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John Lasseter and Disney Studios chief Dick Cook set animation fandom aflame yesterday when they hosted a presentation in New York City to detail the next five years of animated films from Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. The press conference was unusually detailed for the typically secretive world of animation - Cook pointed out that it was the first strictly animation-related presentation from Disney in more than a decade.

In all, ten new theatrical releases were announced. Scheduled to arrive in theaters twice annually, the slate includes four films from WDAS and six features from Pixar. Aside from 2011, when Pixar will release two films, Pixar films will arrive during the summer and Disney Animation productions during the holidays. In addition to the new films, Toy Story and Toy Story 2 will be re-released in 3-D. Also announced were four direct-to-video Tinkerbell films - one each for the next four years - from the overhauled DisneyToon Studios. The theatrical slate, in brief:

2008

WALL*E - Pixar Animation Studios, June 27th, 2008 - Directed by Finding Nemo’s Andrew Stanton, WALL*E is the last robot on Earth when he suddenly falls in love and goes on an adventure to save the world.

Bolt - Walt Disney Animation Studios, November 26th, 2008 - Directed by Chris Williams & Byron Howard and released in 3-D, Bolt follows a canine television star on a cross-country adventure where his on-camera superpowers neglect to translate into the real world.

2009

Up - Pixar Animation Studios, May 29th, 2009 - Also released in 3-D and directed by Pete Docter, Up is about an elderly man who is beginning to think that life has passed him by when he embarks on a perilous journey with an eight year old Wilderness Explorer.

Toy Story in 3-D - Pixar Animation Studios, October 2nd, 2009 - The original John Lasseter film has been converted to 3-D for its re-release.

The Princess and the Frog - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Christmas 2009 - The only traditionally animated feature on this list, and directed by Disney vets Ron Clements and John Musker, Princess reimagines the classic fairy tale in jazz-age New Orleans and features Disney’s first African-American princess.

2010

Toy Story 2 in 3-D - Pixar Animation Studios, February 12th, 2010 - John Lasseter’s first sequel has also been converted to 3-D for its re-release.

Toy Story 3 - Pixar Animation Studios, June 18th, 2010 - Produced in 3-D and directed by Lee Unkrich, the second Toy Story sequel follows the toys as Andy prepares to leave for college.

Rapunzel - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Christmas 2010 - Another 3-D release, this re-telling of the well-known fairy tale is directed by renowned Disney animator Glen Keane and Dean Wellins.

2011

newt - Pixar Animation Studios, Summer 2011 - First-time director Gary Rydstrom, previously a sound designer for Pixar and Lucasfilm, will bring us this 3-D film about two endangered newts who are brought together by scientists to repopulate their species - only they can’t stand each other.

The Bear and the Bow - Pixar Animation Studios, Holiday 2011 - Brenda Chapman becomes Pixar’s first female director with this Scottish tale of magic and fantasy. Produced in 3-D, the film tells of Merida, a Scottish princess who defies her parents and in turn endangers her father’s kingdom.

2012

Cars 2 - Pixar Animation Studios, Summer 2012 - Though long rumored, this film is perhaps the most surprising on the list. Pixar producer Brad Lewis will direct this 3-D sequel, in which our automotive protagonists embark on an adventure overseas.

King of the Elves - Walt Disney Animation Studios, Holiday 2012 - Surprising many, this film had been rumored since Disney optioned the Philip K. Dick story upon which it will be based. Directed by Aaron Blaise & Robert Walker, and produced in 3-D, this odd fantasy tale concerns “an average man living in the Mississippi Delta, whose reluctant actions to help a desperate band of elves leads them to name him their new king.”

We’ll be describing these films in greater detail in upcoming posts, but I have a few thoughts. First, I can’t help but notice that there is unfortunately only one traditionally animated film on the list. It had previously been hinted that Disney had another 2-D project in the works, but as this schedule is fairly crowded I can’t imagine it surfacing before 2013. That’s a long time to wait for some old-school animation, folks!

The release pattern is also interesting. Pixar gets what is assumed to be the plum summer timeslots, not to mention two releases in 2011. It’s also worth noting that all the Pixar films have single directors while all Disney films have two; while this is typical of traditional animation, does it indicate that Lasseter doesn’t yet have faith in Disney directors to have a singular artistic vision?

Troublesome to me is the fact that after WALL*E, all but the traditionally animated Princess are going to be released in “Disney Digital 3-D.” While Disney has been pushing this technology hard since Chicken Little in 2005 as a way to motivate families to choose theatrical releases over home video, I continue to worry that it will remain a gimmick and a fad while neglecting to service the story of the films whatsoever. It was an innovation driven by marketers rather than filmmakers, and despite Lasseter’s enthusiasm for the process I hope that traditional standard releases continue. Maybe I’m a fuddy-duddy (and at such an early age, too), but I’d rather enjoy the art of the animation without having to deal with all the artifacts of the 3-D process (not to mention that I don’t want to wear the sodding glasses either!).

Another interesting aspect of the announcement is how it fleshes out long-circulating rumors, such as the hints that Rydstrom and Chapman were going to be assigned features and the odd mention in one news article mentioning a new Scottish princess in the Disney pantheon. Yet it also brings up questions - where is John Carter of Mars? And while Brad Bird’s Pixar-produced live action 1906 isn’t mentioned, where the frak is Incredibles 2? Such a project has long been denied, but it’s widely asserted among fans that The Incredibles is far more worthy of a sequel than Cars. While Cars 2 is obviously timed to coincide with the opening of the new Carsland at California Adventure in 2011, and inspired by the huge marketing windfall that has followed the original film, one would hope that Pixar isn’t starting to pump out sequels just because of merchandising opportunities. Who cares? I just want Incredibles 2.

In any case, it’s a bold plan and shows the real confidence Disney now has in animation. This is a very ambitious slate, unmatched since the heyday of the 1990’s animation boom. Let’s hope they can just keep all those balls in the air this time around. The best news is that Disney and Pixar have a great mix of seasoned talent and new directors all working on a fairly unique series of concepts with the committed, hands-off support of management. Even the DisneyToons studio has abandoned the unwanted direct-to-video sequel market, with Cook promising more films on the way but only spinoffs or original concepts. It’s an exciting time, and I can’t wait to see what they have in store.

There’s been a great deal of news lately about various upcoming Disney and Pixar productions, what with this year’s release of WALL-E inching closer and the first hard news starting to leak out about Up and Toy Story 3. Rather than crank out a couple of posts a day with each small story - other sites are bound to have them up quicker anyway - they’re collected here en masse in case you’ve missed anything. I’ve also included a few stories concerning Ratatouille and its director Brad Bird, as they begin to reap the fruits of the end-of-year awards season.

Ratatouille

Aside from its Oscar nominations and other awards, Ratatouille has collected the Golden Tomato for best-reviewed wide release of the year from critic metasite Rotten Tomatoes. Director Brad Bird spoke to the website about the award and the film’s critical reception. Other honors the film has earned include an award from the Broadcast Film Critics Association for Best Animated Picture and nominations for awards from the Art Directors Guild for production design, the BAFTAs for Best Animated Film, the Producers Guild of America, and the American Cinema Editors for Best Editing (Darren Holmes).

In a series of interviews, Bird has spoken about his influences and demanded respect for animation writers, as well as describing the process behind the writing of Ratatouille’s screenplay.

Finally, as a neat little extra, Pixar artists have created a Little Golden Book featuring art from the short Your Friend, The Rat. The short, which premiered with the DVD release of Ratatouille, was directed by Pixar story man Jim Capobiano, who highlighted the creation of the film on his blog. The book features actual production art from the film and is available at Amazon.

WALL-E

Buzz for WALL-E continues to build as more information leaks out from the film. Musician Peter Gabriel has revealed on his website that he is writing music for the picture, while new images have been posted on /film and the Disney Reporter (shown here). I’ll speculate that the other robot in the stylized drawing is EVE, the futuristic robot with whom WALL-E falls in love. She can also be seen on the recently-revealed cover of The Art of WALL-E, shown below and available for pre-order at Amazon.

More merchandise is on the way; a few screenshots have been released for the tie-in videogame under development at THQ. The fan community has gotten in on the act, with a group dedicated to building their own real-world replicas of the titular robot. We’ve even seen the first WALL-E case mod.

Expect interest in the film to expand after its upcoming Super Bowl ad.

Up

Upcoming Pixar linked to the above image, as seen in the Disney animation exhibit at Disney’s Hollywood Studios. It’s the first piece of character art released from the film depicting the protagonist, who has been described as a senior citizen who “travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon.” Reports say that the story is loosely modeled on the tale of Don Quixote, perhaps indicating that the hero is more imaginative than actually daring. Personally, the above picture strongly reminds me of Spencer Tracy in his later roles, such as Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? or Inherit the Wind.

Toy Story 3

Possibly the biggest story to come from this update is that not only will Toy Story 3 be produced in 3-D for its 2010 release, but it will be preceded to theaters by 3-D re-releases of Toy Story and Toy Story 2. John Lasseter, Pixar co-head honcho and director of the first two films, will oversee their conversion to 3-D from the original data elements. Toy Story 3 is being directed by Lee Unkrich.

As the Variety article linked above points out, Disney is increasingly using 3-D technology to draw viewers to cinemas. What remains to be seen is whether this will prove a viable artistic tool or just another cyclical trend such as when 3-D surged in the 1950s and the late 1970s and early 1980s. Will the technology add anything besides gee-whiz factor to the new film, and especially the already existing films, or will it just be a gimmick? It’s estimated that the number of 3-D capable theaters nationwide will be in the thousands by the time of the film’s release; while I trust Pixar not to pull a Fozzie Bear (”cheap 3-D tricks?!”), it will be interesting to see how this plays out. The release schedule:

- Toy Story - October 2, 2009
- Toy Story 2 - February 12, 2010
- Toy Story 3 - June 18, 2010

Toy Story 3
2010 - dir. Lee Unkrich

John Lasseter confirmed to Rotten Tomatoes in November 2007 what everyone already knew - Pixar was going to make Toy Story 3. Ironically this is the project that broke the camel’s back when it came to Pixar’s relationship with former Disney head Michael Eisner. Eisner, trying to play hardball during Pixar’s contract renegotiations, maintained that Disney held the rights to all the characters from the Disney-Pixar co-productions and would make Toy Story 3 with our without Pixar. Eisner set up an entirely new internal animation studio, Circle 7, in Glendale to specifically make sequels to Pixar films starting with Toy Story 3.

All this changed with the Disney-Pixar merger in 2006 and the resulting management shakeup; Lasseter shut down Circle 7 and abandoned their work on TS3 (more on this story, and the plot of the abandoned sequel, can be found here). Pixar, who already had a concept of their own for the film, began development under director Lee Unkrich. Unkrich was on the original creative team for Toy Story and co-directed Toy Story 2; he also edited both films. The storyline for the new sequel is still unknown, but it’s targeted for a 2010 release. Based on a treatment by Andrew Stanton, the film will be scripted by writer Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine).

Cast: Tom Hanks (Woody), Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear)

Crew: Lee Unkrich - Director, Michael Arndt - Screenplay, Randy Newman - Score, Darla Anderson - Producer, John Lasseter - Exec. Producer