Over the past several months I have been writing a series of blogs about the recent Disney hit, Frozen. Tonight marks a special night for the film and for Disney Animation as a whole so I thought it would be a good time to conclude this series of blogs.

First off, for anyone who missed my previous efforts, the first part of this blog series was about the history of Disney animation. You can read it here.

The second blog was a combination of a review of sorts of Frozen itself, and a look at the upcoming lineup of Disney films starting with this year's Big Hero Six and ending with 2018's Moana. You can read it here.

To those who don't have the time to read three lengthy blogs in a row, I'll summarize the gist of my argument as best I can. Disney animation has had its ups and downs over the past 80+ years. While virtually all of its early work is considered classic now, many of Disney's films were both critically and commercially unsuccessful upon release. The films released after Walt's death were unsuccessful in their time and remain unsuccessful to this day. Films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron nearly bankrupted the company and the animation division was almost shut down entirely before The Little Mermaid caused the second Disney Golden Age. This era, from the late 80's to the late 90's but mainly consisting of the period between The Little Mermaid in 1989 and The Lion King in 1994, saw Disney's animation division at its most successful. But the decade that followed was decidedly less so. The animation department was once more nearly shut down until Disney came to a deal with Steve Jobs, owner of Pixar. Jobs agreed to sell the company to Disney as long as Pixar chief John Lassetter would be put in charge of all Disney Animation. John would have full greenlighting abilities, and would not have to answer to any executive at the company. He reported directly to the CEO and his decisions were to be final regardless of the financial ramifications or objections by the Board of Directors of film division executives. Jobs also was given a 7% stake in the company, that when combined with the stocks of Roy Disney allowed Lassetter to have greater control of the animation division than anyone since Walt himself.

After his takeover, Lassetter made numerous changes. He stopped production of all DisneyToon sequels, cancelled a handful of planned theatrical features, and started work on a new 2D animated film, the first in several years. His first effort, Princess and the Frog started a trend of rising quality that continued through Tangled, Wreck it Ralph, and Frozen. Today marked the final feather in Lassetter's cap as Frozen became the first Disney film to take home the Oscar for best animated feature, and the first to win best song since Tarzan nearly 15 years ago. This comes after a handful of other major achievements. Frozen won Disney a ton of Annies, a win at The Golden Globes and Critics Choice Awards, and the soundtrack has become Disney's most successful since The Lion King. In fact it is arguably the most successful film soundtrack since Titanic came out in 1998. Disney now plans to make a stage musical based on the film. Frozen also recently overcame The Lion King as Disney's most commercially successful film, with a box office gross that broke the $1 billion mark this weekend. By the end of the month the film will overcome Toy Story 3 to become the highest grossing animated film of all time and the highest grossing non-sequel of all time not directed by James Cameron.

With that level of success you would think that the executives at Disney would be overjoyed with Lassetter, but that is in fact not the case. The reason stems from the cost of Disney films. With a budget of $150 million Frozen is one of Disney's more expensive productions. It followed the $165 million Wreck-It-Ralph, and Tangled, which at $260 million has the largest official production budget in movie history. All of these films made money. In absolute terms they made more money than any Disney film since The Lion King. The issue is that The Lion King was made for only $45 million. What's more important, though, is that companies like Illumination (the folks behind Despicable Me among others) and films like The Lego Movie are able to earn just as much if not more money on budgets less than half of what Lassetter is giving. Even worse, though, are films like The Nut Job and Free Birds. These films might have much lower quality animation than the films by Disney, Dreamworks, or Illumination, but their budgets are often well under $50 million. While none of these films have been billion dollar grossers up to this point, there is a compelling argument that three mediocre $50 million movies will be much more profitable as a whole than one great $150 movie. Disney is suffering from something unique in animation history - competition. And while Dreamworks has been around for over a decade, and its predecessor Amblin Animation several decades before that, those studios focused on making films that were better than Disney's. They hired away many of Disney's top animators and their films cost as much, if not more, than what Disney's costs.

But today, with more powerful computers and easy to use programs, the barrier to entry is much lower for feature animation. Even a low budget, relatively poorly animated film like The Nut Job looks better than what Dreamworks and Pixar were doing 10 or in some cases even 5 years ago. We've reached a point where good is good enough for most people. And that puts Disney in a position where it has to either sacrifice quality or admit that it will be losing potential profits as it attempts to keep quality high. For many executives the choice is obvious. Luckily the deals put in place by Steve Jobs mean that those executives can do little to stop Lassetter's push for quality. As a relatively young man as far as studio heads go, I hope Lassetter remains in charge in the decades ahead and that Disney's upcoming lineup is able to equal, or even exceed the works of the early 90's (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King), the original five (Snow White, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Bambi, Fantasia), and the post-war resurgence (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmatians).

And with that I end my blog series on Frozen. I want to conclude by congratulating Jennifer Lee on becoming the second woman in a row to win the Oscar for best animated film, and to Robert Lopez, for becoming one of only a handful of people to win the EGOT (an Emmy, Tony, Grammy, and Oscar) and giving a thank you speech in poem form with his wife and writing partner.