The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh were kind of, I guess, experimental projects to see how 2D animation would do in the box-office. Neither of them did well, so I wouldn't be surprised that Disney doesn't want to take the risk again.
WTP suffered from being Flanderized to a baby franchise, and frankly, over exposure of the character from Disney over the past decade and a half. And for being released opposite Harry Potter. And for being barely an hour in length. It shouldn't have been a summer movie at all, honestly. It seems like it would have at least gained some traction with a winter release. That Gnome thing got dumped in the winter, and since it was the only family film, it did well. THAT'S the audience it should have got.
The sad thing is, Disney was going to launch a classic Pooh franchise on that movie, trying to undo the damage of My Friends Tigger and Pooh and the whole baby franchise mindset behind the bear. It's just like when Looney Tunes BIA flopped and they cancelled plans for a series of Daffy Duck shorts and instead rebooted it with the
terrible Loonatics series. So I guess Pooh's doomed to have another pre-preschool friendly reboot.
PATF, other than what else was discussed, shouldn't have been the movie to bring back the 2-D franchise. They should have had something with more of a cross gender appeal to it first. I swear, they tanked with Brother Bear and Home on the Range (the first one really doesn't deserve most of the crap it gets, the second one is just 90 minutes of mindwarp) so they could go on to CGI films. But like I always say, Disney got flack for doing Princess films, then they got flack for
not doing Princess films. They can't win!
News like this stirs people up and maybe that's a good thing. Maybe it's exactly what needs to happen. Maybe it's deliberate in order to get people behind 2D animation again.
Maybe, but it seems more along the lines of panicky misinterpretation. I just don't think Disney wants to do a 2-D film because they didn't want to. From what the rumors say, there's to be a partially 2-D/CGI hybrid film from Dreamworks (Me and my Shadow), so
that might just be the kick in the pants. Still, I know Lassiter hates the DTV sequels and somehow lets Tinkerbell movies get a pass... but we need a 2-D animated Mickey and co project of some kind.
My dream is still a traditionally animated "Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck" movie, but apparently the US
hates Duck family comics, and everyone would think it was a Ducktales movie and complain that Launchpad isn't in it.