‘Tarzan’s Complicated Legacy May Have Led to Disney Buying Pixar, Marvel, and Star Wars

It’s hard to overstate how much Disney dominates the box office. Star Wars: The Force Awakens currently holds the record for the most profitable domestic release. Avengers: Infinity War holds the record for the most profitable opening weekend, both domestically and worldwide. Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King are still the most financially profitable PG and G-rated movies of all time. We live in a world where it feels like Disney can’t lose.

But there was a time in the very recent past when Disney was struggling. From about 2000 to 2007, Disney was marred by inconsistent animated originals and major flops. During this time, only the powerhouse that is Pixar consistently delivered the box office-shattering numbers Disney was used to seeing. Disney’s troublesome years and its relatively recent love of collecting creative outlets like Pokémon cards can both arguably be traced back to one unlikely culprit: 1999’s Tarzan.

How? In short, even though Tarzan was profitable, its success marked the beginning of an era of Walt Disney Animation that abandoned the musicals, princesses, and traditional animation that had previously defined it. Disney’s originals later evened out, producing big, critically acclaimed, and profitable movies that weren’t reliant on singing characters like Zootopia, Wreck-it Ralph, and Big Hero 6. But the shaky moments following Tarzan may have made the company all the more eager to acquire Pixar, Marvel, and LucasFilm in an attempt to expand and further diversify its entertainment empire.

2000 to 2007: Disney’s Hard Years

When Tarzan was released in 1999, it performed well for Disney. The animated comedy-drama made $448 million worldwide (Note: All of the numbers used in this article will refer to gross worldwide box office). Disney hadn’t seen numbers like that since Pocahontas premiered five years earlier to $346 million. Neither of these films held a candle to The Lion King‘s shocking numbers ($968 million), but Tarzan made more money than Beauty and the Beast, a movie that was considered to be extremely profitable for the company during a historically successful decade. The movies that followed in Tarzan‘s wake, though, didn’t see the same measure of success.

Tarzan is often referred to by Disney fans as marking the end of Disney’s Renaissance period, which started with 1989’s The Little Mermaid and ended about a decade later. The Disney of the ’90s was borderline unstoppable. With the exception of The Rescuers: Down Under and The Little Mermaid, all 10 of the films released during this period cleared $250 million at the box office, and all but three were well reviewed. However, Disney’s Post-Renaissance period didn’t see nearly as much success.

The next major animated motion picture to premiere after Tarzan, Fantasia 2000, only made $90 million — a shockingly low box office for Disney. The following years saw the release of similar flops: The Emperor’s New Groove ($169 million); Atlantis: The Lost Empire ($186 million); Home on the Range ($103 million); and Meet the Robinsons ($169 million). Adding insult to injury, 2002 brought with it the release of Treasure Planet, a passion project that was one of the most expensive and least profitable films in Disney history. The sci-fi retelling of “Treasure Island” made a paltry $109 million against its massive $140 million budget. Out of the 10 major movies released during this period, five underwhelmed.

There were a few bigger hits during this eight-year period at Disney. 2000’s CGI-infused Dinosaur was the fifth highest grossing film of the year, netting $349 million. Likewise, Lilo & Stitch and Brother Bear were moderate successes, netting $273 million and $250 million respectively, and Chicken Little was a strong performer at the box office. The retelling of the classic fairy tale made $314 million. These numbers may be impressive to other studios, but this is Disney we’re talking about; a Disney that was just coming off of its overwhelming wave of success in the ’90s. Pixar may have produced consistently profitable hits during this time, but Walt Disney Animation in the 2000s was a hit or miss affair.

It wasn’t until around 2008 that Disney started to course correct. In 2006, Disney officially purchased Pixar at a $7.4 billion valuation, making WALL-E the first feature film released as a Disney/Pixar joint (Ratatouille, which was released in 2007, was distributed by Buena Vista). That success went hand in hand with 2008’s Bolt and 2009’s The Princess and the Frog, two movies that paved the way for Walt Disney Animation releasing more consistent hits. These two films made $309 million and $267 million respectively. These were followed by massive films like 2010’s Toy Story 3 and Tangled, 2012’s Brave and Wreck-It Ralph, and 2013’s juggernaut Frozen.

Disney is now arguably stronger than its ever been, and thanks to its strategic acquisitions, it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the biggest blockbusters in recent history. But first, they had to take a swing with Tarzan; and a miss.

Tarzan and Unfortunate Lessons Learned

Tarzan was remarkable for a couple of details that had nothing to do with its profits. Disney had been incorporating CGI into its movies since it released The Black Cauldron in 1985, but both the ballroom scene in 1991’s Beauty and the Beast and the Deep Canvas-produced backgrounds in Tarzan started to mark a turning point in Disney animation. The company was getting comfortable with incorporating CGI more liberally.

These films, paired with the success of companies like Pixar and DreamWorks, led to Walt Disney Animation leaning more into CGI-heavy movies in the late 2000s and the 2010s. Disney would later produce masterful films that depended on CGI like Moana and Zootopia. But the early days of Walt Disney Animation fully embracing CGI led to the successful Dinosaur, yes, but they also led to Meet the Robinsons and The Wild, two movies that are often forgotten at best, unpopular and unprofitable at worst.

But what really set Tarzan apart was that it was one of Disney’s only animated films that wasn’t technically a musical. Save for some diegetic numbers such as “You’ll Be in My Heart” and “Trashin’ the Camp”, most of the music from Tarzan came from its gorgeous score and Phil Collins numbers. According to the Chicago Tribune, the decision to not make Tarzan a musical came largely from the film’s directors. “I did not want Tarzan to sing,” director Kevin Lima said.”I just couldn’t see this half-naked man sitting on a branch breaking out in song. I thought it would be ridiculous.”

There have been Disney films in the past that have strayed from musical territory, such as The Fox and the Hound and The Black Caldron, but few have been as successful as Tarzan. Perhaps it was coincidence or perhaps there were some conversations happening behind Disney’s closed doors that led to this shift, but the movies after Tarzan continued its musical-free trend.

Some Disney movies during this time were more like animated comedies or action films than traditional Disney films, like The Emperor’s New Groove and Atlantis: The Lost Empire. There were musical moments in both of these films, but the music was more like a part of these movies rather than sung out loud. And a couple of the later Disney movies followed in Tarzan‘s footprints, incorporating soundtracks from big stars into their stories. Brother Bear utilized the talents of Phil Collins and Tina Turner, and Treasure Planet fully embraced The Goo Goo Dolls’ John Rzeznik. Lilo & Stitch and Home on the Range also leaned on specialty music rather than transforming into full-blown musicals.

The protagonists of Disney movies from 2000 to 2007 also marked a shift for the company. The perception that Disney was the home of princesses is directly connected to the Disney Renaissance. During this 10-year period, the company released five movies with heroines who would later come to be part of its official Disney princess line. Even the films that didn’t have princess worthy characters, like The Lion King, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, and Tarzan, starred strong female characters. Prior to the release of The Little Mermaid, the last time Disney had made a princess movie was in 1959.

Tarzan started to shift Disney’s gender balance, introducing an era of Disney films with male heroes and a pointed lack of romantic subplots. After the studio’s initial slate of princess movies, they took a break, from 1959 to The Little Mermaid in 1989. Then, the Disney Renaissance followed, with hit after hit burgeoning the rep of the Mouse as the house that princesses built. Hercules and The Hunchback of Notre Dame (and arguably The Lion King) all aimed to shift this gender paradigm as well; but post-Tarzan began Disney’s concentrated, princess-free slate.

The Emperor’s New Groove, Treasure Planet, Brother Bear, Chicken Little, and Meet the Robinsons — these were all stories about universal, non-romantic themes that were helmed by male characters. Then there was Lilo & Stitch, a beautiful movie that had a wonderfully weird little girl as its lead but that also heavily featured sci-fi. It’s not much of a stretch to think that the Post-Renaissance Disney was trying to entice male audiences as successfully as the Renaissance period had enchanted female audiences.

But the numbers weren’t great. The films that branched out the most from the “typical” Disney movie — Atlantis, The Wild, and Tarzan‘s spiritual brother Treasure Planet — drastically underperformed. Home on the Range, The Emperor’s New Groove, and Meet the Robinsons also didn’t pull in great box office numbers. Only the more “traditional” Disney movies released during this time — Brother Bear, Lilo & Stitch, and Dinosaur, which was stylistically innovative but fairly by-the-books from a storytelling perspective — saw real success. It’s not surprising that Disney would be eager to get back into musicals and princesses, and it later did with the release of The Princess and the Frog in 2009.

The Safety Net of Acquisition

While Disney was floundering, there was one branch of its empire that seemed impervious to failure — Pixar. The year before Disney released one of its biggest flops, 2002’s Treasure Planet, Pixar’s Monsters Inc. made $577 million. The following year the company broke its own record, making $940 million on Finding Nemo. During the same period that Walt Disney Animation had been throwing out hit or miss movies, Pixar was having one of the strongest runs in its short history, with the four movies released from 2001 to 2006 averaging $648 million each. Pixar had an unbeatable record of success, but there was just one problem: Disney didn’t own Pixar; it was just a distribution branch for the animation company.

Disney and Pixar had always had a shaky relationship, largely thanks to the clashing personalities of Disney’s Michael Eisner and Pixar’s Steve Jobs. But the companies managed to resolve their differences, leading to the Pixar deal in 2006. Disney’s creative gamble in the wake of Tarzan may have backfired, but it taught the company that acquisition is king.

That purchase then led to bigger buys, notably Disney’s purchase of Marvel Entertainment in 2009 and its acquiring of LucasFilm, the company behind Star Wars, in 2012. Disney has always been strategically smart about its acquisitions. The company didn’t touch Marvel until the studio produced the action-adventure hit Iron Man in 2008. And even though its prequels are largely disliked, there really aren’t any pop culture franchises as beloved as Star Wars. Acquiring Marvel and LucasFilm came with a big price tag (about $4 billion each), but like with Pixar, they were sure bets.

These two companies also brought with them the male audiences Disney had so desperately tried to entice in the past. When discussing why Disney purchased Marvel in 2009, Disney’s former Chief Financial Officer told Newsweek, “We both have properties with broad appeal, but they skew more toward boy.” Though Disney has adamantly maintained throughout the years that its movies are for everyone, securing male audiences has long been an unspoken concern for Disney  — one that crested and floundered with Tarzan.

Fast forward to 2018 and Disney is in talks to purchase Fox for as much as a staggering $71 billion. The company has also already announced its own streaming service. Disney has always been an impressive if not imposing empire, but it’s very likely that panic over its box office failure in the 2000s transformed it into the behemoth it is today. Nineteen years after its premiere, the final gasp success of Tarzan helped spark the all-consuming Disney empire we know today. Makes “You’ll Be in My Heart” sound a bit ominous, doesn’t it?

Where to stream Tarzan