Disney Shuts Down Production on A Few Good Ghosts

The L.A. Times reports that Walt Disney Studios halted production Friday of its long-troubled animated project A Few Good Ghosts (aka "My Peoples"), raising questions about the fate of the company's Orlando, Florida, animation facility and its staff of some 258 artists who were working on the project.

Disney's animation president, David Stainton, confirmed Friday that the movie was being shut down and that "over the next six weeks we are going to examine all our options going forward," including shuttering the Florida studio.

Disney recently laid off 50 animators in Orlando, closed its Paris animation studio and shuttered its animation unit in Tokyo, laying off more than 100 employees. In all, Disney has slashed more than 700 jobs in recent years, leaving the company with a total of about 900 animation workers, including those in Orlando.

To try to rein in escalating production and labor costs, Disney also has sliced animators' salaries as much as 50%.

Disney, which pioneered the art of hand-drawn animation, has been trying to creatively reinvigorate the high-profile unit at a time when audiences seem to have shown a preference for cutting-edge 3-D computer-generated movies over traditionally drawn cartoons.

A Few Good Ghosts, a combination of computer animation and traditionally drawn 2-D human characters, went into production this summer. It would have been the fourth feature produced entirely at the Florida studio, the others being Disney's Brother Bear, Lilo & Stitch and Mulan.

The story is about two star-crossed lovers reunited by a family of ghosts who inhabit the bodies of folk-art dolls.