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In what can only be described as a short-sighted business move by Hollywood moguls, Disney and DreamWorks have both added a clause to their contracts for cast and crew forbidding them to use social networking sites while in production on a film.
Hollywood loves it some Twitter; countless celebrities frequently tweet, using the website to reach out to fans and promote new projects. The studios’ contractual changes effectively ban them from updating Facebook, Twitter, personal blogs and more while at work on a movie. This move may seem counterproductive to studios’ goals of promoting upcoming movies, as cyberspace updates from famous names would be good publicity for a fledgling film project. But negative Tweets and Facebook updates about ousted directors, on-set feuds, budget overhauls and production problems hurt box-office numbers when a film is released.
Celebrity voices in cyberspace have been problematic for studios in the past. Last August, American Idol judge Paula Abdul tweeted that she was quitting the show before Fox had made the news public. When the studio finally responded with a statement, the news had already spread worldwide, fueling rumors and preventing the company’s PR machine from controlling the story.
As an entertainment lawyer told the Hollywood Reporter, “Hollywood has a long history of controlling what talent says in the media. This is just a new area of media that hasn’t been controlled yet.” Still, these contractual changes will curtail helpful publicity for a film, and leaks to news-hungry fans will almost certainly occur anyway via e-mails, indiscreet interviews and intrusive paparazzi.
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Your Disney characters and the people born to play them is the stupidist thing I have ever seen. People are picked to play characters because of their voices, not their looks and rarely has the studio made anything but the perfect vocal choice. "Mr Toads Wild Ride" is the name of a ride at the theme parks and a live action movie with members of Monty Python, the animated film was "The Wind in the Willows" part of the feature "The Adventures of Ichabod and Mister Toad" And "The Brave Little Toaster" was not made by Disney it was made by a Japanese company and distributed by Disney. Disney had no say on the voice talent. No, your choices are pathetic, the siamese cas were voiced by someone who was probably the sexiest singer of the, Peggy Lee, who also wrote the siamese cat song, among others in the movie. No people, think before you write, don't just write to see your work (?) in print.