Disney is an Animation Company

July 24, 2024·45 min·3 clips

Peter Schneider reveals that Disney actually removed color from Beauty and the Beast to make it look unfinished for the New York Film Festival — and the audience gave it a standing ovation anyway.

1. Land of the Giants examines the history of Disney animation, asking whether Disney has lost the creative identity that once made it the definitive name in animated film. 2. Host Bilge Ibiri is a film critic for New York Magazine and Vulture; the episode draws on Disney veteran Glenn Keane, former president Peter Schneider, producer Don Hahn, Disney historian Josh Spiegel, Harvard professor David Collis, and film critic Alyssa Wilkinson. 3. The episode's framing question is whether Wish, Disney's 100th anniversary animated film, is a symptom of a deeper identity crisis in the studio that invented the feature animated film. 4. Ibiri opens by calling Wish exhausting after five minutes, noting its heroine's first song felt like it was 'inspired by Robert's Rules of Order' and the film as a whole felt 'spit out by a Disney-informed AI machine' — all the elements of a Disney movie assembled without the human touch. 5. Bob Iger appeared at the New York Times DealBook Summit in 2023 and acknowledged that films including Wish and The Marvels 'were not as good' as their predecessors, the most direct public admission of Disney's recent creative decline. 6. Glenn Keane joined the Disney animation studio in 1974 at age 20, apprenticing under the 'nine old men' who had created Snow White, Pinocchio, and Bambi, and describes the Burbank studio as an idyllic world of squirrels, park benches, and the smell of pencil shavings. 7. After Jeffrey Katzenberg and Michael Eisner took over Disney in 1984, the animation team was physically moved from the Burbank lot to partially constructed warehouses in Glendale, a move Peter Schneider says communicated that animation might not survive at Disney. 8. Disney hired Peter Schneider to run the animation studio despite him having no animation or film background — he was told directly that Katzenberg and Eisner 'were going to hire some idiot' and didn't care who it was. 9. The contrast between The Black Cauldron's box-office disaster (losing approximately $20 million) and Touchstone Pictures' Splash making a nearly 500% return on an $11 million investment defined the period of animation's institutional irrelevance. 10. The Little Mermaid was rescued from development limbo — it had been delayed repeatedly for years — when director Keane asked to work on Ariel rather than the villain Ursula, saying 'I know this girl' after hearing Jodi Benson sing 'Part of Your World.' 11. Alan Menken and Howard Ashman were hired to write the music after Katzenberg received a tip; Keane describes hearing them work out 'Under the Sea' on a piano in the hallway as feeling 'really fresh.' 12. The Little Mermaid made over $200 million worldwide at the box office, not counting merchandise, and 'once again animation became sort of relevant,' according to Schneider. 13. Beauty and the Beast was presented at the New York Film Festival at Alice Tully Hall at Lincoln Center — Schneider says his team actually removed color from the nearly-finished film to make it look more like an artistic work-in-progress, and audiences applauded after every number and gave a standing ovation at the end. 14. In 1992, Beauty and the Beast became the first animated feature nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars, marking a watershed moment for the medium's cultural legitimacy. 15. The Lion King in July 1994 made twice what the studio had predicted on opening weekend and became one of the highest-grossing films of all time, triggering other studios including DreamWorks (founded by departing Disney exec Jeffrey Katzenberg) to enter animation. 16. Pixar debuted in 1995 with Toy Story, a fully computer-animated film co-founded with Steve Jobs, and Glenn Keane characterizes the difference as: 'Pixar's is wouldn't it be cool if? Disney's is once upon a time.' 17. The episode has a documentary-narrative format with Ibiri as a clearly opinionated guide; the production uses archival audio from Iger, Eisner, Steve Jobs, and film clips from The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, and The Lion King. 18. The tone balances nostalgia with critical analysis; Ibiri is clearly invested but willing to call Disney's current strategy 'depressing.' 19. Film enthusiasts, Disney devotees, and those interested in brand strategy and creative industry cycles will find this episode directly rewarding. 20. Viewers wanting current news or those unfamiliar with Disney's animation history will need patience for the episode's 45-minute historical narrative structure.

As heard by us

Disney animation is framed as both an art form and a marketing strategy.

This episode treats Disney's animated legacy as both art and sales pitch, and that tension gives it some bite. It starts with the unease around Wish, then follows how the studio kept insisting that animation was a serious place for fantasy, craft, and performance.

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Why you'd press play

You want Disney's animation story without the nostalgia glaze.

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