Blog:Walt Disney Animation Studios (2003-2007)

Walt Disney Animation Studios (WDAS for short) also referred to as Disney Animation, headquartered at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California, is an American animation studio that creates animated feature films, short films and television specials for The Walt Disney Company. Founded in 1923, it is a division of the Walt Disney Studios. In 2007, Walt Disney Feature Animation took on its current name, Walt Disney Animation Studios.

While the studio has garnered a massive reputation for its high-quality films and smashing box office hits, neither can be said about it between 2003 and 2007, which are considered to be the studio's weakest years.

Bad Qualities
Some of the reasons listed have to do with Disney's business practices
 * 1) The main problem with this era was that CGI films from other studios (particularly Pixar) were increasing in popularity, often topping box office charts. The studio meanwhile was still directing traditionally animated films that were not able to reach the same level of success the studio found in the early to mid 1990s and to a lesser extent, the late 1990s and early 2000s.
 * 2) *As a result, Home on the Range was the last Disney's traditionally-animated film until 2009, when The Princess and the Frog was released. Worse, after 2011's Winnie the Pooh underperformed at the box office, despite receiving positive reviews, Disney has killed off and cancelled the traditional hand-drawn animation they used in their films for so many years, except as small supplements to their current CG efforts (such as Maui's tattoos in Moana), and hardly gave it full attention ever since.
 * 3) To make matters worse, Jeffery Katzenburg left Disney in 1994 to establish Dreamworks Animation after differences with CEO Michael Eisner divided the company. As a result, many talented animators left to join him. This would negatively affect the studio in the coming years.
 * 4) Some of the studio's older films received cheap, terrible direct-to-video sequels with this era holding some of the absolute worst of those sequels.
 * 5) Treasure Planet and Meet the Robinsons were some of Disney's worst box office performances due to the company's poor marketing and terrible release timings (especially Treasure Planet's).
 * 6) The infamous Disney Vault was quickly becoming outdated and was not replaced until the launch of Disney+.
 * 7) The studio reduced creative freedom for directors. As a result, some of its films became plagued with executive meddling with not so magical results:
 * 8) *Chicken Little, Disney's first fully CGI film, tried to be Shrek and nothing more. This resulted in the film having a poorly executed story, multiple plot holes, too many pop culture references, and an extremely poor grasp of the source material.

Good Qualities

 * 1) The studio started to find its footing again with Bolt and redeemed itself in 2008.
 * 2) For a brief period of time, Bob Iger was okay as CEO but unfortunately got worse as the years progressed.
 * 3) As part of Disney's acquisition of Pixar in 2006, they brought on John Lasseter as the head of the studio, who helped turned things around for the studio.
 * 4) The films released during this era, while not always good, were still creative and still had thought behind them.