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WALT
Disney Co., the latest entertainment company to hop on
corporate America’s green bandwagon, is launching a new
film-production unit called Disneynature to make
feature-length documentaries about animals and the
environment. The endeavor, inspired by the success of
the 2005 Oscar-winning documentary March of the
Penguins, is in keeping with Disney’s strategy to
produce low-cost movies aimed at family audiences.
Penguins, distributed by Warner Independent Pictures,
cost about $8 million to produce and grossed nearly 10
times that at the US box office.
“After
that came out, a lightbulb went off and we said that
should have been a Disney film worldwide,” said Disney’s
chief executive Bob Iger. “That’s part of the Disney
heritage.”
The new
unit marks a return to Disney’s onetime tradition of
making nature films. From 1948 through 1960, the studio
produced the 13-film series True-Life Adventures,
eight of which won Academy Awards. The Living Desert
was the first full-length feature to be released, in
November 1953.
THE phenomenal success of
2005’s
March of the Penguins convinced Walt Disney Co. to
return to its tradition of making nature films.
Under
the new initiative, to be headed by Paris-based Disney
veteran Jean-Francois Camilleri, each film is expected
to cost $5 million to $10 million and will be marketed
and distributed through Disney’s mainstream movie
operation.
Although
the production budgets are much less than a typical
feature film, payoffs nonetheless are hardly assured.
Arctic Tale, the 2007 follow-up to Penguins,
grossed just $1.8 million worldwide.
In a
presentation Monday at Disney’s Burbank headquarters,
Iger and Walt Disney Studios chairman Dick Cook
announced and showed snippets from the new label’s
initial slate of seven films.
The
first US release, Earth, is set to open on April
22, 2009—Earth Day. The 90-minute movie, based on the
award-winning BBC and Discovery Channel series Planet
Earth, will chronicle a year in the life of the
planet. It will be narrated by James Earl Jones.
The
Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos
is scheduled for international rollout in December 2008
and will open in the US next year.
The
announcement, which came a day ahead of Earth Day, also
provided an opportunity for Disney to tout its
environmental credentials. Iger pointed out that at
Disney’s Animal Kingdom in
Orlando,
Florida,
the company had nursed endangered sea turtles back to
health, returned white rhinos to Africa and conducted a
census of cotton-top tamarins, a species of monkey found
only in Colombia.
The
Disney Wildlife Conservation Fund also has given more
than $11 million in support to 650 projects in 110
countries since 1995.
When
asked whether Disney planned to donate proceeds from its
upcoming documentaries to environmental causes, Iger
said that decision had not been made.
In line
with Disney’s approach of extending its creative
franchises across the company’s various business units,
Cook said he could envision the nature films inspiring
opportunities in publishing, merchandising and
theme-park attractions. |
