Disney’s The Wild

This recent GLOBE AND MAIL story reveals that the cost of Disney’s upcoming THE WILD was $80 million. Judging from the film’s nearly unwatchable TRAILER, an $80 million budget is not enough to do the following:

– have characters speak with decent lip sync
– plant a character’s feet firmly on the ground so it doesn’t look like it’s floating
– create a production design that marries characters and backgrounds in a manner that doesn’t disturb viewers

I don’t know whether the $80 million figure is taking into account the decade-long cost of when the film was being developed at Disney, but clearly the $80 million budget isn’t showing up in the finished film. Despite the good news that came out of last week’s deal with Pixar, Disney will be unable to avoid the impending embarassment of this film when it’s released in April.

If the powers that be were smart, they’d bury this film and bury it deep. The Disney animation brand is suffering enough nowadays without films like THE WILD exacerbating the situation. The wisest bet would be for Disney to hire the WB folks who were responsible for marketing THE IRON GIANT. That’ll guarantee nobody ever sees THE WILD.