Should you watch Waking Sleeping Beauty?
Who it’s good for, who it isn’t, and what’s in it. No ratings, no scores.

Waking Sleeping Beauty
Documentary · 2010
By the mid-1980s, the fabled animation studios of Walt Disney had fallen on hard times. The artists were polarized between newcomers hungry to innovate and old timers not yet ready to relinquish control. These conditions produced a series of box-office flops and pessimistic forecasts: maybe the best days of animation were over. Maybe the public didn't care. Only a miracle or a magic spell could produce a happy ending. Waking Sleeping Beauty is no fairy tale. It's the true story of how Disney regained its magic with a staggering output of hits - "Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast ," "Aladdin," "The Lion King," and more - over a 10-year period.
The sides of Waking Sleeping Beauty
- Disney animation in crisis in the mid-1980s
- Studio executives fighting over control
- The run from The Little Mermaid to The Lion King
Waking Sleeping Beauty is good for you if…
- you want the true story of how Disney went from flops to The Lion King.
- you like the studio fights between Katzenberg, Eisner and Roy Disney.
Waking Sleeping Beauty is bad for you if…
- you need more than interviews and home video footage.
- you don't care about animated films, even how they were made.
About: creativity · rivalry · reinvention
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