TOY STORY 3 The first animated film to gross $1 Billion

Woody and Buzz are the gifts that just keep giving.

TOY STORY 3 has recently crossed the $1 billion mark, Disney announced Friday. That makes the sequel the first animated film to reach that milestone.

It’s more good news for a studio that’s having a very, very good year at the box office. In addition to Toy Story 3, Disney’s 3D fantasy film Alice in Wonderland also took in $1 billion. DVD Town

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Time Warner Cable says Disney is the problem

With less than a week to go before their programming contract expires, the rhetoric between Walt Disney Co. and Time Warner Cable is starting to heat up.

At issue are fees that Time Warner, the nation’s second-largest cable operator and the dominant pay-TV company in Los Angeles, pays Disney to carry its various networks and channels, including KABC-TV here as well as ESPN, ABC Family and Disney Channel. LA Times

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Disney Narrows Its Movie Focus, Building on Known Characters

As the business model that propelled Hollywood for more than a decade fades to black, Walt Disney Co. is retooling how its movie studio makes and markets films.

The Disney studio, which is to unveil its production slate this spring, is backing away from one-off comedies like “When in Rome” and “Confessions of a Shopaholic,” according to people familiar with the studio’s new gameplan.

In their place, Disney plans to focus on films that are essentially brands—like a planned Muppets movie—that can be exploited across its network of theme parks, videogames and commercial products. The recent success with “Alice in Wonderland” has given a new team of executives who run the studio confidence in their approach.  Wall Street Journal