Filmmaker Tim Burton didn’t hold back on his thoughts toward Disney during a press conference in France on Saturday.
Burton, who was in Lyon to receive a lifetime achievement award from the Lumière Festival, weighed in on the status of his relationship with the company he started working for in the early ’80s.
Burton has worked on several movies for the studio including “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” “James and the Giant Peach”and the 2010 version of “Alice in Wonderland” over his career.
Burton said his movie with the studio, a 2019 remake of “Dumbo,” will likely be his last there following his unsatisfactory time making it, Deadline reported.
“The thing about Dumbo, is that’s why I think my days with Disney are done, I realized that I was Dumbo, that I was working in this horrible big circus and I needed to escape,” Burton said.
“That movie is quite autobiographical at a certain level.”
Burton also discussed the studio’s liking for popular franchises such as Star Wars and Marvel, adding that he’d never make a superhero movie for the latter franchise.
“It’s gotten to be very homogenized, very consolidated,” Burton said.
“There’s less room for different types of things. I can only deal with one universe, l can’t deal with a multi-universe.”
It isn’t the first time this year that Burton has spoken out about a studio.
Burton slammed Warner Bros. for replacing him as “Batman” director and alleged that the studio deemed his “Batman” movies – the first two in a four movie series that ended in 1997 – “too dark,” Empire magazine reported in June.
“They went the other way, that’s the funny thing about it,” Burton said.
“But then I was like, ‘Wait a minute. Okay. Hold on a second here. You complain about me, I’m too weird, I’m too dark, and then you put nipples on the costume? Go fuck yourself.’ Seriously. So, yeah, I think that’s why I didn’t end up [doing a third film]…”
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