Yesterday in New York City Disney / Pixar Animation announced a handful of new projects that are in the works over the next 4 years, as well as screening 30 minutes of footage from the soon-to-be-released Pixar film Wall-E.
Here’s a list of the projects that Disney announced:
- Up will follow WALL-E for Pixar, featuring the voices of Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger and Jordan Nagai.
- Tinkerbell will go direct-to-DVD, followed by three sequels. So four Tinkerbell films all together.
- Rapunzel is back! Not only that, but the classic story will be done in full CGI.
- King of the Elves is another film coming from Disney animation in 2012, and it’s based on a Phillip K. Dick story.
- Toy Story and Toy Story 2 to be released in 3-D in 2009 and 2010.
- Toy Story 3 hits theaters on June 18, 2010
- Newt will be Pixar’s film in 2011, and it comes with this description: “What happens when the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet are forced together by science to save the species, and they can’t stand each other?
- Cars 2 coming in 2012!
(Found at Cinematical)
Some of the projects sound really exciting while others look like a sprinkling of the staple Disney sequels that they just can’t help but put out. As far as Wall-E goes the initial reactions to the screening seem extremely positive, which makes me happy. I know that the teaser trailer, the first glimpses we had of the undeniably cute Johnny 5 inspired robot, instantly captivated pretty much everybody but when the longer trailer was released and we got a better idea of what might actually happen in the movie some people were put off. My guess is that the teaser was charming in its simplicity, the concept rang true to everyone who saw it about what might happen if all of humanity had to leave Earth and the last robot was never deactivated, followed by the excitement of a weird ship showing up and then taking back off with Wall-E hidden in tow. However with the full trailer we got a look at another, sleeker and more modern looking robot, whom develops a relationship with our little friend and people began to fear that the feelings from the teaser might become cluttered or lost. I hope that from this longer screening people have had a chance to see more of the movie and let us know if the feelings are indeed in tact.
If you know me at all then you can probably guess that mention of the King of the Elves story by Phillip K. Dick is what I’m most excited about. This probably represents one of the ONLY stories Dick wrote that Disney could even come close to telling, but I do hope that some of the darker tone to it remains in this adaptation. I’m hoping that this will feature some gritty CG and really appeal to a wider audience, if they gear it too much towards children then it might as well not be based on Dick’s story at all. If you have not read the short story, it opens up with some excellent imagery that has always stuck with me, and if you haven’t read any Phillip K. Dick you still know his stories – Blade Runner, Minority Report, Total Recall, Paycheck, The Golden Man (adapted as the movie Next), and several scenes out of The Truman Show are inspired by Dick’s work.
At one point I heard something about Rapunzel, that it was going to be classically animated, then it was changed to CG, then back again, and now it is back to CG? I’m curious how the computer animation will go at Disney if they don’t have Pixar working on it, but a large part of me will always miss good old hand-animation. You know, the good old days!
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