We figured out that we were going to have to do CGI and 2-D animation on screen at the same time. Sixty-five percent of the picture is CGI. That's a big mix. When you marry those two, they can either look very foreign to each other, or they look like they belong together.
A picture will wind up costing $90 million dollars... Well, animation can't stand that. It can't bear the weight of a $90 million dollar budget, because it can't recoup. Then everybody's surprised when it only pulls in $50-$60 million domestic.
I prefer that animation reach into places where live action doesn't go, and it seems like all of animation nowadays is trying to go where live action is.
You've got to be able to make animation for much less... Less is not the studio's way.
It just seems like the whole, overall animation world is trying to go where maybe animation doesn't belong.
When business executives are making the artistic decisions and don't understand animation, things can go awry.