The strange thing about these ambitious plans is that they are exactly that, ambitious. From my layman's position looking in on this matter, it seems more of a risk to plan an entire series of films like this based on IPs as it is to risk a single film's budget on a new idea.

What a fantastic way to cheapen any story they plan to tell. This expansive universe thing must be seductive to studios, but call me old fashioned, I thought that "stories" worked pretty well for movies too.

This is the million dollar equivalent of a stupid parent thinking
'Sure I could make kids books how hard can it be.'

Looks cute. Reminds me of the route they went with the recent Moomin movie/series. Unlike The Smurfs, or Yogi Bear, they understood the appeal of the drawings lay in the shapes.

B is about right, but it's hard to say with just one episode. A commendable achievement of the original Cosmos was its scope and assumption that viewers were watching the entire series, so knowledge was built upon with each episode and Sagan didn't have to oversimplify or spend time re-explaining ideas to new viewers,…