Katherine Collins on the troubles at Disney in the late 70s and 80s

Ironically, of course, a year after this interview, trouble did in fact begin to brew at the studio. The first manifestation of this was when Don Bluth led a group of experienced Disney animators in a mass exodus, to create their own studio. The group subsequently produced The Secret of Nimh. The entire Disney organization began to go into severe convulsions in the first half of the 80s, when it became apparent that the leadership of the Old Guard was increasingly at sea. The Disney film division was making very little money, and was producing movies that were a bad joke. The animation department seemed to be adrift, taking five years to produce the the indifferent The Fox and the Hound and another five for the truly awful The Black Cauldron. A series of "greenmail" takeover attempts by corporate raiders finally resulted in an overthrow of the management, and the creation of a new regime (in power today) which had succeeded in turning the re-named Walt Disney Company into a standard, but successful Hollywood movie studio, which also happens to have an animation department. The atmosphere at the studio today is relatively workaday, with neither the hum of excitement of the great days, nor the disconcerting lassitude and air of unreality which pervaded the lot in the late seventies.

[This small footnote is fascinating to read in the context of Disney history. Collins doesn't give a specific year when this interview was done, but Don Bluth left Disney in 1979 so we can assume it was around 1978. It was published in 1988, only a year before the Disney Renaissance in 1989. The Little Mermaid was in production as this was being published. It just shows how bad things looked at the time, and that no one could have predicted how much of a hit The Little Mermaid and subsequent films would be.]