As we reported last week, Disney has shut down production on its 2D/3D-mixed animated film My Peoples, which has had a troubled history, going through re-writes and strange titles galore: A Few Good Ghosts, Once In a Blue Moon and Angel and Her No Good Sister being among them. Now the Los Angeles Times (subscription required) confirms the story, in a report featuring an official announcement from Disney’s animation head-honcho David Stainton. The LA Times story, which refers to the film as A Few Good Ghosts, can be read here:

Disney Halts Work On Orlando Film

By Claudia Eller | Los Angeles Times

Walt Disney Studios halted production Friday of its long-troubled animated project A Few Good Ghosts, raising questions about the fate of the company’s Orlando animation facility and its staff of 258 artists.

Disney animation chief David Stainton confirmed Friday that the movie was being shut down and that “over the next six weeks we are going to examine all our options going forward,” including shuttering the Florida studio.

“By January, we hope we’ll have a more concrete plan for the [Orlando] studio,” said Stainton, elaborating no further.

The decision to ax Ghosts – which is half computer generated, half traditionally drawn – also reflects management’s desire to streamline its ranks and focus all of its production resources at its corporate headquarters in Burbank, Calif.

The entertainment giant recently laid off 50 animators in Orlando, closed its Paris animation studio and shuttered its animation unit in Tokyo, laying off more than 100 employees. In all, Disney has slashed more than 700 jobs in recent years, leaving the company with a total of about 900 animation workers, including those in Orlando.

In an effort to rein in escalating production and labor costs, Disney also has sliced animator salaries by as much as 30 percent to 50 percent.

Disney, which pioneered the art of hand-drawn animation, is trying to creatively reinvigorate the high-profile unit at a time when audiences seem to have shown a preference for cutting-edge 3-D computer-generated movies over traditionally drawn cartoons.

Though Stainton has stressed that “2-D is not dead,” and that Disney is not abandoning the medium, the studio’s current release Brother Bear, produced in Orlando, is only one of two remaining major 2-D movies in Disney’s lineup. The other is next year’s planned release Home On The Range.

Mark Simon, who runs a small Orlando animation studio, A&S Animation, said he received several calls Friday from Disney animators looking for jobs.

“I know there are a lot of people out there looking for work,” Simon said, noting that it was his understanding that the halting of work on A Few Good Ghosts would affect the entire Orlando animation unit.

The project, which went into production this summer, would have been the fourth feature that was produced exclusively at the Orlando studio, the others being Brother Bear, Lilo & Stitch and Mulan.

There is no other project in production or development in Orlando, where in 1989, 70 artists were assigned to an animation showcase attraction at Disney-MGM studios.

For years, the artists produced mainly short films, or “featurettes,” as Disney calls them, including Roller Coaster Rabbit, and helped on full-length films, including The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Later, the operation became known as Walt Disney Feature Animation Florida, growing to more than 400 animators in the late 1990s.

Stainton, who was in Orlando on Friday morning to announce to the crew that production of A Few Good Ghosts was being shut down, sent an e-mail to the troops at Disney Studios in California explaining the decision. “The fundamental idea is not strong enough or universally appealing enough to support the kind of performance our movies must have today.”

The story is about two star-crossed lovers who are reunited by a family of ghosts who inhabit the bodies of folk-art dolls.

“The entire studio was working on it,” A&S Animation’s Simon said. “It’s a shame. This is probably the most talented animation unit in all of Disney.”

More at The Orlando Sentinel (subscription required).