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In 1994, the death of Disney President and Chief Operating Officer Frank Wells, and the departure of studio chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg to co-found DreamWorks, left Michael Eisner in full control of the company.

At the turn of the century, films such as Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet, and Home on the Range failed to meet the critical and commercial expectations set by the early 1990s phenomena, in spite of exceptions such as Lilo & Stitch and The Emperor's New Groove.

At the same time, the high level of popular acclaim bestowed upon Toy Story, the first film animated entirely using computer-generated imagery ( CGI ), sparked an industry trend.

Based on the commercial success of Pixar's computer-generated animated films and other CGI fare ( especially Dreamworks ' Shrek, which contained numerous jabs at Katzenberg's former workplace and boss ), Disney came to believe that CGI was what the public wanted — so it ceased producing traditional two-dimensional animation after Home on the Range, and switched exclusively to CGI starting with 2005's Chicken Little.