In the last few years, audiences have stayed away from Disney films in droves. Now the studio is playing down its Mickey Mouse image to win them back.
The facts of life were never Walt Disney‘s strong point. His films, whether animated (Snow White) or live-action (Pollyanna), often glossed over them, painting a sunny view of the world, with, at most, a few villainous clouds that were easily dispersed in time for the last reel. Disney didn‘t need to bother with the facts of life. His formula was so successful that even Fantasia, a rare Disney flop during its initial release, eventually became a popular classic.
Nevertheless, certain ugly realities of the changing marketplace finally caught up with the Disney formula. After Walt‘s death in 1966, the studio kept churning out sweet, gentle family films, but the families stopped coming, at least in the numbers that had helped the studio weather most of the postwar storms that buffeted the rest of Hollywood. For one thing, there were fewer and smaller families — the birthrate had declined sharply, leaving Disney with fewer young fans. Moreover. those youngsters seemed to be growing up faster, demanding more sophistication in their movies.
Although the studio still came up with successes like The Love Bug and The Rescuers, the misses, especially in the live-action category, began to substantially outnumber the hits. The studio‘s share of the American box office declined from seven percent in 1976 to only four percent in 1981.
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