Disney Renaissance

The Disney Renaissance was a period from 1989 to 1999 during which Walt Disney Feature Animation returned to producing commercially and/or critically successful animated films. The ten feature films associated with this period are The Little Mermaid (1989), The Rescuers Down Under (1990), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), The Lion King (1994), Pocahontas (1995), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Mulan (1998), and Tarzan (1999).

The Great Mouse Detective (1986), Oliver & Company (1988) and Fantasia 2000 (1999) are also often included; the first two being precursors of the period and the last being the last animated feature film to follow the same artistic pattern as classic Disney films.

The films were mostly musical adaptations of well-known stories, similar to ones produced by Walt Disney from the 1930s to 1960s. They saw great success at the domestic and foreign box office, earning much greater profits.

Background (pre-1989)

After the deaths of Walt and Roy O. Disney (in 1966 and 1971, respectively), Walt Disney Productions was left in the hands of Donn Tatum, Card Walker, and Walt's son-in-law, Ron Miller. Under their supervision, creative leadership over feature animated films largely fell to Wolfgang Reitherman.

While certain films, such as The Rescuers (1977), were commercially and critically successful, most of the films released in the two decades after the death of the Disney brothers did not perform as well as the studio's previous work. Reitherman was determined to produce only family-friendly material certain to turn a profit, so he softened Disney villains so that they were more comical or pitiful than scary. During production of The Fox and the Hound (1981), long-time animator Don Bluth left Disney's animation department to start his own rival studio, Don Bluth Productions, taking 11 of Disney's 65 animators with him.