Movies - TV
Tim Burton Says Disney Is A 'Horrible Big Circus' And He Was Dumbo
By VALERIE ETTENHOFER
It sounds like Tim Burton won’t be making more Disney movies anytime soon. At the Lumière Festival last week, Burton spoke about why making “Dumbo” was the last straw in his relationship with the studio, and how the film came to be almost autobiographical for the filmmaker.
Burton started out at Disney, storyboarding and animating until he was let go for wasting money on a movie that was too scary. Later, he was rehired and worked with the studio on movies like “Frankenweenie,” “Alice in Wonderland,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” In Burton’s words, “I was hired and fired like several times throughout my career [at Disney].”
However, it wasn’t until 2019 when working on “Dumbo,” that Burton started thinking differently about the company. Burton said, “I realized that I was ‘Dumbo,’ that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape. That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level.” Burton hasn’t worked with Disney since, instead focusing on his Netflix series, “Wednesday.”