Cars stalled

Soon to be divorced animation studio partnership Disney-Pixar are delaying the release of new offering Cars to ensure its success.

16:27 09 December 2004

Soon to be divorced animation studio partnership Disney-Pixar are pulling out all the stops to ensure its last joint venture Cars is a success.

The original date of November 2005 has been moved back seven months to the notoriously blockbuster heavy summer period in 2006.

According to both companies, the move is designed to exploit the large number of bored youngsters who will drag their parents to the cinema again and again during their summer breaks.

Steve Jobs, Pixar's chief executive, told the BBC: "Cars longs to be a summer movie. We plan to finish Cars on its original schedule, and look forward to Cars and our future films benefiting by summer theatrical releases and holiday DVD releases."

This may seem like a rather cynical, and unusually candid, admission from a family-orientated studio such as Disney, but the move may have more integrity than one might at first assume.

It reflects not only the transition of Pixar from lowly minnow to a whale of gargantuan proportions in its own right, but also marks the rising up of CGI-animation as a genre to challenge the conventional forms of cinema.

And through the consistently top-draw work of studios like Pixar and DreamWorks, the new found confidence of the style means we can now expect to see the battle of animation vs celluloid being played out on at least a yearly basis when blockbuster season comes along.