Content area
Full Text
WALT DISNEY COMPANY - now the most successful studio in America, thanks to concentrating on movies for adult audiences - is turning its attention to children's movies.
At a press conference - Disney billed it as a "presentation" - the studio announced ambitious plans that include production of a new animated feature-length movie every year."We don't want Touchstone features to overshadow Disney animation," Walt Disney Studios chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg said yesterday.
The studio that Mickey Mouse built is best-known these days for its adult-movie division, Touchstone Pictures - producer of box office bonanzas such as "Three Men and a Baby" ($160 million) and "Good Morning, Vietnam" ($110 million). Katzenberg and Michael Eisner, chairman of the parent company, are credited with reshaping Touchstone into a winner since coming to Disney from Paramount Pictures in 1984.
"Animation continues to be the lifeblood of Disney," said Katzenberg. In the lineup of feature-length animated films for the next five years are "Oliver and Company" (coming this Thanksgiving), "The Little Mermaid" (1989), "The Rescuers Down Under" (1990), "Beauty And The Beast" (1991) and "An Arabian Night" (1992).
Company vice chairman Roy Disney, nephew of the founder and - as a major shareholder - one of the richest men in America (Forbes estimates his fortune at $400 million) engineered the changeover. A tall, gentle man...