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LOS ANGELES — For decades, the Walt Disney Company has largely kept
Mickey Mouse frozen under glass, fearful that even the tiniest
tinkering might tarnish the brand and upend his $5 billion or so in
annual merchandise sales. One false move and Disney could have New
Coke on its hands.
Now, however, concerned that Mickey has become more of a corporate
symbol than a beloved character for recent generations of young
people, Disney is taking the risky step of re-imagining him for the
future.
The first glimmer of this will be the introduction next year of a new
video game, Epic Mickey, in which the formerly squeaky clean
character can be cantankerous and cunning, as well as heroic, as he
traverses a forbidding wasteland.
And at the same time, in a parallel but separate effort, Disney has
quietly embarked on an even larger project to rethink the character’s
personality, from the way Mickey walks and talks to the way he appears
on the Disney Channel and how children interact with him on the Web —
even what his house looks like at Disney World.
“Holy cow, the opportunity to mess with one of the most recognizable
icons on Planet Earth,” said Warren Spector, the creative director of
Junction Point, a Disney-owned game developer that spearheaded Epic
Mickey.
The effort to re-engineer Mickey is still in its early stages, but it
involves the top creative and marketing minds in the company, all the
way up to Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive.
The project was given new impetus this week with the announcement
that, after 20 years of negotiations, the company has finally
received the blessing of the Chinese government to open a theme park
in Shanghai, potentially unlocking a new giant market for all things
Mickey.
Disney executives are treading carefully, and trying to keep a low
profile, as they discuss how much they dare tweak one of the most
durable characters in pop culture history to induce new generations
of texting, tech-savvy children to embrace him. Disney executives
will keenly watch how Epic Mickey is received, to inform the broader
overhaul.
Keeping cartoon characters trapped in amber is one of the surest
routes to irrelevancy. While Mickey remains a superstar in many
homes, particularly overseas, his static nature has resulted in a
generation of Americans — the one that grew up with Nickelodeon and
Pixar — that knows him, but may not love him. Domestic sales in
particular have declined: of his $5 billion in merchandise sales in
2009, less than 20 percent will come from the United States.
“There’s a distinct risk of alienating your core consumer when you
tweak a sacred character, but at this point it’s a risk they have to
take,” said Matt Britton, the managing partner of Mr. Youth, a New
York brand consultant firm.
In Epic Mickey, the foundation of which a group of interns dreamed up
in 2004, the title character still exhibits the hallmarks that
younger generations know: he is adventurous, enthusiastic and
curious. “Mickey is never going to be evil or go around killing
people,” Mr. Spector said.
But Mickey won’t be bland anymore, either. “I wanted him to be able to
be naughty — when you’re playing as Mickey you can misbehave and even
be a little selfish,” Mr. Spector said.
In many ways, it is a return to Mickey at his creation. When the
character made its debut in “Steamboat Willie” in 1928, he was the
Bart Simpson of his time: an uninhibited rabble-rouser who got into
fistfights, played tricks on his friends (pity Clarabelle Cow) and,
later, was amorously aggressive with Minnie.
Epic Mickey, designed for Nintendo’s Wii console, is set in a “cartoon
wasteland” where Disney’s forgotten and retired creations live. The
chief inhabitant is Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, a cartoon character Walt
Disney created in 1927 as a precursor to Mickey but ultimately
abandoned in a dispute with Universal Studios. In the game, Oswald
has become bitter and envious of Mickey’s popularity. The game also
features a disemboweled, robotic Donald Duck and a “twisted, broken,
dangerous” version of Disneyland’s “It’s a Small World.” Using paint
and thinner thrown from a magic paintbrush, Mickey must stop the
Phantom Blot overlord, gain the trust of Oswald and save the day.
Consumers will not be able to buy the game before fall of next year.
Anticipation is intense. “Wow! This is amazing,” said Eli Gee on
GameInformer.com. “I’m really... REALLY excited.”
Other observers are less impressed. “The approach warrants a lot of
caution given the difficulty that publishers have had gaining
traction on the Wii,” said Doug Creutz, a media analyst at Cowen and
Company.
Industry veterans with experience in the family niche think that the
Disney brand can overcome such hurdles.
“This is a huge opportunity to create more relevancy for Mickey and
pull him into the fastest-growing entertainment medium,” said Jim
Wilson, the chief executive of Atari’s North American business. “If
it’s a good game — and given the strength of the developer and I.P.,
the likelihood of that is high — people are going to buy it.”
Not that the idea is not radical. “I was told to withhold judgment
until I had seen the whole pitch,” said Graham Hopper, executive vice
president for Disney Interactive Studios.
Disney has big video game ambitions, spending at least $180 million on
their development this year alone. It has had successful spinoff
titles, but no true self-published blockbusters. Disney generated
about $86 million in retail sales from January to September in the
United States, according to NPD data. Nintendo of America, the
leading seller of games, had about $1 billion in sales.
Mr. Iger solved a right problems with the game by making a deal with
NBC Universal in 2006. In the negotiations, Mr. Iger persuaded NBC
Universal to trade the Oswald rights for rights to Al Michaels, the
sportscaster. NBC wanted Mr. Michaels for its new football franchise
and Mr. Michaels wanted to go, but Disney held him in a longtime
contract through its ESPN unit.
In the interim, Mr. Spector has struggled with the correct 3-D model
of the mouse, consulting with animators and John Lasseter, the Pixar
co-founder.
Considerable effort has gone into instilling a backdrop of choice and
consequence. Players can either behave in an entirely happy way and
help other characters — and have an easier go of it in the wasteland
— or choose more selfish, destructive behavior with a harsher
outcome, including a Mickey that starts to physically resemble a
rat.
“Ultimately,” Mr. Spector said, “players must ask themselves, ‘What
kind of hero am I?’ ”
When it comes to Mickey, Disney is asking it, too.
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