I always wondered why Disney make the sequels for Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Little Mermaid, etc as direct-to-video movie with small budget.
I mean Toy Story, Shrek, and Despicable Me still puts their sequels in the cinema with high budget and they're succeeded.
I believe it's because of money × effort ratio.
Aladdin, Cinderella, Lady and the Tramp, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Lion King, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Mulan and Tarzan are regarded the beloved of classic Disney films. Grossing around $700-800mil or so each movie.
These films had official sequels... but were direct-to-video. And these films earned around $300-400mil in sales.
Now, I haven't seen all the sequels, but I noticed a drop in quality with the few I have seen (not as well shaded, slightly muted colours, less FPS) so less effort was put into these movies as their big-budget prequels. I wouldn't be surprised in the Aladdin sequels were made by
Disney Television Animation studio, the studio that made TV series adaptions of Aladdin, Hercule, Little Mermaid and Tarzan. Cartoons that were seen either on Saturday morning shows or
The Disney Afternoon block.
That said, it could be Disney simply didn't have much faith these sequels would be as big money-makers as their prequels. They didn't want to put big budget $ on sequels that may not hold a candle to the prequel and not make enough back (which, to be fair, would be the case with some of these movies). But they still wanted money, so making these movies direct-to-video (and later DVD) meant Disney could put minimum effort into these sequels while still getting substantial money back from it. Not as much money as a big budget blockbuster, but still worth their while.
Maybe they would get a bit more money if these sequels had time, effort and money put into them as the classics that started them... but Disney likely thought they just wouldn't make enough back.
