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Disney Executive Claims Story Doesn’t Matter

Photo: Disney Enterprises
Mia Wasikowska as Alice in "Alice In Wonderland."
Alice in Wonderland. Photo: Disney Enterprises

It’s been nine days since Disney’s chief technical officer Andy Hendrickson delivered a talk at SIGGRAPH, and we hope he’s enjoyed the relative anonymity. The Internet is burning up today with a few quotes that came either from Hendrickson’s speech or from a parody of what a particularly soulless studio executive might say (but since Variety is reporting that Hendrickson actually said these things out loud, we will trust Variety). “‘People say ‘It’s all about the story,’” Hendrickson told the audience. ‘When you’re making tentpole films, bullshit.’” To prove his point, Hendrickson dissed one of Disney’s highest-grossing films ever, last year’s Alice in Wonderland: “The story isn’t very good, but visual spectacle brought people in droves. And Johnny Depp didn’t hurt.” Still, even this impressively brazen approach to moviemaking has its limits; Disney recently halted the Depp vehicle The Lone Ranger when all the elements larded in for maximum spectacle, including a werewolf villain and a massive train derailment, became too expensive to justify a green light. [Variety]

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Disney Executive Claims Story Doesn’t Matter