Paper Beats Pixels For Pixar Info - So Much New News

I recently linked to an article on the Time website called Why Pixar is Better. Now, the industrious uberfans at JV Pixar News have found out from the similarly keen and sharp Upcoming Pixar that the print version of the piece contains a lot more information. Superb.

There is information on Wall-E, Toy Story 3 and Up. Here's a snippet of each.

On Wall-E: Those who remember the 1931 Charlie Chaplin film [City Lights], about a blind girl wooed by a tramp she mistakenly believes is a rich man, can transpose the story to a lonely planet and guess from there.

On Toy Story 3: "We got an idea we thought would be really great." Lee Unkrich will be THE director....he co-directed Toy Story 2 and Finding Nemo. He says, "We're just starting to write the story"....and confides, "I wake up evey morning hoping for a eureka moment.

On Up: Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson are preparing this 'coming-of-old-age story' about a seventysomething guy who lives in a house that "looks like your grand-parents' house smelled." He befriends a clueless young Wilderness Ranger and gets into lots of alter kocker altercations. Says Pixar: "Our hero travels the globe, fights beasts and villains and eats dinner at 3:30 in the afternoon."

Toy Story 3 Is Now Set For 2010 - So What Will Be Coming From Pixar In 2009?

Lee Unkrich has spoken to Entertainment Weekly about Toy Story 3 and let slip some fascinating details.

For example, the film isn't due for release until 2010, not 2009 as was previously reported. This means that another, different film from Pixar will come following W.A.L-E. Looking at all available evidence, this one is most likely to be Pete Docter's new film. It appears to have been in development for at least a couple of years now and is still completely and utterly secret - apart from the fact that, according to comments in an old Splinecast at least, the lead character is a human adult.

Michael Arndt has been working with Pixar on the Toy Story 3 script since before Little Miss Sunshine was sold at Sundance last year: those Pixar folk, they can smell talent half a world away, I tell you.

Chris Sanders Out At Disney, New Director - And Plot! - For American Dog

Jim Hill Media have a very intensive break down of the comings-and-goings at Disney over American Dog, their big release for next year. Many of the characters we've seen in test footage have now been axed, the lead character redesigned and the plot radically revamped. Curiously, the story (which you can read at Jim Hill Media) seems like a weird hybrid of Buzz Lightyear's arc in Toy Story and the direct-to-DVD 101 Dalmatians sequel Patch's London Adventure.

According to the report, John Lasseter was not a fan of Lilo and Stitch. I love the film, for the most part - it's the visual style and set-pieces, mainly - but it is obvious that the third act was severely lacking and depended on some dry, overlong dialogue scenes and a touch of deus ex machina to get the loose ends anything like tied up. That film's director Chris Sanders is an obvious talent however, and I think Disney might live to regret losing him.

American Dogs' new director is reported to be Chris Williams, a story artist on Mulan and The Emperor's New Groove. If he's had the nod from Lasseter, I'm sure he's a good guy but, for now, we can only cross our fingers and hope that he has the odd wit and idiosyncratic style of Sanders.

Who Is Writing Toy Story 3? And What Is Going To Happen To Chris Sanders An American Dog?

Reuters have the straight scoop from a Disney-Pixar press conference. Most exciting news? That Lee Unkrich is directing Toy Story 3 from a script by Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine. Unkrich is Pixar's master of montage and was a co-director on Toy Story 2.

Several clips and pre-production reels were shown from a number of films, including Ratatouille, Wall-E, Toy Story 3 and Chris Sanders' feared-dead An American Dog.

Ed Catmull confirmed that hand-drawn animation was indeed retruning to Disney, but that the 'main studio', Walt Disney Feature Animation, would also be making CG films quite seperately from Pixar's.

I'd open a bottle of champagne if I had one.

When Will Pixar Go Real D?

Hollywood Reporter are, er, Hollywood reporting that 200 more Real D equipped screens will be in place across the US by March, in time for Meet The Robinsons. Real D is an extremely impressive 3D system, employed in the last twelve months to bring both Chicken Little and Nightmare Before Christmas to extra-dimensional life. Disney have been solidly behind Real D, even calling it Disney 3D for the releases of their films - but the qurstion remains, when will Pixar movies start hitting the big screen with their third dimension intact?

Not as soon as I hoped, apparently. Ratatouille is set only for a 2D release, as is the 2008 Pixar film, W.A.L.L - E, Andrew Stanton's sci-fi follow up to Finding Nemo. Apparently, the first film that might be given a 3D theatrical run is the 2009 movie, which I hear is to be directed by Monsters Inc.'s Pete Docter and is, so far, being kept very secret indeed. And even that one might remain 2D if Lasseter and Docter aren't impressed by the 3D tests that they haven't even started yet.

So, to cut a long answer short: not yet. And not for some time.

[EDIT: And now I'm being told (by those anonymous guttersnipes that tell me things) that Toy Story 3 is a serious candidate for the Real D process. Toy Story 3D, anyone? No matter how many dimensions, they also suggest that there will be two Pixar films in 2009 - Pete Doctor's one, mentioned above, and John Lasseter's Toy Story 3, with the sequel first out of the gate, and making it Pixar's tenth feature length release. We'll see]