"The Disney Renaissance" is the era from the late 1980s to the late 1990s when Walt Disney Animation Studios returned to making successful animated films, restoring public and critical interest in Disney. The animated films released during this period include 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 period between Walt and Roy O. Disney’s deaths and the release of The Little Mermaid was a somewhat dark time for the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Although most of the movies produced during this period are considered classics today, they weren’t getting the same reception from the public or critics that the earlier ones had, and the Animation Department was in real jeopardy. It also didn’t help that during production of The Fox and the Hound, long-time Disney animator Don Bluth left the company, taking 11 other Disney animators with him, to start his own rival studio and began cranking out movies like The Secret of Nihm, An American Tail, and The Land Before Time.
Disney had been developing The Little Mermaid since the 1930s, and by 1988, the studio had decided to make it into an animated musical. Lyricist Howard Ashman and composer Alan Menken were hired to write and compose the songs and score for the film. The Broadway style that the team brought to the film would set the standard for most of the musicals to follow.
The Little Mermaid was released on November 14, 1989 and garnered a higher weekend gross than Don Bluth’s All Dogs Go to Heaven, which opened the same weekend. It went on to break The Land Before Time’s record of highest-grossing animated film. The Little Mermaid was a critical and commercial success and won two Academy Awards, Best Original Score and Best Original Song (“Under the Sea”).
Thus was the beginning of The Disney Renaissance.
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