Agreed! Dark, serious, brooding.

I don’t believe in “demand.” I believe in good storytelling. When the majority of talking animals movies feature lackluster storytelling, then that’s what the audience is getting tired of. More Finding Nemo, less Over the Hedge.

It’s not that there’s a lack of talking animals in animated films, it’s just that there are less of them out there then was originally common 6 or 7 years ago. And like Esther said, it’s due to the shifting demands of the general audience and the rise of non-verbal animal sidekicks.

Agreed. I’d say Animals in Animation is going through a transition stage and we’ve done a lot now that we’re in the 21st century. We’ve had films like “Dumbo”, “Fox and the Hound”, and the dancing hippos in “Fantasia” before. But audiences today may be having different demands.

On one end of the spectrum you have the no-talking yet very expressionless Toothless from “HTTYD” and the other end are the technology-saturated talking Penguins of “Madagascar”. I doubt this sub-genre will go away; as long as it can pull profits at the box office, Pixar and Dreamworks will keep trying (I hope!).

Why thank you, and yeah, that is a very good point. I’ll keep that in mind when I don’t have a dozen other articles that need my attention 😉

Of course no studio has a monopoly, if you noticed I mentioned Disney´s talking animals as well. I just meant that maybe public has gotten tired of talking animals which is why those movies that have them have been doing worse and there are now less talking animal movies coming out.