What comes after Cars? That was one of the questions investors wanted to know when Disney bought Pixar. This story in Time Magazine claims to have the answer.
Pixar may follow its summer vehicle Cars with Ratatouille, a tale about a rat who lives in a fancy French restaurant. Little is known of future projects, but Incredibles auteur Brad Bird has long wanted to direct a noir-style film, possibly based on Will Eisner‘s comic The Spirit.
Meanwhile, creative kingpin John Lasseter, who has a deep affinity for
traditional 2-D cel animation, is expected to revive that form in some
way. He may even jump-start the long-dormant world-music spin-off of Fantasia, titled Musicana.
I really like the idea of that.
The article also looks at some upcoming Disney animation including something that sounds like it could be really cute and funny — Gnomeo & Juliet, a musical remake of Shakespeare’s tragedy featuring garden gnomes (think West Side Story but with gangs of gnomes from indoors versus outside). Anyway the people in Norway should be happy.
(thanks to Luxo)
[ disney, pixar, animation, john+lasseter, cars, ratatouille, brad+bird, will+eisner, the+spirit, fantasia, film, movie, musical, gnome ]
John;
Get a rake, and some thick work gloves, and just clean out all of these crap, dead & stalled projects like Gnomeo and Juliet (shudder), Musicana (I can see the forced smiles at opening night’s after party now), Frankenstein (please- no more remakes, sequels and such).
Clean them out, start up a new division within DFA, and actively solicit new ideas from interested parties. The phalanx of desperate creeps we all wade through at Disney Features and Disney TV are seemingly there to protect their jobs and protect Disney from anything like a new idea. Sad, but true. That’s got to change. For years, Disney’s been chasing their own tail, and it bit them in the ass. Please reboot the whole system and abandon the slow, unappealing projects clogging the pipes.
Speaking of Ratatouille, there was some poster art at Siggraph and it didn’t look like a slam dunk to me. I know some people have predicted an eventual bomb for Pixar, and Ratatouille might be it.
Also at Siggraph was some clips of CGA “American Dog” which Chris Sanders (Lilo and Stitch) is directing. Now that looked like something Pixar would put out, a potential blockbuster with heart. Unfortunately, it won’t be out until 2008.
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