Saturday 12 September 2009

D23 Expo

For the last couple of days, and continuing this weekend, the Walt Disney Company has been holding its inaugural D23 Expo at the Anaheim Convention Centre, California, front of 4,500 adoring fans. Among the highlights: Johnny Depp turned up in his Jack Sparrow clobber to announce the fourth movie, Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Strangers Tides, was due in 2011.

Tim Burton was there, too, to show some new footage and talk about Alice In Wonderland, and to officially announce Frankenweenie. Introduced by Disney Studios' chairman Dick Cook as a filmmaker who got his start at Disney as an animator, Burton corrected him by saying, "I was an in-betweener." Later, Cook asked why he wanted to adapt Alice and was told that it was his dissatisfaction with all previous movie versions. "Sorry," said Burton, "I know Disney did one."


Meanwhile, Cook announced that Disney and Guillermo Del Toro have formed a production company called Double Dare You to create "animated films with a spooky edge", with its first project called The Troll Hunters. "I love to take audiences into fantastic worlds and provide them with some anxious moments in the process," said Del Toro in a recorded presentation. "It is part of the Disney canon to create thrilling, unforgettable moments and villains in all their classic films. It is my privilege for Double Dare You to continue in this tradition."

5 comments:

Gerard said...

My work office this week replaced our monitors with great big lovely new ones, and the first thing I did was rewatch the Alice trailer on my lunch break. I was pretty astonished by how much background detail I'd not noticed in the howevermany times I've watched it here on my laptop. Hadn't even realised The March Hare was in it! If I wasn't excited before...

Meanwhile, I'm loving the direction Disney seems to be taking on Lasseter's watch. Disney Double Dare You sounds bloody tremendous.

Mark Salisbury said...

I know exactly what you mean. Seeing the Alice trailer on the big screen at Movie-Con was akin to watching it for the first time. The detail was incredible. Plus it's cut fast, so your eye doesn't have time to drink in every corner of every frame. It's a visual feast...

Gerard said...

Did the trailer at Movie-Con have that shot towards the end where you hear Alice in voice over ("But, that's impossible...", followed by a close-up on The Hatter ("Only if you believe it is")? It's odd - on the direct link to a lower-res one I was sent by Disney for the blog, it's there. But it isn't in any other version I've watched, including the hi-def ones linked in the same correspondence. Curioser and curioser...

Mark Salisbury said...

Curious indeed.

Gerard said...

Yeah, cripes, way to spell, me. Teach me for leaving surreptitious blog comments while I'm at work...