I read this article in disgust on the front page (above the fold) of yesterday's newspaper.

The two telling quotes:

Ratatouille, WALL-E and Up have all been critically and commercially successful movies. But each is built around unconventional characters — a French rat, a nearly wordless robot and an elderly widower — that don't necessarily lend themselves to rides, shows and souvenirs.

"We definitely have a hit on our hands. But Up is not the kind of movie that's going to generate the kind of multiplatform-franchise success of movies like Cars or Toy Story or other movies that we have in the pipeline, like the princess movies," Disney Co. Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger said during a recent conference call.

Princess movies? All I can say is cookie cutter crap. Where is the diversity in characters? Oscar the grouch lives in a frickin' garbage can. Sponge Bob is a SPONGE for chrissakes. In the Czech Republic, the equivalent of Mickey Mouse is a mole called Krtek. I am guessing the Marketing folks at Disney are just lazy and want the product to sell themselves.

I know I am not the demographic they seek, but the first Blu-Ray disc I bought was Ratatouille. The question I ask is which movie is going to have staying power over 10-20 years? A Pixar flick... or the last franchise-able turd of a Disney movie that come out, G-Force.

It is this exact corporate thinking that shows the Hollywood is not just dead, it is becoming a fossil. The suits think that it is better to come out with a movie like Transformers or GI Joe, because if at least the movie sucks they can still sell toys to the kiddies. Where is the creative soul in that?