Actually, there was a W&G TV show. Wallace and Gromit’s World of Invention.

totally agree! Wallace and Gromit never had a TV show so there seems to be so much more they would be able to do with them.

Eh. That’s pretty my much standard for any trailer of any given film. Definitely not exclusive to DWA. In fact, I would avoid any and all trailers if I were that worried about being the least bit spoiled about anything.

Recently the marketing for DW’s films (at least in the US) keep spoiling important events in their movies. Have you forgotten the trailers for HTTYD2? UGH!

Thank you. You do have a point in that Disney may very well change their tune in a few years if the climate changes or if somehow an opportunity presents itself, but for now, outside distribution of animated films from other studios (here and abroad) will remain the focus of second-tier players who want in on the market, as opposed to the big names that are already established.

Well, in order to become THAT popular a movie needs more than just marketing or story/production quality. For some reason, people just have to really like it a whole lot and/or a great many people must like it enough, whether we individually feel the same or not.

Minions had extremely effective saturation marketing, yes, but these characters were already popular to begin with (inexplicably, from my point of view, but that’s just me), and the movie would not have succeeded at anywhere near this level without it, regardless of quality (apparently doesn’t need to be good, but that’s just my opinion, as well as those of critics and people taking exit polls).

Toy Story 3 was part of an established franchise, too, and while it probably didn’t have quite this level of marketing support, many consider it a very good movie, and this helped. It probably wouldn’t have been that big if it were not already established as a franchise ahead of time, like Minions, though–even being both good and well-marketed is usually not enough.

Then there was Frozen, which wasn’t marketed as effectively as the others and wasn’t an established franchise at the time, but in addition to having a very good story and appealing characters, it had a song, “Let It Go” of course, that went viral as few things ever have before, and this in turn was probably the result of capturing the zeitgeist of many countries around the world at once, which can have a powerful effect (no need to be a sequel or spin-off here).

In general, marketing can help, but can’t do it alone, and the same goes for being good (which of course is subjective, individual opinion, although there can be a perceived consensus), and even the combination of the two are unlikely to result in such mega-blockbusters. There must be additional, somehow compelling factors involved, as well–ones that are generally not within the control of the creators, as they should know all too well (or else something is wrong with them ;)).

I was trying to dig a little deeper for the truth, not necessarily to contradict anything you said. 🙂 In fact, I said that I agreed, except that I wouldn’t entirely rule out Disney changing their minds, probably several years from now if ever. They’d only do this if they needed to, and who knows, maybe they will need to, or rather want to (in addition to other measures) in order to help grow the business.

A corporation in Disney’s position can never be satisfied with the status quo in terms of revenue and profit. Every other major and semi-major studio is actively trying to grow the animated feature market as well as their own piece of it, and I don’t see how Disney can simply stand by in the long run (as long as the market grows without them). If WDAS and Pixar cannot make animated features at a faster pace–and history has shown, right or wrong, that they cannot–then Disney will presumably require the output of additional animation studios eventually.

For the time being, though, you’re almost certainly right. If anything, the only realistic possibility would be to benefit from the prestige of a studio like Aardman, as Octaviano suggested, but I still consider this scenario less likely than not.

You’ve just explained my point. The Disney of the early-to-mid 00’s would have been more open to distributing films from other animation companies, and while they probably could do it today, they are now in a place (financially) where they don’t have to do it and they probably don’t need to do it. That leaves all of your second-tier studios (like Lionsgate), who are hungry for even just a small percentage of the animation market, to hone in on that particular sector.