By Motion capture is creepy. Despite thinking it was pretty well-done (considering its predecessors) in Mars Needs Moms, the movie probably would have avoided a lot of its animation problems by just straight-up animating everything. Maybe it wouldn’t have bombed so badly if children weren’t afraid of the characters.
Robert Zemeckis, producer of Mars Needs Moms and director of The Polar Express, Beowulf, and the 2009 animated version of A Christmas Carol, wanted to unleash yet another motion capture monstrosity in the form of a remake of Yellow Submarine. Zemeckis obtained the rights to sixteen Beatles songs and had a cast in mind, but the project was delayed by budget issues. After the poor performance of A Christmas Carol followed by this recent disaster, Disney dropped the movie like a bad habit. Zemeckis may still try to push the thing on another studio, but with that kind of black mark, it’s unlikely to go too far.
[via THR]