Animation directors jumping into live-action and vice versa

Directors can't stay in one medium forever.

 

It's worked well for Mike Judge and Seth MacFarlane.

 

I think Andrew Stanton did a good enough job with John Carter, despite the film failing at the Box Office. Even though he's achieved numerous successes with Pixar, I do hope he takes another stab in the live action arena in the foreseeable future.

 

Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Iron Giant, Ratatoullie) directed a Mission Impossible film and Tomorrowland.

Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, A Bug's Life, WALL-E) did John Carter of Mars...not a great transition.

 

You beat me to Andrew Stanton by a moment!

I agree he did a pretty good job with John Carter (saddled with a lame script). Hope he does more live action in the future.

 

Yeah, it's a shame we may not get any sequels soon but maybe they should turn the John Carter books into a TV series?

 

In the "vice-versa" category, Richard Linklater has made a couple of animated films - okay, they were rotoscoped, but they still fall under the "animation" umbrella!

Tim Burton started in animation, went to live-action with his film debut and came back to animation with "Corpse Bride" and "Frankenweenie"...

 

The two directors of The Lego Movie, Chris Miller and Phil Lord, seemed to be doing well on the upcoming Han Solo movie... but they got fired off it today. I think it's fair to say that not all directors do well in the switch between animation and live action. (In fairness to these two, they did do OK with 22 Jump Street.)

There's a book out there about why John Carter failed, and a big part of the reason is that Andrew Stanton was reportedly very arrogant and difficult and would not make the changes recommended by Disney marketing people and the studio execs. His basic response was, "my Pixar movies have made billions for the studio... leave me alone." They did, and the movie was an enormous flop. I don't think he's a bad guy, and I would agree that Stanton's animated films are exceptionally good.

I was very sad when Brad Bird's Tomorrowland flopped, because his films have been terrific going back 20 years to Iron Giant, and insiders say he's a very enthusiastic and optimistic guy to deal with. Bird has been trying to develop a live action San Francisco earthquake movie called 1906, and hasn't been able to get that off the ground for 20 years, despite his success with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol (which was not a bad movie at all and made a fortune).

 

Man. I've heard about that and Disney and Warner Bros. were supposed to produce it together, the biggest animation rivalry back in the day.

 

Yeah, there were various studios rumored to be developing the 1906 film for Brad Bird, but it kept getting cancelled because the budget (from more than 15 years ago) was going to be $200 million. I don't doubt that an accurate dramatic film about the turn-of-the-century San Francisco earthquake, told with modern visual effects and action sequences, could cost a ton o'dough -- basically Titanic on land.

 

Frank Tashlin might be one of the earliest examples.
Frank Tashlin - Wikipedia

 

I really like Wes Anderson's Fantastic Mr. Fox, and I understand he's currently working on another animated film.

 

I wonder if two studios attempting to do a movie together will work. The movie I'm thinking of is Popeye (starring Robin Williams) which was combination of Paramount and Disney, and didn't go over very well.

Another movie to mention is March Of The Wooden Soldiers starring Laurel and Hardy. It was supposed to be a combination of Hal Roach Studios and Disney but (if I remember correctly) Disney bowed out (Mickey Mouse does appear in the movie in the form of someone in a costume [not animated]).