“We found ourselves attracting the caliber of talent with which ‘event’ movies could be made. And, more and more, we began making them. The result: costs have escalated, profitability has slipped and our level of risk has compounded,” Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg wrote in January 1991. “The time has come to get back to our roots.”
This assertation was part of a larger memo, dubbed “The World is Changing: Some Thoughts on Our Business” and distributed to key Disney executives like Michael Eisner, Frank Wells, Dick Cook and the “creative staff” of live-action Disney shingles Hollywood and Touchstone. While the memo claims that its creation was inspired by many issues plaguing the industry, namely a lackluster Christmas 1990 season which saw the release of such costly misfires as Brian De Palma’s The Bonfire of the Vanities and Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, Part III, it was clear that the note was mainly inspired by Disney’s biggest hope (and biggest regret) of 1990: Warren Beatty’s Dick Tracy.
Full article at COLLIDER
