Why no animated “Wing Commander” movie?!

A

Ace Rimmer

Spaceman
After watching some “Titan A.E.” videos on YouTube I realized how awesome and practical a “Wing Commander” animated movie would be! “Titan A.E.” rocked, and with all the new animation techniques out there, a WC movie with anime people and CG ships in the same vein as A.E. would blow everyone away!
 
The animated Wing Commander TV series apparently did not get high enough ratings to justify funding a second season, much less an animated feature film.
 
Ijuin said:
The animated Wing Commander TV series apparently did not get high enough ratings to justify funding a second season, much less an animated feature film.
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This is inaccurate. Wing Commander Academy was the highest rated animated show on the USA network at the time. The reason WCA never got a second season was because that was the exact time that USA decided to stop making animated kids programming all together.
 
I think animation is a natural place for something like Wing Commander. WCA was very good.
 
Ace Rimmer said:
a WC movie with anime people and CG ships in the same vein as A.E. would blow everyone away!
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I mostly agree, but I really hate anime people.
 
Exactly. A CG Wing Commander film would be awesome, but making it anime style would just make it lame.
 
Dyret said:
I mostly agree, but I really hate anime people.
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There really isn’t any specific anime style. I’ve seen a lot of anime and the people were stylized completely different in every film and show. My favorite styles are “Last Exile”, “Titan A.E.” and the cleaner look from “Cowboy Bebop: The Movie” (not the show).
 
Generally, animation is more expensive to produce than live action. Another live action WC movie would be less of a "chance" investment than a serious niche market like a video game turned animated movie.

However, something direct to video would be much more fesible, but there has to be a big interest to merit starting up a "cold" production like WCATV.
 
There are some pretty good direct to video animation movies out there. I've seen both Avengers movie, and they were good enought. Something of similar quality would be fantastic for WC.
 
LeHah said:
Generally, animation is more expensive to produce than live action.
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Do you have anything to back this up? Seems to me animation is cheaper. That's why there's so many cartoons on TV and not live-action Batman, Spider-Man, ect kind of shows. I could be wrong...
 
Beckmen said:
Seems to me animation is cheaper.
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Do you have anything to back this up?

(Yes, I do. Between one of Disney's biggest theatrical flops ((Fantasia)) to the longest in-production movie ever ((Thief And The Cobbler - 28 years)) and a number of friends who use to work in Nelvana, I can safely say I can back up my statement)
 
There is no way a Wing Commander animated film could be more expensive than a live action version. (unless the live action version would have 0 special effects & unknown actors/director)
 
Confed said:
There is no way a Wing Commander animated film could be more expensive than a live action version.
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Budgets
Wing Commander (1999) - $30 million

A Bug's Life (1998) - $45 million
The Iron Giant (1999) - $48 million
Mulan (1998) - $70 million
Titan AE (2000) - $75 million
The Incredibles (2004) - $92 million
The Emperor's New Groove (2000) - $100 million
Treasure Planet (2002) - $140 Million

Keep in mind - several of these are box office bombs. Heck, Treasure Planet was the death knell for Disney's cell animation department.
 
The Wing Commander movie ended up something like 40% over budget -- so it's higher than that (I believe the stated budget was something like 27 million).

That said, I think everyone here is correct... giant animated movies are very, very, very expensive -- the box office failure of Titan AE, mentioned in the original post, lead to the closing of a major animation studio. All the 'big' Disney-styled films cost a lot of money.

At the same time, much of the animation you see on TV (which is what another poster referenced) is done fairly cheaply.
 
Forgot to add the Final Fantasy movie - which only grossed back about 30 million of its 140 million cost. That was the first and only (if you not count the Animatrix short they did) movie Sony's CG animation studio did.

There are many different levels of animation - obviously it all depends on budget, where the animation studio is located (strangely, most anime and "saturday morning" fare is done in Korea on the cheap) and if its a theatrical release (obviously, straight to DVD material is much, much cheaper)

Would a theatrical WC live action movie be cheaper than a theatrical WC animation movie? All signs point to yes.
 
LeHah said:
Forgot to add the Final Fantasy movie - which only grossed back about 30 million of its 140 million cost. That was the first and only (if you not count the Animatrix short they did) movie Sony's CG animation studio did.
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Who did the “Final Fantasy: Advent Children” CG movie?
 
Ace Rimmer said:
Who did the “Final Fantasy: Advent Children” CG movie?
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Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within
Chris Lee Productions
Square Co. Ltd.

Advent Children
Square Enix Co. Ltd.

(Spirits Within was actually a purely American production in terms of CGI rendering, while AC was purely Japanese, I believe. Also, from IMDB - Due to the poor performance of the film at the box office, Square Pictures announced the studio's "retirement" from the film business in October 2001. The studio did, however, go on to produce the short film _Final Flight of the Osiris (2003)_ in a similar realistic CGI style to Final Fantasy which played in theaters before Dreamcatcher (2003) and was released as the first of a series of short films set in the Matrix on DVD entitled The Animatrix.)
 
Well, WC was relatively cheap to make- if you take another space opera released at the same time, the budget would be much higher.
 
It depends. If you're talking a film that's entirely CGI or has CGI elements mixed in then it would be -far- more expensive than a traditional animated film. Personally, I think either way would be neat. For the time being the most likely option would be an animated film (no CGI) since nobody is going to be interested in funding a major Wing Commander film production these days. Wait a few years though, eventually there'll probably be a new Wing Commander or even Wing Commander-esque game or movie and a film maker in the industry who has fond memories of Wing Commander will say "Hey, that would be a cool movie...".

Personally I would love a CGI film akin to the Roughnecks series created for StarShip Troopers. Providing it was done correctly. Someday soon the development of animated films will be more accessible to people like us and there will be a lot of fan-made movies for all the various games/books that obsess people.
 
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/records/allbudgets.php

Shows how much they budget for each film. Now keep in mind thats HOW MUCH THEY BUDGET, not how much they spent. You can see alot of the numbers are the same cause they prob just set a fair single price for each director on how the can spend.

Now in hell animation is cheaper than Live Action, i can see how you think that cause of how long it takes to draw and computer animate them. Now useing Fantasia as an example is really unfair cause whats so unique about Fantasia is that they Animated around the music. Usually you craft your music to work in tune with your animation but no Disney wanted to Animate the Classical Musics which took extreme amount of talent, patients, and precision.
 
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