Bits: Star Wars, Changing Disney Dates and Hand-Drawn Goodness

Not necessarily Animation Tidbits, but just bits of news: Animation, live action and what-not...

First off, check out this new advertisement for British department store John Lewis…



Did you get a strong Brother Bear vibe from that? Well if you did, you did for a good reason. Two Disney Feature Animation Florida veterans did the animation for this, Brother Bear director Aaron Blaise himself and Dominic Corola.

Blaise said...

"I designed all of the characters while Dom and I supervised all of the animation. I personally animated all of the Bear and the Hare while Dom and his crew animated the rest of the animals. It was taken all the way through final line at Premise in Orlando. It was so great to do 2D again! I was even working on paper at my old Disney animation desk! Something I hadn’t done since Brother Bear!"

What's truly cool about this ad is that the characters are set against a stop-motion background, which would be a neat style for an animated feature. Hopefully Blaise and Corola try to get something like this made with the help of Kickstarter or something.

Blaise's comment is also kind of sad if you think about it… C'mon Disney executives, enough with this "audiences don't like hand-drawn anymore" crap. You yourselves engineered the box office performances of The Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh…

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It looks like Star Wars: Episode VII is not too far away… Disney has finally announced a release date for the film: December 18, 2015…

(For a while, I had predicted that!)

A questionable date, because the script is said to be in the works and there is no cast. That being said, late 2015 is still a ways off. We've heard of the recent screenwriter change (Michael Arndt departing from something like this is not really a good sign) and rumors of Disney CEO Bob Iger insisting that the film be released in 2015, while Kathleen Kennedy and the creative crew think summer 2016 will give them the time they need.

I sincerely hope that Arndt didn't leave because Iger pushed for this film to be a 2015 release, I hope that this was meant to be a 2015 release all along and that it's not being rushed. Oddly enough, they'll be breaking the Star Wars May release date tradition. Now it's time for other blockbusters and big budget December 2015 releases to get moving. *cough*Warcraft*cough*Inferno*cough**cough*

Also… Will Kung Fu Panda 3, which opens December 23, 2015, be affected by this film? I sure hope not, the last thing DreamWorks needs is another Kung Fu Panda 2-esque performance at the domestic box office. I have a feeling that there's going to be a little reshuffling with their schedule, not to mention the fact that Finding Dory and How To Train Your Dragon 3 still share the same release date.

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The same day Star Wars: Episode VII's release date was announced, Disney pushed Brad Bird's Tomorrowland to May 22, 2015. The original sci-fi story starring George Clooney and Hugh Laurie was originally set to open on December 19, 2014… But let's be honest, that spot wasn't good to begin with: It had to go up against the last Hobbit, Disney's own Into The Woods, Night at the Museum 3 and several others.

But this new date isn't great, either. It opens a few weeks after The Avengers: Age of Ultron...

Here's hoping that Age of Ultron doesn't affect that film, because it's a Brad Bird film and it's an original tentpole film from Disney. We need more of those, and less… You know… Re-imaginings of stories they have already tackled!

Speaking of which, Jon Favreau will be the director of Disney's live action re-imagining (well, second actually) of The Jungle Book. While this gives me a little optimism, I still have no excitement for the project. I'd be totally fine with Disney scrapping it, the Cruella origin story, The Beast and even Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella… But that's already filming. Maleficent? Don't really care…

With him being attached, that means this will come to theaters in 2016 at the earliest. Blech, whatever…

Disney Slate Update: Marvel, Muppets, Planes & More!

Disney has once again changed their upcoming slate, but this change doesn't affect releases from Walt Disney Animation Studios or Pixar. The details are here thanks to Box Office Mojo and /Film...

The big news here is that two untitled Marvel productions have been slated for May 6, 2016 and May 5, 2017. Marvel usually takes the first Friday of May for most of their films (the Iron Man films, The Avengers and its sequel, Thor), and I guess Star Wars spin-offs are opening in theaters in both May 2016 and May 2017.

What will be ready? For the May 2016 film, probably Doctor Strange, though in my recent set of predictions, I thought that the film would come a month early since Marvel has locked the early April 2014 spot for Captain America: The Winter Soldier. I was thinking that Disney would release Marvel movies in April to distance them from any Lucasfilm productions (i.e the Star Wars spin-offs, since Disney wants at least one Star Wars film a year), but it looks like Disney is okay with releasing both a Marvel film and a Lucasfilm production in the same month. That is, if Lucasfilm follows the mid-May tradition for everything they release.

Oddly enough, no other Marvel production is slated for a 2016 release. This implies that Marvel may produce one film a year after 2015, but maybe we'll hear more in the coming months. I can't see Marvel ditching the 2-film-a-year strategy anytime soon since the momentum is still there. Speaking of Lucasfilm, no date for Star Wars: Episode VII yet! But I think we all know what it will be...

Yep, Ricky Gervais is going to be in this.

Some minor changes were made to one 2013 release and two 2014 releases...

Brad Bird's Tomorrowland has been moved a week forward. The film will now open on December 12, 2014... Good. The only thing that stands in its way is the finale to Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy, but something tells me that this Bird-directed sci-fi will overshadow the hobbits since the first one did very well, but didn't perform like a titan. In addition to George Clooney, Hugh Laurie and Raffey Cassiday, Thomas Robinson has now been cast. It'll be fun to track this one, since the marketing will be decidedly enigmatic!

The Muppets... Again! is now Muppets Most Wanted. Not really sure about that title, to be honest. It may fit in with the plot, but I think it sounds a bit awkward. What do you think of it? The release date is still the same: March 21, 2014.

This December's Disney film, Saving Mr. Banks, has also been moved a week forward. The film opens on December 13, 2013.

More films have been scheduled for release in 2014...

The first of which is Planes: Fire and Rescue, which opens on July 18th... I was hoping that this spin-off franchise wouldn't be a theatrical thing. I was already not to thrilled with the fact that Planes was getting a theatrical release, this will only cause more confusion since a lot of people assume that the series was made by Pixar. Like I need to hear any more "Planes? What are you doing, Pixar?!" complaints. Anyways, Disney is apparently very confident in the first film. After all, it probably didn't cost much to make being a DisneyToon Studios production, but I'll be surprised if it makes much more than $100 million at the domestic box office.

Opening on August 8th is a project I've never heard of before: The Hundred-Foot Journey. A Touchstone/DreamWorks production, the film is based on a book by Richard C. Morais. It's about an Indian boy living in Paris who becomes the apprentice for a chef that's a rival to his father.

This one was announced last year: Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. An adaptation of the children's book of the same name where a boy's family has a bad day thanks to him wishing they'd experience his daily problems, this might go the way of The Odd Life of Timothy Green... It just screams unspectacular to me. However, The Jim Henson Company is working on it so there might be something interesting about it. Steve Carrell and Jennifer Garner will be in it, and Cedar Rapids director Miguel Arteta will direct. The film is set to open on October 10, 2014.

Into The Woods will arrive on Christmas Day. I had initially predicted that it would be Disney's March 2015 release, but apparently it'll be ready by the end of next year. The Rob Marshall-directed production stars quite the cast, too: Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Jake Gyllenhaal, Emily Blunt and Meryl Streep. This ought to be a big success for Disney, though it's being released a little too close to Tomorrowland.

A total of 13 films from the Mouse House (including Marvel and Touchstone/DreamWorks films) will now be coming to theaters in 2014! I guess Disney really does want to bang 14-15 films out a year! Now I'll have to update my predictions...

What's your on this news? What do you think of Planes' sequel getting a theatrical release? Are you interested in any of the live action films that Disney has planned for 2014? Or not? What do you of think the new title for the Muppets sequel?

Sound off below!

Visions of Tomorrow

It looks like more details about the legendary animation director's next live action project have been revealed...

Brad Bird's next feature film was originally announced as 1952, a title which puzzled me because the Incredibles director was also attached to a Warner Bros. project titled 1906, a film about the San Francisco earthquake. That film doesn't seem to be getting off the ground anytime soon, though I suspect it will after this film is completed. Now, Disney D23 has announced that the film's title is not 1952; it is titled Tomorrowland. Tons of questions ensue...

Some are suggesting that it could be about Walt Disney and the creation of Disneyland, given the working title, the actual title and the photos of the mysterious box that were unveiled a few days ago. I hope it isn't, we already have a film coming out from Disney that features a portrayal of Walt Disney (Saving Mr. Banks) and it just doesn't fit the whole "original sci-fi" description from the announcements. I'm doubting it will be anyways, the box could just be another marketing trick. After all, Damon Lindelof is co-writing the screenplay with Bird.

Perhaps the title is only a reference to Tomorrowland, since it seemed like this project would be a retro-futuristic 1950s sci-fi story. Perhaps Tomorrowland and the visions of the future in the 1950s are the main inspirations behind this mysterious project. Disney hasn't taken on this sort of approach to marketing or announcements to their upcoming films, so it'll be exciting to see the mystery of this cryptic project unfold.

Tomorrowland stars George Clooney; it opens in theaters on December 19, 2014.