I think we all knew this was coming. Disney have annouced that next year's animated movie
Meet the Robinsons will be the last CGI animated movie from Disney, leaving Pixar (owned by Disney) to exclusively work on that medium. Disney will from now on just focus on what made them famous in the first place...2D animation. From where I'm sitting, this can only be good news. Pixar are great at CGI and Disney are the masters of 2D animation, so keeping them separate just makes sense. In a film industry where more and more companies like Dreamworks are putting out 3D animation, Disney didn't really need to be competing with themselves. I've said before on this site that 2D animation is far from dead (just look at
Miyazaki's output in Japan). The only reason why the 2D animated movies in the late 90's were so unsuccessful was because they were bad movies, not because of their form! Storytelling is the most important aspect of any movie, animated or not. Disney's first forary back into 2D animation will be with
The Frog Princess, scheduled for a release sometime between 2008 and 2009. The expected CGI movie
American Dog from
Lilo & Stitch director
Chris Sanders we can presume will either conform to 2D or be scrapped. source -
cinematical