The downfall of big budget family shows (Aka Disney)...- Page 2

[CurtainPullDowner]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 12:33pm

"behind MARY POPPINS there was actually a decent story"

What was that?
I find a big problem with POPPINS is that there is no story,
no love story, nada.
Mary does not even have a big 11 O Clock number.
(or even a decent solo number).

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 12:34pm

Yeah, we had a lot of kids who were misbehaving when I saw it, too. I really feel that you'd get the same experience just showing your kid the movie again. The stage show is exactly like the movie, if you take away the fancy staging and costumes.

I mean, I'm not against taking people taking their kids to the theatre if they can handle it, but there are so many better kid-friendly shows out there.

Updated On: 7/26/09 at 12:34 PM

[adamgreer]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 12:43pm

If you don't consider The Lion King kid-friendly, what exactly is their demographic?

I'm curious, because it seems Disney has (very successfully) marketed it as a family show. Most of the times I've seen it, the kids have been very well-behaved and seemed enraptured by it. I wonder if it's better for slightly older children, like the 8-10 ages, as opposed to 5-7.

[SporkGoddess]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 1:01pm

That would be my guess. I do think it's a kid-friendly show, just a lot of the kids I saw there were misbehaving. But they were in that younger age bracket, IIRC.

[colleen_lee]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 2:53pm

I actually had kid misbehaving issues when I saw "The Lion King" too. This was way back in '96 or '97 when the pre-Broadway tryout was playing in Minneapolis. The woman sitting behind me had a child probably about 4 years old sitting on her lap (I don't even think they purchased a seat for the child), the child was not particularly interested in the show and was throwing cheerios for the ENTIRE PERFORMANCE. Then, at one point the mom gave the child a sippy cup and the kid was flinging the sippy cup in the air and ended up getting milk all over a brand new dress that my mother had purchased for me just for the occasion! (I was only about 15 at the time).

I don't recall much about the show as I was so distracted by the family behind me. I've been considering going back and seeing the Broadway production to see if I actually enjoyed the show or not.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 6:50pm

So what's Disney's track record- a handful of "flops" and three shows that made boatloads of money- two of which are among the most successful shows in history? There aren't many producers who wouldn't KILL for that career.

[adamgreer]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 6:54pm

Disney's track record...

Beauty and the Beast- huge hit
The Lion King- huge
Aida- hit, made a $12 million profit
On the Record- flop
Tarzan- flop
High School Musical tour- big hit
Mary Poppins- hit
The Little Mermaid- flop

Out of the 8 major productions they've produced, 5 of them have been hits. That's a really great track record, and I agree with JoeKv, most producers would kill for that kind of success.

Out of

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 7/26/09 at 7:27pm

If you look at the Disney track record, the true DISNEY hits were the early productions. Poppins was a hit, in large part, due to the hand of CamMac. High School musical succeeded on the road because they struck while the iron was RED hot, it was based on a live action piece not driven by effects, and the opened it on the road without giving the NYc critics a chance to rip its throat.

The problem is the Disney "formula".

Look at the past twenty fove years of Disney animated films. in fact, take two and play them side by side in sync. They are 100% formula. The same stock characters, the same animation style, and the song beats are virtually the same as well. During the Eisner era, it became less about creativity and a tried formula. Disney Theatricals suffers the same fate. They didn't know what they were doing when they started, so they left it up to the theatre professionals to create and build from the ground up.

Robert Jess Roth approached Disney with an idea for "Beast" and then he went off to create with theatre people. The book worked, so Disney turned the libretto into a formula for how they think a Broadway libretto should be, and they have hampered each of their writers with the task of writing to that formula.. David Henry Hwang spoke openly of that in writing Tarzan.

Taymor auditioned a revolutionary idea to use an out-there conecpt to bring The Lion King to life.. and it worked and paid off in spades, so all of a sudden, the shows have to be done in a high sconcept (ie, Tarzan and Mermaid).

Shumaker comes aboard and, with a history and aspirations, he grabs the reigns and decided that HE will come up with concepts for the shows and their staging, not a director that they hire to come up with a staging idea, and then he instructs the hired directors to stage the show in that way.. he doesn't let the shows grow in an organic fashion from the creative team as the original Disney hits did.

Therefore, each of these shows has, in their own ways, been forced and unnatural. he stopped running the shows as their own entities and started managing them like a corporation, co-dependant on the others..

THAT is the wall that Disney has hit. Mary Poppins, in large part because of the involvement of CamMac, managed to avoid that fate in it's development.