Disney Wonders if a Mermaid Can Follow a Trail Blazed by a Lion

From this mornings New York Times.

Mr. Schumacher says he runs the unit as if he were artistic and managing director of an institutional theater. As laughable as it may seem to compare Disney to a nonprofit theater, in terms of the management structure the comparison is fitting. Mr. Schumacher gets above-the-title billing, a rarity for corporate executives even in the entertainment industry.

Fueled by its early hits, Disney Theatrical Group, as it came to be known, grew rapidly. But the new work sputtered. “The Hunchback of Notre Dame,” which Disney jointly produced with a Dutch company, closed in Berlin, never making it to Broadway. A touring revue of Disney songs called “On the Record” opened in Cleveland in 2004 and was dead in Denver eight months later. Then there was, of course, “Tarzan.”


Full story at link...

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/20/theater/20disn.html?_r=1&ref=movies&oref=slogin

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Did he read the out of town reviews????

Did you read them?

The show has problems, but I did read the reviews and they were mixed, not pans... and that was back in Denver. Changes have been made since then. Are there still problems with the show? Hell yes. Are there fundamental problems that can't be changed before opening night? Absolutely. But it's no Tarzan and there are many informed people who love it just as much as there are people who hate it.

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Funny - I thought the article said absolutely nothing.

The division has announced two medium-size Broadway-bound projects in development: a musical adaptation of Jules Feiffer’s book “The Man in the Ceiling” and a musical based on the book “Peter and the Starcatchers” by Dave Barry and Ridley Pearson about the early days of Peter Pan.

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Wow, after reading that I thought to myself, 'Those folks at Disney NEVER stop being positive about things!'

That was the biggest load of tripe.

These are just a couple of things that really stuck out in that article.

“First things first: Mr. Schumacher is, apparently, here to stay. Robert A. Iger, chief executive of the Walt Disney Company, said in an interview last week that the company had recently renewed Mr. Schumacher’s contract, though he would not reveal its length. Mr. Schumacher, for his part, said, “I’m not going anywhere.””

Isn’t that the same thing that was said about Eisner right before he got the big ‘Heave-Ho’?

“The musical was panned by Variety when it opened in Denver in August, and word of mouth among the Broadway cognoscenti has been mixed, to put it generously. Mr. Schumacher dismisses much of that as insider sniping, pointing out that the show was sold out in Denver.”


Sure it sold out…in Denver. It was the World Premier of a Disney stage musical.

If it HADN’T have sold out, it would have been a shock.

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It seems that Disey wants it both ways....a popular sell out and also artistic acclaim.

They can't have both.

Does anyone else find it absurd to read an article supposedly detailing all of Disney's theatrical projects that doesn't even mention "High School Musical"?

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Other shows have had artistic acclaim and been sellouts--Rent, Bring in Da Noise quickly come to mind.
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