It is said around the Walt Disney Productions studios in Burbank that 13 years after Walt Disney's death the entertainment empire still runs by his visionary blueprint. The strict Disney standards, including hair length and dress, remain in force, and loyalty to Walt Disney's memory approaches reverence. Small wonder, given the extraordinary Disney success.
But in the animation department, where Walt Disney first and most notably created his magic, the spell has been broken. Last month a dozen of Walt Disney Productions' new breed of animators resigned, led by 42-year-old Don Bluth, to set up their own company.
By no means will the animators' departure rattle Disney's financial fortunes, certainly not in the short run. The lucrative entertainment enterprises, the mainstream operations, are scarcely affected; for its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Disney is expected to report earnings well above the 1978 fiscal year's $98.4 million on $741.1 million in sales.
But even Disney cannot shrug off the loss of its artists. It has already caused a delay in the release of the studio's "The Fox and the Hound," originally scheduled for Christmas 1980. And, more fundamentally, it has dashed the studio's efforts to rebuild the Disney animation department to its past glory.