How do you come to terms with sacrificing your artistic merit for the sake of a paycheck? That is, in fact, what Tim Burton has done these last few years, selling his soul to Disney, being their “pet weirdo” as it is described in the below Anne Thompson article for IndieWire.
Burton says in the sitdown interview, “If somebody asked me or the kids I grew up with, ‘what do you remember about about Dumbo?’ It’s him getting wasted, getting drunk on champagne. Politically, that’s stuff you can’t do these days.”
Politically? Of course you can still do that stuff. It’s just that, quite frankly Mr. Burton, you have been handcuffed by your masters over at the mouse house. The film needed that kind of edge but it had none of it. Why can’t we show Dumbo being drunk and seeing pink elephants? Instead of watching a copout sequence substituting the champagne bubbles and the surreal “Pink Elephants on Parade,” with blownup pink elephant bubbles in the circus act.
Paul Greengrass’ "The Uprising," starring Andrew Garfield, opened to $3.2M from 2,068 theaters this weekend. Yikes. The budget hasn’t been disclosed, but is said to be in the $20-$30M range.