Toon-In-Talk Episode 08: Interview with Tim Beyers

Hello and welcome to eighth episode of Fanboy Nation’s Toon-In-Talk, your rendezvous for animation interviews. For animation fans, the release of a new animated film is always exciting. 2015 is going to have a lot of animated films showing on the silver screen, but yo have to wonder what will succeed and what will bomb at the box office. Whitney interviews geek financial analyst Tim Beyers to discuss what 2015 animated movies will be a success and what will fail. Show Notes Tim Beyers writes about geek financial news for The Motley Fool. Last year, he and Whitney discussed which animated films would be successful in 2014 and they repeat the same theme for 2015. Tim thinks that Minions will be this year’s success followed close by Inside Out. Pixar films are still successful, but with the reboot of Disney Animation, the studio has taken the original Pixar magic and inserted it into their own movies. Disney Animation movies have been more successful than Pixar lately, but this could be Pixar’s year with the release of two animated films. Whitney thinks Pixar will do better than Disney. Sequels have a better chance of earning more money than the originals, because the fan base is already established and audiences want to see more. Inside Out has the classic Pixar formula, especially story, but Minions are extremely marketable. Pierre Coffin and Chris Renaud do the voice of the minions, not Dee Bradley Baker. Tim and Whitney both love it with professional voice actors get to strut their stuff in feature films. Tim thinks Hotel Transylvania 2 will be the least successful and the Peanuts movie has enough juice to pull ahead. Whitney is optimistic about both. She thinks Monster Trucks will be the least successful and it might be copying the Cars. It’s exciting what is happening with Disney with the number of properties they are releasing. The House of Mouse is becoming the mother of all studios. When Disney does a great job they do a GREAT job, but Whitney doesn’t want the studio to get complacent. In response, Time says Disney is far away from doing that because they’re still competing with Warner Brothers. Big Hero 6 was good, but it was predictable. Story still remains king. Please note Pixar doesn’t make all 3D movies. The Peanuts movie has historical fans, but the franchise is being reintroduced to a whole new generation who aren’t familiar with Charlie Brown, Snoopy, and the rest of the game. It’s a gamble, however, so were The Muppets. Original ideas are becoming scarce, but they are around and they come from studios with money to burn. Online fundraising platforms, however, do allow creative individuals to raise money for their projects. The Internet allows more creators to put their work out there, but there is a lot more competition. The hardest part of making a creative property is making the actual property. Tim declares that the next three years in animated entertainment is a new golden age of cartoons, animation, and more. Just for fun, this interview rounds out with Tim’s interview from last year.