And, they ended on a high note, winning three Academy Awards: Best Sound Editing, Best Visual Effects, and Best Film Editing. It opened to good reviews and greatly pleased audiences. Worldwide, the film grossed nearly $330 million dollars. June 22 nd, 1988: Who Framed Roger Rabbit opens in theaters, bringing in over $11 million dollars in its first weekend, placing it in the number one spot. With an overall budget of $30 million dollars, this was the most expensive animated film to date. Producing the film was Amblin Productions, Steven Spielberg’s company, and Spielberg retained a good chunk of creative control. Both are equally as ridiculous at playing the piano. Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck (and, when you watch the film, you’ll notice that, at the end, when Porky Pig does his “that’s all folks”, Tinkerbell closes out the circle that he has made.) No character from one company got more screen time than another and no character appeared more talented than another. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, as long as they have equal screen time with Disney’s biggest characters, i.e. The deal that was made was that Warner Brothers would lend Disney their biggest characters i.e. Now, Who Framed Roger Rabbit was being made and produced by the Walt Disney Company. It was on film, in theaters, where animation was struggling. Feature length American animated films were hard to come by outside of Walt Disney. That’s where a number of other animation companies, such as Fleischer Studios, had found success. That’s where Warner Brothers was still succeeding. However, it was alive on television and in shorts. Now, I need to make something clear here. Warner Brothers was brought in, largely due to their vast number of popular animated characters. This was the one chance that the Walt Disney Company had to revive animation as a film genre. And that movie, my friends, was Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Make a movie that everybody just had to see. Make a movie that incorporated everybody’s favorite characters. Make a movie that captured people’s attention.

But, what was to come of animation? Animation was a dying art form, a dying film genre. The Walt Disney Company agreed, and Michael Eisner was placed in charge of the company with Frank Wells, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and Roy Disney all in major positions in the company. Instead, the Bass Brothers gave the company money, on the condition that they could choose the people in charge. Well, long story short, the company didn’t get taken apart.

With all the major animators gone, what was the company to do? If there wasn’t going to be a takeover before, there definitely would be now. So, in one instant, Don Bluth and several other animators led a walkout, leaving the studio permanently. And there was a lot of buzz about a possible takeover. However, the quality of the animation throughout the 1970s was not up to par with what Walt Disney himself had done or what he would have wanted. He had worked on The Rescuers and Pete’s Dragon, as head of animation. Bluth had been one of the animators who stepped up after Walt Disney’s death. Most of the animators who had been there for years left when Don Bluth chose to leave. Exhibit Aĭuring the 1980s, the Walt Disney Company was in a crisis. But, through your child self, watching a film where there was definitely too much adult material for, you and your family (or whoever it was that you saw this film with) helped to save a studio and an entire film genre. Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a film that most of us saw when we were far too young to have seen it.

Roger and jessica rabbit