Bonnie Arnold Hits Back At Animation Snobs: “Our Films Make More Money Than Their Films”

Storied animation producer Bonnie Arnold gave short shrift to those who are snobbish about her beloved discipline at Annecy today.

The Toy Story and How to Train Your Dragon producer, who started out in live action with the likes of Dances with Wolves and The Addams Family, had some simple words for those who see animation as beneath them.

“Our films make more money than their films,” she said during a masterclass at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.

“It keeps the lights on,” added Arnold, before politely checking with the crowd of mostly French animation fans that they were aware of the meaning of this phrase.

She was responding to a question from moderator Justin Johnson, the BFI’s lead programmer, who said Arnold is “living proof that in Hollywood being a good person can go hand in hand with being a good producer.”

Arnold talked the audience through a decades-long career that has seen her work on some of the biggest animated movies of all time, a leading female voice in an industry traditionally dominated by men that is slowly improving its gender balance. “I was used to being in a room full of men, laughing at their jokes,” she said wryly about the start of her career.

While she has worked on a plethora of huge studio movies, Arnold is currently producing Apple TV’s Snoopy Unleashed, which she said is set up in a different way and shows the direction in which the industry is headed. The film follows Charlie Brown and the Peanuts gang, who go on an emotional and wondrous journey to the vibrant Big City when Snoopy runs away from home.

“It’s been a different kind of challenge because there wasn’t a studio building,” said Arnold. “There was [producer] WildBrain, there were people in Canada, independents, director Steve Martino and we called on a lot of people we liked [to work on the movie]. There are still studio movies being made but there is a lot of independent work. Everyone does their bit and the result is quite amazing.”

“I said Toy Story would ‘change animation'”

Reflecting on the early part of her career, when she transitioned from Dances with Wolves to Toy Story having spoken to then-Pixar boss John Lasseter, Arnold said there was something strangely serendipitous about the two movies, and revealed what they had in common.

“The budget was the same for both,” she said. “It was $17M. And I thought that was a sign.”

She added that she had a good feeling about both when she saw the test screens.

“I’d finished the Dances with Wolves test, which people said would be a disaster but I said would change people’s perspectives about the Native American experience,” she added. “And for Toy Story I had a tingling in my neck after watching the Buzz and Woody test that said, ‘This is going to change animation’.”

It was after Toy Story that Arnold was contacted by DreamWorks Animation founder Jeffrey Katzenberg, who eventually persuaded her to join Dreamworks, where she made some of her best work.

Arnold was speaking at Annecy on a packed lineup. Snoopy Unleashed is being introduced later this week.