Modern animation in the United States

At the same time, Roy E. Disney, who had already resigned as President in 1977, relinquished his spot on the Board of Directors to use his clout to change the status quo and improve the company's declining fortune.

Roy Disney, now back on the Board as its Vice-Chairman, convinced Eisner to let him supervise the animation department, whose future was in serious doubt after the disappointing box office performance of its big-budget PG-rated feature, The Black Cauldron.

In 1988, the studio collaborated with Steven Spielberg and Robert Zemeckis, to make Who Framed Roger Rabbit, a comedic detective caper that mixed live-action and animation while paying homage to the Golden Age of Cartoons.

Several aging legends in the business, such as Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng, suddenly found themselves the center of attention, receiving acclaim and accolades after decades of being virtually ignored by audiences and industry professionals alike[citation needed].

Disney followed up Who Framed Roger Rabbit with Oliver & Company in 1988[21] and The Little Mermaid, an adaptation of the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, in 1989 with songs by Broadway composers Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.

In 1994, the death of Disney President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells, and the departure of studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to co-found DreamWorks, left Michael Eisner in full control of the company.

At the turn of the century, films such as Dinosaur (Disney's first CG animated feature), Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the 1990s phenomena, despite exceptions such as The Emperor's New Groove and Lilo & Stitch.

[28] Because of strong video sales, the studio continued to make these films despite negative critical reaction; 2002's Cinderella II: Dreams Come True received a rare 11% rating from the review-aggregating website Rotten Tomatoes.

Bluth and Goldman returned to the United States a year earlier to discuss the creation of a feature-animation division at 20th Century Fox; the studio's three previous animated films (FernGully: The Last Rainforest, Once Upon a Forest, and the live-action/animation hybrid The Pagemaster) had all failed.

The 2001 live-action/animation hybrid Osmosis Jones, starring Bill Murray, was a costly commercial failure,[38] although its home video performance proved successful enough for the studio's TV animation department to produce a short-lived spin-off series called Ozzy and Drix.

Inspired by the success of Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit and a series of Nike and McDonald's commercials teaming the characters with basketball superstar Michael Jordan, the studio produced the live-action/animation combo Space Jam in 1996.

Unlike the original shorts, Taz-Mania (1991-1995) and Baby Looney Tunes (2001-2006) were aimed primarily at young children, while Loonatics Unleashed (2005-2007) was a controversial revamping of the characters in the distant future.

Hanna and Barbera continued to work as Time Warner employees and consultants until their respective deaths in 2001 and 2006; the name is still used for productions based on properties created during the Hanna-Barbera era.

Ren & Stimpy was a wild and off-beat series that violated all the restrictions of Saturday morning cartoons, instead favoring the outrageous style of the shorts from the Golden Age period.

Real Monsters, Hey Arnold!, KaBlam!, The Angry Beavers, The Wild Thornberrys, CatDog, SpongeBob SquarePants, Invader Zim, The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, Back at the Barnyard, The Fairly OddParents, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Danny Phantom, and Avatar: The Last Airbender.

Disney continued launching successful cartoon series in the late 2000s to 2020s, such as Phineas and Ferb, Gravity Falls, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, the 2017 DuckTales reboot, Big City Greens, Amphibia, The Owl House, and The Ghost and Molly McGee.

CBS was simply never able to come up with any new hits once the shows that anchored its late 1980s/early 1990s Saturday morning lineup—Muppet Babies, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Garfield and Friends, etc.—ran their respective courses.

Animated series produced exclusively for Adult Swim include The Brak Show, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Sealab 2021, Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law, Squidbillies, The Venture Bros., Perfect Hair Forever, Stroker and Hoop, Tom Goes to the Mayor, Robot Chicken, Rick and Morty, Metalocalypse and Smiling Friends.

MTV produced several successful animated series especially for its adolescent and young adult audience, including Liquid Television, The Brothers Grunt, Æon Flux, Beavis and Butt-head (and its spin-off Daria), The Maxx, and Celebrity Deathmatch.

The Academy Award-winning Forrest Gump (1994) depended heavily on computerized special effects to create the illusion of Tom Hanks shaking hands with Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, and to make Gary Sinise convincingly appear to be a double amputee, winning a special-effects Oscar.

Lucas experienced cash flow issues after his 1983 divorce, and in 1986 Pixar was spun off from Lucasfilm as a separate corporation with $10 million in capital from Apple Computer co-founder Steve Jobs.

At that time, Pixar primarily developed computer animation hardware, but Lasseter helped the company make a name for itself by creating acclaimed CGI short films such as The Adventures of André and Wally B.

DreamWorks' commercial success continued with three Shrek sequels, Shark Tale, Madagascar, Over the Hedge, Kung Fu Panda, How to Train Your Dragon, Megamind, The Croods, The Boss Baby and Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.

[58][59] To maintain the separateness of Disney and Pixar (even though they share common ownership and senior management), it was outlined that each studio is to remain solely responsible for its own projects and is not allowed to borrow personnel from or lend tasks out to the other.

An adaptation of the Brothers Grimm's "Rapunzel" tale entitled Tangled was released in 2010, earning $591 million in worldwide box office revenue, and signified a return by the studio to fairytale-based features common in the traditional animation era.

[65] They also had critical and commercial success with Oscar winners Big Hero 6, Zootopia and Encanto alongside (following in Pixar's footsteps) their own animated shorts Feast and Paperman; the latter was shown before Wreck-It Ralph.

Universal Studios attempted several times to become a viable participant in the market, finally achieving the goal in 2010 with Despicable Me, the first feature film from Illumination Entertainment which provided more hits for them within the following decade.

2001 saw the first attempt to create a fully animated world using photorealistic human actors in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, which met with moderate critical success but did not do well at the box office.

The unprecedented nomination of Disney's Beauty and the Beast for Best Picture and five other awards changed things, even though it won two Oscars for its song and score while Toy Story became the animated film for Best Original Screenplay.

Since then, Pixar has won the most awards in this category with the current exceptions being Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit in 2005, Happy Feet in 2006, Rango in 2011, Frozen in 2013, Big Hero 6 in 2014, Zootopia in 2016, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse in 2018, Encanto in 2021, Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio in 2022 and The Boy and the Heron in 2023.