Here’s a 2006 article that sheds a lot of light on the production of The Wild, with possible portents of what sank the movie as well as C.O.R.E. Feature Animation. Also, a few folks here have mentioned The Wild being in production before Madagascar, which this article seems to confirm. Some key quotes follow the link and form a sort of condensed narrative version:
“…Disney’s publicity material makes a point of crediting producer Beau Flynn and writers Mark Gibson and Philip Halperin for pitching The Wild to Disney ‘over nine years ago.’”
“Disney’s original intent was to make The Wild a hybrid film, with its animal characters composited over real-world backgrounds, much like Who Framed Roger Rabbit…”
“Not only did Williams talk Disney into abandoning its hybrid approach, he also convinced them to bankroll a new animation studio in Toronto to produce the film: C.O.R.E. Feature Animation…”
“‘We took this thing from zero, we built a facility and a story. These other [CGI animation] companies already had an established pipeline. It’s one thing to do a movie and put it in a pipeline, it’s another thing to build a…pipeline.’”
“‘The biggest difficulty was putting the story together and getting it to work. Sometimes we had to change the cast based on how that was going. We changed stuff all the time, then you’d run into huge technical problems that would make you go back and address a bunch of [previously nailed-down] shots as a result.’”
“C.O.R.E. used an animation package known as Houdini to animate The Wild in a close to photorealistic style. Houdini had never taken on an entire feature before…”
“‘It was crazy. Apart from the tech issues we dealt with, coming up with story that worked was really, really tough. This was huge, massive. We were trying to satisfy many masters at same time. We had to have something else ready every four weeks to show to Disney. We ended up working in sort of a reactionary mode all the time. Disney was going through their own growing pains with Pixar in or out, who knows. Then along comes our little film and all of a sudden people started taking notice. The big boys were there, they thought “wow, look at this.”’”
“The Wild may have been–like Valiant–another attempt by Disney to find an independent studio capable of filling Pixar’s computer-generated shoes. Now that Pixar is permanently in Disney’s orbit, and with their own in-house facility [responsible for last year’s far more cartoony Chicken Little] up and running, Disney may no longer have the need it once did to find an outside partner for its CGI fix.”
So, what emerges is the likelihood that C.O.R.E. was the little studio that got caught in the crossfire between Disney and DreamWorks, a china casualty of bigger bulls. The article explains a lot about why The Wild cost $80 million to produce (per Box Office Mojo), not exactly a low-budget effort for a 2006 release–Open Season (2006) reportedly cost $85 million, and Valiant (2005) cost $35 million. It also explains a lot about any story limitations. But no matter how you slice it, this is an instructive example of how not to make a CG-animated feature.
One point of curiosity: Has the Houdini software ever been used on another CG-animated feature? The Wild does have a unique look about it, and maybe the use of Houdini explains that.
I don’t think it really has a fanbase, either.