABC’s New Friday Night Line-up Hopes to Recapture its TGIF Ratings