A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
- Thread starter Geekhis Khan
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Just to quickly recap: HAC made a Hostile Takeover run on Disney ITTL, but failed, accumulating a lot of debt. But HAC had craploads of assets including lots of Real Estate in Australia that we has able to liquidate to pay down the debt. There was enough liquidity left over that he partnered with Turner on the blitzkrieg takeover of CBS. This, ironically given the failed Disney run, got HAC more deeply invested in Entertainment than IOTL. Thus, he made the choice to acquire MGM's share of Tri-Star (~33% IIRC) when Turner bit off more than he could chew with the MGM/UA buy from Tracinda (as per OTL). And then, when Turner grabbed Columbia Pictures from Coca-Cola (Sony eventually bought it IOTL), he used the newly liquid assets over the (as per OTL) stock market incited selloff of some of his industrial assets to buy up Columbia's share of Tri-Star (~33%) giving him a supermajority of Tri-Star and unquestioned control. The big irony here is that his failure to acquire Disney has led him deeper into the Entertainment world ITTL and away from his industrial and real estate origins, mirroring Gulf+Western's evolution into Triad ITTL.
Turner can be pretty impulsive about things, but he's not the clueless yokel his detractors of the time assumed. He's picked and chosen his assets carefully. For example (to answer @myacc1) he sold MGM/UA Home Video back to Tracinda along with all of UA, including the UA library. He also hires smart people and actually listens to them sometimes. Right now the strategy has been to buy, break up, and sell off what he doesn't need, such as the stakes in Tri-Star and As You Wish. A lot of the distribution and home media divisions of the buys were passed along to HAC's ACC, who lacked that type of infrastructure. Note that even with Columbia and CBS Turner is still smaller than OTL's Time-Warner.
Orion acquiring LIVE was IIRC something that Carolco did IOTL, IIRC. Recall that Carolco bought Orion in '85 or '86.
Coke's stock will indeed stabilize. Between Columbia and New Coke it was a challenging few years for them.
Bally still owns all the hotels and is focusing their efforts there. Presumably they make a partnership with WB the way Marriott partners with Disney ITTL.
Well, we can certainly expect to see the old 'toons on Cartoon TV.
The Stooges...who knows? Not too familiar with the politics behind the rights. I'm sure Turner would love to play the 3S on TCM.
Yes, that always amused me too. And yea, it was a rough time between New Coke and David Putnam's rocky run in charge of Columbia.
Munchausen gets mentioned tomorrow!
Absolutely. Great idea. Expect it in the next few days.
I'm actually talking about his cousin, who has the tendency to stare at people for an uncomfortably long time.
In all seriousness thanks, will edit. I hate those ones that Spell Check misses!
As mentioned above, yea, HAC has ironically been pushed more into Entertainment than IOTL despite being o nthe bad side of a buyout attempt. HAC's ACC will keep the iconic Tri-Star brand as their film division and merge or shed CBS Films assets and infrastructure.
Having Disney take over the stake in As You Wish seemed logical to me since there's an existing relationship through The Princess Bride and Bernie's existing relationships with Carl & Rob Reiner and Mel Brooks. Also, the philosophies on art & profit seemed aligned. Unless someone has a more logical pairing?
Transformers could make a big return like OTL, or maybe not...I haven't decided yet. Ironically, I actually intended to have Disney divest themselves of those rights specifically so as NOT to keep Disney acquiring things that became Super Big IOTL, but you all talked me into keeping them and MLP! (I actually retconned a post based on reader feedback in that regard if you recall) D&D is probably never going to be a major asset. A few million a year in game supplement sales (rather minor compared to other IP for a company Disney's size), maybe a movie or TV show or two at best, but certainly no D&DCU ahead.
Technically, Turner owns the largest stake in the Pink Panther. Recall that Disney owns the MGM Name/Label and Theme Park rights, but only a 20% stake in the MGM pre-'85 IP. Turner owns 31% and Dodi 20%. If MGM made it before Disney bought the label, then Disney will need to partner with Turner's Columbia to do anything with it.
And full disclosure mini-meta: I actually try not to think too much about what buys I have anybody make before I make them in order to keep things more organic. I look at when something came up for sale IOTL and, unless there's a butterfly that would avert the sale, I just try to figure out who's gonna grab it ITTL based on the strategic circumstances. For example, ironically I originally wasn't going to have Disney and Marvel merge just to specifically avoid OTL alignments to be different, but as the TL progressed the butterflies just sort of made themselves known to me and it would have made little sense for Disney to pass up the chance to buy up Marvel when the owner put the assets up for sale in '85 as per OTL, given their established TTL relationship.
MickeyQuest is technically a super-simple tabletop RPG (makes basic D&D look complicated). TTL's version of Kingdom Hearts will get a nod coming up fairly soon.
You may recall that Ron Miller was Mickey, Henson was Goofy, and Lucas was Donald in their little "Three Mouseketeer's club" in '84.
I'll need to think about that. TotIH IIRC marked the very first Gratuitous Stan Lee Cameo.Will we still get these ITTL:
The Incredible Hulk Returns - Wikipedia
en.wikipedia.org
And will they be picked up as their own series?
The Trial of the Incredible Hulk - Wikipedia
The Hulk movie/specials like the Corman FF movie needed more money and special fx. As an outgrowth of the TV show they are just more of the same, but needed more kapow! For the big screen imho.
I think it’s the same for all the OTL Marvel movies until Blade or the X-Men. Captain America, Nick Fury, Punisher, FF, they all lacked a something - perhaps good writers should be added money and sfx?
I think it’s the same for all the OTL Marvel movies until Blade or the X-Men. Captain America, Nick Fury, Punisher, FF, they all lacked a something - perhaps good writers should be added money and sfx?
Chernabog would be the Sealed Evil In A Can that the villains would be trying to release for their evil plan. He'd basically be a Galactus-level threat in that universe.
But DePatie-Frelang Enterprises, who had the animated rights to the Pink Panther, was sold to Marvel Comics and transformed into Marvel Productions.
Tv rights can be sold separate by movie rights, especially if we are talking on pure animation while the movie are live-action
Chernabog will be the menacing Background Threat as the heroes fight their way through the assembled ghosts, demons, harpies, etc. to ring the church bell and banish Chernabog before the time runs out.
Ah, that I did not know. So hard to keep all the tangled mess of rights straight! So in that case I can still see a Columbia/Disney deal to co-produce a Pink Panther reboot (hopefully better than the OTL one as much as I love Steve Martin) paired with an animated reboot on CartoonTV produced by Marvel.
CartoonTV? Is that the Cartoon Network ITTL? Where's the article that describes that?!
Can Leslie Neilson be Cruseau for this PP reboot?
And Marvel's Star Comics would technically have the comic rights ITTL.
A Hippie in the House of Mouse (Jim Henson at Disney, 1980)
Or the Calgary Zoo. I'll give you the zoo though, I hear it's nice. I can attest to that, having worked there for about six months. Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled thread...
www.alternatehistory.com
"And when AAP and R-B went to W-B, they rebooted Popeye along with Betty Boop and Mighty Mouse and played them all on Nickelodeon along with the Looney Tunes and R-B classics, helping to shore up the struggling network. Meanwhile, Ted Turner’s CBS, who’d bought up the struggling Hanna-Barbera from Taft in ’87, launched Cartoon TV in ’89, mostly playing the old H-B titles at first. This led Triad to scoop up Filmation from Westinghouse in 1988 and, in turn, Hollywood Pictures Chairman Michael Eisner and Studio Head Jeffrey Katzenberg approached DIC…"
Since syndication is entering a new era of animation, what is the Saturday Morning market like as of late?
With the working relationship between Toei and Disney I can see Disney disturbing the English dub of this:
en.wikipedia.org
Transformers: Zone - Wikipedia
I do think that Disney would make a Transformers revival eventually, maybe like the late 90s or early 00s when people mostly forgot about the 80s cartoons and there's potential in creating a better animated series for kids and their parents. Plus Transformers is literally one of their best IPs in inserting into Tomorrowland besides Star Wars and Toy Story, assuming the latter gets made. Either that or a weird Bio-Force ride....
Sounds perfect for an early digital adaptation to be honest, or even the beginning of a franchise. Some early Western RPGs took a lot of inspiration from DnD (like Baldur's Gate) while Japanese RPGs fall into the same turn-based style, so the series can literally go either way and still make sense for its target audience. I reckon that eventually our old fabled knights, bards, and wizards would make their way into an action-RPG but that's a long while. The 90s is the perfect decade for Disney to bring it into digital, although when is mostly definitely a huge question.
Drat, I forgot that Miller was one of the Three Musketeers. That does put the Steven Spielberg prequels into a weird limbo of whether he'll say yes or no but I still believe that if Lucas works more with Disney and Amblin on creative input and directorship, he would create a better Prequel Trilogy.
Still, I can't help but think that Henson would try to convince the two of them to don Three Musketeer outfits for the opening of Disneyland Valencia, although it's very likely that both of them will say no. Would be a cool bit of conversation though, but maybe Richard Hunt and Frank Oz/Dave Goelz would accept wearing such fabulous costumes...
Disney would be smart to use the movie as a gauge to see how interested audiences are at a new Transformers. If it's successful then it'd be a good excuse to outsource the animation to Toei for a new animated series or just do a early 90s reboot with their own animation studio.With the working relationship between Toei and Disney I can see Disney disturbing the English dub of this:
Transformers: Zone - Wikipedia
Speaking of anime, is the earlier and more pronounced permeation of anime into America going to lead to an earlier Toonami block for CartoonTV? It would be interesting to see an earlier release of Dragon Ball and other anime franchises, albeit subbed before companies like Funimation are created to fill in the dubbing void.
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If this means that Harmony Gold, the company that made Robotech, could actually improve their dubbing capabilities, then I'd still be skeptical of an earlier anime boom.
Possibly. Does he ever do a French accent? Honestly it will be a challenge to ever replace Peter Sellers.
As of the late '80s/early '90s there are still plenty of people in the US/Canada without Cable (myself included!) so SMC will still be around for the time being.
I figure that Transformers will appear eventually in some form to be determined.
I figure Mickey Quest (Disney Quest?) could certainly be the basis of a Final Fantasy type RPG
Still kicking around the Prequels. Spielberg could direct regardless. IIRC he was approached by Lucas IOTL as were Bob Zemeckis and Ron Howard. All three recommended that GL direct it himself. Rumor has it that Lucasfilms non-SAG status meant that they'd risk fines working for it. Maybe if there's a partnership with Amblin, which is a Union shop IIRC.
I figure that with the Disney Channel playing Kimba and Astro Boy there's no reason why CTV wouldn't launch a Toonami block. Considering.
Not to mention Maya the Bee and The Secrets of Akko-Chan could also air on The Disney Channel.
What about Doraemon? I think it would be really popular if they get the 1979 anime on American shores.
Yeah, it's certainly a possibility given the closer working relationship between Amblin, Disney, and Lucasfilm. I'm just morbidly curious to see how a more successful Prequels would change Lucas's mindset. Maybe he'll be more confident and willing to work on the Sequels as a writing consultant?
With Akira and more mature films/television shows arriving to America to critical acclaim and popularity, I reckon that there would be a unfulfilled demand for anime such as Gundam, Fist of the North Star, Dragon Ball, Macross, and etc. That's where Toonami comes in.
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