Ahoy, squirts! Quint here with a story forwarded on by the dastardly Moriarty, from Jim Hill's newest blog.

On the surface, the story is about Disney taking Chris Sanders (LILO & STITCH) off of the CG movie, AMERICAN DOG. But the real story here is Mr. Hill's sources telling him that it isn't because John Lasseter wants to fuck the guy over, but that he believes Pixar and Disney both making CG animated movies amounts to cannibalism.

The word is Lasseter and Ed Catmull want to bring Walt Disney Feature Animation back to where its true talents have been for... what? Seven decades now? He wants Pixar, now just as much a part of Disney as the Feature Animation house, to continue with their CG animation and Walt Disney Studios to go back to 2-D cell animation.

A nasty bit of collateral damage in this move is Chris Sanders' AMERICAN DOG, which had the brakes applied as it was just starting to build up steam in pre-production.

According to Mr. Hill, Bob Iger at Disney is not yet convinced of this strategy, but I think it's a brilliant move. I thought LILO & STITCH was great and really miss the traditional animation. It'd not only be a way to Disney to control a little of the over-flooding of the market-place with CG, it'd make their traditional animated features stand out that much more. It's a win-win situation in my book. It also opens the door for some long rumored projects, like Brad Bird's 2-D feature idea RAY GUNN.

Let's hope Lasseter can push it through... and hopefully we'll see Chris Sanders' AMERICAN DOG in another form or at another studio.

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