All about Bunnymund (voiced by Hugh Jackman) in "Rise of the Guardians."
Bunnymund is the Guardian who protects spring and ensures the cycle of life. Each year, his enchanted eggs dye themselves in magical pools of colored water and hide themselves. Celebrate this weekend with aDreamWorks Animation egg hunt! Explore our Facebook pages to find the enchanted eggs, and download the Rise of the Guardians app to discover more of Bunnymund’s world. http://bit.ly/ROTGApp
Disney Interactive and YouTube (part of the Google juggernaut) have announced a collaborative agreement to create co-branded, family-friendly video destinations, Varietyreports. The entertainment behemoths will utilize Disney produced content, plus family fare already available on YouTube.com, along with a blend of current Disney Interactive original series, select Disney Channel programming, and user-generated content.
“With online video consumption exploding and YouTube at the center of that trend, we see an opportunity for Disney Interactive and YouTube to bring Disney’s legacy of storytelling to a new generation of families and Disney enthusiasts on the platforms they prefer,” said Disney Interactive Media Group’s co-president James Pitaro. “As we prepare to re-launch Disney.com in fall 2012, the Disney/YouTube destination will play a critical part in our next generation platform.”
The first project set to launch through the partnership will be an original web video series based on Disney’s mobile game Where’s My Water?, due out in February.
Where’s My Water?
Just when you start to think the old rumors about hidden dirty jokes in Disney animated features have died down, they get passed on to a new generation. This was proven to me recently at an event I attended in which animation’s Renaissance man, Tom Sito, was speaking to a group of high school students. There probably isn’t a question relating to animation that Tom, a veteran animator, director, story artist, author, union leader and industry historian, cannot answer. But when the Q and A time came and the hands started to shoot up, one of the first questions raised was, What about those hidden dirty jokes in Disney movies?
Now, nobody can make the claim that such jokes don’t exist. One of the best goes all the way back to Pinocchio and involves Geppetto’s waking up in the morning. The gag moves too fast to be seen in real time, and cannot even be detected when run frame-by-frame. But when run in slo-mo—which was not possible in 1940, except through flipping animation drawings—it becomes clear that the wood cutter is coming down from a really great dream.
A similar gag allegedly existed in 1989’s The Little Mermaid, this time appearing to show the robed bishop who marries Ariel and Eric giving a whole new dimension to the term standing erect—allegedly, because it’s not a dirty gag at all, but rather a misunderstanding. And Tom Sito should know, since he animated the scene.
Tom related the story behind the scene to the kids in the abovementioned event, but I first heard it from him in 1996:
“In the original design, the bishop was this little, tiny man who had small little bandy legs, and who walked very slowly up to the podium. That scene got cut for time, so now you see him standing on a little soap box, and the protrusion you see is his knees. What happened is they put this very, very long robe in a straight line going down the side of his body, and the robe cuts off what would be visible of the legs and the feet, so all you see are his knees sticking out.”
It should be noted, however, that Disney had the misunderstanding digitized out for the film’s 2006 DVD release…just in case.
Another legend referenced by the questioner was the rumor that Aladdin speaks the line: “Good teenagers…take off your clothes.” Tom similarly dismissed the notion that this was a deliberate prank, saying:
“Some people say it’s definitely there, but I don’t hear that. Anyway, that sequence was done in Florida, and the guy who animated it, Mark Henn, he’s real straight-laced. I mean, anything stronger than ‘shoot’ and the guy bristles.”
So what are some people hearing? The line is in the background and somewhat muffled, but it occurs in a scene in which Aladdin is being menaced by a tiger. I propose that the line is actually, “Good tiger…take off and go,” though for some reason, the word tiger comes out sounding like teegers.
Tiger; teeger…who knows? Maybe only Tigger has the real story.
The long-awaited sequel to Pixar’s hit film Monsters, Inc. has a title: Monsters University.
Disney confirmed at CinemaCon in Las Vegas both the title and that the new film will be a prequel to the 2001 hit film, with actors Billy Crystal and John Goodman reprising their roles as the voices of Sully and Mike.
ComingSoon.net confirmed March 31 the Twitter rumors that Dan Scanlon (Mater and the Ghost Light) will be directingMonsters University, which is scheduled to arrive in theaters in 2D and stereoscopic 3D on Nov. 2, 2012.
Acclaimed director Henry Selick will direct a stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book for Disney, says Deadline.com. The Newbery Medal award-winning book is a ghostly take on Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book, about a young boy who is raised by ghosts in a graveyard.
Selick directed the Oscar-nominated stop-motion featureCoraline, which was also based on a Gaiman children’s book.Graveyard was original optioned by U.K. vfx studio Framestore with Neil Jordan attached to direct. Disney’s The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach were also directed by Selick. The talented director is also working on a project for Pixar, but little has been revealed about the feature. Selick is repped by The Gotham Group.
Fox has given the go-ahead to an animated series version ofAxe Cop, the comic-book franchise created by seven-year-old Malachai Nicolle and his older brother and chief illustrator Ethan, according to Vulture.com. The comic centers on a very earnest police officer who uses a firefighter’s axe as a weapon and, has a flute as a sidekick and a T-Rex as a pet.
The show is the first project officially put into development by Animation Domination HD (ADHD!) Fox’s alternative animation production unit headed by Adult Swim alum Nick Weidenfeld. Fox has ordered six 15-minute episodes of the show and plans to debut it in early 2013 as part of its late-night Saturday animation block. The network expects to air about an hour of first-run animation programming, including a number of recurring series and animated shorts. Fox will fill up the rest of the 90-minute block, which will air against Saturday Night Live on NBC with some acquired titles.
Weidenfeld told Vulture that he has been a fan of Axe Cop since his days at Adult Swim. He is now looking for a showrunner who “has a good idea of how to adapt it, without ruining what’s great about a story whose origins hail from the mind of a 5-year-old.” Incidentally, we hear that Lost creator Damon Lindelof is a fan of the comic too!
Attendees at yesterday’s CinemaCon event in Las Vegas learned all about Pixar’s upcoming animated slate and found out details about the sequel to Disney’s Muppets movie. Here is the Pixar slate:
The Good Dinosaur. Directed by Bob Peterson with co-director Peter Sohn and producer John Walker. This comedy takes a look at what happens “if the cataclysmic asteroid that forever changed life on Earth actually missed the planet completely and giant dinosaurs never became extinct?” It will be released in the U.S. on May 30, 2014.
Untitled Pixar Movie That Takes You Inside The Mind. Pixar takes audiences on incredible journeys into extraordinary worlds: from the darkest depths of the ocean to the top of the tepui mountains in South America; from the fictional metropolis of Monstropolis to a futuristic fantasy of outer space. From director Pete Docter (Up, Monsters, Inc.) and producer Jonas Rivera (Up), the inventive new film will take you to a place that everyone knows, but no one has ever seen: the world inside the human mind.” The film’s release date is June 19, 2015.
Untitled Pixar Movie About Dia De Los Muertos. From director Lee Unkrich and producer Darla K. Anderson, the filmmaking team behind the Academy Award-winning Toy Story 3, comes a wholly original Pixar Animation Studios film that delves into the vibrant holiday of Día de los Muertos. No release date yet.
Disney also announced that director James Bobin will return to direct the sequel to the 2011 hit Muppets movie, based on a script by Bobin and Nicholas Stoller. No release date has been announced.
During its New York City upfront presentation, Cartoon Network announced today several new and returning series to its programming line-up including the world premiere ofDreamWorks Dragons: The Series, Annoying Orange, Ben 10: Omniverse and Beware the Batman. Held at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, the presentation included live performances of classic Cartoon Network television theme songs and the creative talent behind the hit animated comedy series Adventure Time and Regular Show.
Announcements included a new sketch comedy show from entertainer Nick Cannon; the world premiere of DreamWorks Dragons: The Series, based on the critically-acclaimed feature film, How to Train Your Dragon; an original series based on Web sensation,Annoying Orange; a brand new animated series from the global franchise powerhouse, Ben 10: Omniverse; and a new CG-animated series from Warner Bros. Animation, Beware The Batman. Also, on the heels of the hugely successful Ninjago launch in 2011—which is currently the #1 show across 1st Quarter 2012 with all boys—a new partnership with LEGO for a second series was announced.
“We are executing a brand vision and content strategy that is fueling tremendous results for Cartoon Network,” said Stuart Snyder, president and chief operating officer, Turner Broadcasting’s Animation, Young Adults and Kids Media (AYAKM). “Today, with a re-invented and thriving prime time, along with overall double-digit growth in total day, we are building the kind of momentum that is making this a great 20th anniversary.”
CN also announced new upcoming seasons of its original hit animated comedy seriesAdventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, MAD and The Looney Tunes Show. A second season pick-up for the live-action comedy series Level Up, which debuted as the most watched live-action series in the network’s history, and a fith season ofStar Wars: The Clone Wars, also was announced.
Combined with top-performing acquisitions and specials, these programming anchors fueled 2011’s prime time performance as Cartoon Network’s most-watched in five years and set the stage for a record breaking first quarter in 2012. New seasons for more than a dozen additional series also will premiere across the 2012-13 programming timeframe.
Cartoon Network also announced its ongoing commitment to its shorts program with ten original 7-minute shorts to be produced this year with a wholly dedicated production unit at Cartoon Network Studios. With production already underway on many of these projects, this continuing investment in diverse and unique talent has resulted in many of the network’s hit animated series.
NEW SERIES
Annoying Orange: Boasting more than 1 billion YouTube online views to date, Annoying Orange is the Web sensation transformed into a new television series that follows Orange and his buddies as they go on a wide range of adventures that take them from the fruit stand to parts unknown and everything in between. The television series was developed and will be produced by The Collective. Dane Boedigheimer co-created the television series with Tom Sheppard (Emmy Award-winning writer for Pinky and the Brain). Conrad Vernon (director of Madagascar 3 and Monsters vs. Aliens) will serve as executive producer for the series along with Gary Binkow and Dan Weinstein of The Collective. The series will premiere on Cartoon Network this summer.
DreamWorks Dragons: The Series: Picking up where the critically-acclaimed feature film,How to Train Your Dragon, left off, this weekly animated series follows the continuing adventures of Hiccup and his dragon Toothless on the island of Berk, along with the band of dragon trainers, all of whom now have dragons of their own!
Through their training, the kids are finding out the cool things dragons can do. Not only will they learn more about their dragons, they’ll also discover new ones and battle against enemies as they explore worlds they never dreamed existed. In addition, the talented cast from the feature film—Jay Baruchel (Hiccup), America Ferrera (Astrid), Christopher Mitz-Plasse (Fishlegs) and T.J. Miller (Tuffnut)—will lend their voices to the series, which is produced by DreamWorks Animation and premieres this fall.
Ben 10: Omniverse: In the brand-new animated series, Ben 10: Omniverse, Ben will have a new character design that pays homage to his past, and he’ll have a whole new batch of aliens to battle. Beating the bad guys is just part of the superhero gig. With a little help from his new, by-the-book rookie partner, Ben explores the quirkier side of things in the alien underground and discovers enemies from his past looking for a re-match, all while a mysterious hunter is hot on his trail! With 10 new aliens at his disposal and a brand new lease on life, Ben 10 is back and more fun than ever! Matt Youngberg is supervising producer for the series, which will premiere on Cartoon Network this fall.
Beware the Batman: A cool, new take on the classic Dark Knight franchise, Beware the Batman incorporates Batman’s core characters with a rogues gallery of new villains not previously seen in animated form. Along with backup from ex-secret agent Alfred and lethal swordstress Katana, the Dark Knight faces the twisted machinations of Gotham City’s criminal underworld led by the likes of Anarky, Professor Pyg, Mister Toad and Magpie. Produced by Warner Bros. Animation, this action-packed detective thriller deftly redefines what we have come to know as a “Batman show.” Featuring cutting-edge CGI visuals to match the intricate twists and turns of the narrative, Batman steps out of the shadows and into the spotlight for an entirely new generation of fans. With WBA’s Sam Register executive producing, and Batman Beyond’s Glen Murakami and Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated’s Mitch Watson producing, Beware the Batman, based on characters from DC Comics, is coming soon to Cartoon Network!
Total Drama: Revenge of the Island: It’s back to the island where Total Drama began with an all-new cast! Since the series’ host Chris took the show worldwide, Camp Wawanakwa has been abandoned and turned into a toxic nuclear waste dump—the perfect place for new and painful, cringe-inducing challenges! Fighting for the million dollar prize are thirteen wild new players. Total Drama: Revenge of the Island is produced by Fresh TV and will premiere on Cartoon Network this summer.
Returning series to the CN lineup include Adventure Time, Regular Show, MAD, The Amazing World of Gumball, The Looney Tunes Show, Ninjago, Level Up, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, Young Justice, Johnny Test, Pokémon, Green Lantern: The Animated Series, Almost Naked Animals, Casper’s Scare School, Hero 108, Scaredy Squirrel and Sidekick.
Online teen and young adult comedy content destination SMOSH will launch a new animation YouTube channel calledShut Up! Cartoons on April 30. The toon channel is led by former Disney TV Animation head Barry Blumberg and SMOSH co-founders Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox.
“We are very excited with our initial batch of programming for Shut Up! Cartoons and are grateful to our partners at YouTube for offering us the opportunity to participate in their unprecedented original programming initiative,” says SMOSH president and Alloy Digital exec VP Barry Blumberg. “This ambitious undertaking provides these brilliant creative minds with a tremendous platform to showcase their talent and passion projects.”
Shut Up! Cartoons has enlisted the talents of many top animation professionals and artists including Peter Hannan (creator of Nickelodeon’s CatDog series), Cory Edwards (director ofHoodwinked!, Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil), Peter Hastings (Pinky and the Brain) and Prudence Fenton (Pee-wee’s Playhouse, Liquid Television)
The animation channel twill initially deliver 18 short-form web series comprising 180 episodes in the first year. Three series will premiere the week of April 30, 2012, leading withDo’s and Don’ts: A Children’s Guide to Social Survival debuting on Monday April 30,Pubertina on Wednesday May 2 and Zombies Vs. Ninjas on Friday, May 4. All three series will debut at 12:00pm Pacific Time.
Padilla and Hecox will work closely with the creative team while also delivering their own project, Teleporting Fat Guy, in which the time-traveling hero of many SMOSH sketches lands his own animated series.
“We’ve set out to establish a welcoming environment to entice a diverse and extremely talented group of individuals to the channel, covering the entire spectrum from accomplished filmmakers to college students – we even got a pitch from a 10-year-old kid,” notes Blumberg. “We have given our creators the creative freedom to be as off the wall as they want within content guidelines. In fact, we take the Shut Up! from our name as marching orders for how we work with talent. We just try to ‘shut up’, let them do what they do best, and deliver what could be the next huge breakthrough multi-platform hit.”
Shut Up! Cartoons will benefit from ongoing cross-promotion through other Alloy properties, including SMOSH’s two YouTube Channels, with established audiences of more than six million subscribers from the coveted 12-24 year old demographic, and www.smosh.com, which draws more than 13 million monthly visitors. Shut Up! Cartoons will additionally work closely with Alloy’s in-house production division, Generate Studios. Alloy Digital acquired SMOSH in July 2011.
Scheduled initial programming will include:
For more info, visit www.youtube.com/ShutUpCartoons.
“It was a very difficult decision. Very. But his team lost faith in him. The town, as you know, never wanted him to succeed. And it was just the wrong fit,” a Disney insider tells me explaining Walt Disney President/CEO Bob Iger’s decisionannounced today to fire Disney Studios Chairman Rich Ross. After 2 1/2 years in the job, Ross’ own slate of movies had not even bowed: Peter Hedge’s The Odd Life Of Timothy Green (August 15th), Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie (October 5th), Sam Raimi’s Oz The Great And Powerful (March 8th, 2013), Gore Verbinski’sThe Lone Ranger starring Johnny Depp under the Jerry Bruckheimer banner (May 31st, 2013), Maleficent (March 14th, 2014) starring Angelina Jolie. The rest of Disney’s release slate are Pixar/Walt Disney Animation, Marvel, and DreamWorks pics. Disney strenuously denies there are any problems with Ross’ upcoming films. Instead, insiders strenuously complain about Ross’ personality:
“He had an ‘awareness’ issue,” a Disney source explains to me. “Sometimes people, when they’re put in a different place, they manage it well. And sometimes they don’t. It has nothing to do with the slate of his upcoming films. They’re fine. It’s just about leadership and management. Rich didn’t make the transition. He got caught up in the trappings of the job rather than the specifics. What it became about was we saw him making stupid mistakes. Focusing on things that were not important like parties and celebrities. People that were doing business with us in the film business not only internally but externally were complaining that they were having a hard time doing business with him.”
Rare indeed is the movie mogul who isn’t arrogant. But as much as Ross’ style and substance were the problems, and of his own making, so was his situation. Because the Walt Disney Studios has become unmanageable. Among Ross’ most vocal detractors were Disney’s mega-shareholder Marvel Entertainment CEO Ike Perlmutter, Pixar/Walt Disney Animation Studios chief creative officer and mega-exec John Lasseter, mega-producer Jerry Bruckheimer, and DreamWorks mega-filmmakers Steven Spielberg and Stacey Snider. The fact is that these powerful personalities — oh, hell, let’s call them what they are: major-league pricks — have come together in one place making so many demands on the parent studio that it’s hard for anyone who finds himself nominally in charge able to keep them all satisfied. Interestingly, Ross’ predecessor, the famously people-pleasing Dick Cook, did for a time and maybe could have continued well into the future. But Iger fired him, too.
Ross arrived at a watershed time for the studio: shortly after Iger entered into the 2009 deal with Marvel. The comic book, TV, and film entertainment company’s Israeli owner Ike Perlmutter is not just a notoriously tough custumer but a budget-obsessed megalomaniac besides a recluse. He has taken control of Disney’s consumer products division already (firing here, fixing there), and my sources tell me he is making Iger’s life miserable with back-seat managing of everything, especially Walt Disney Studios. (“Iger has real problems with Ike. That’s the real story,” one of my insiders tells me. ”Bob thought he could handle him. But Ike is uncharmable.”) Lasseter had the full force of then mega-stockholder Steve Jobs behind him, and singlehandedly caused the film studio to back the loser live action picture John Carter. DreamWorks, of course, drove two Universal and Paramount crazy with their constant complaining before it started to give Disney the same mistreatment beginning in 2009 and continuing through War Horse. Meanwhile, Jerry Bruckheimer’s films were falling out of favor at the box office. Now Bruckheimer is pissed that, after all the hits he’s delivered in the past, under The Lone Ranger‘s ‘favored nation’ deal negotiated with the studio to deflate a bloated budget, he (+ Depp + Verbinski) get paid big bucks only when Disney recoups.
And then there is Iger himself, infamous for firing top executives just when they’re about to turn their divisions around. Back in 2004, he inexplicably axed ABC Entertainment Television Group Chairman Lloyd Braun and ABC Entertainment Television President Susan Lyne only to be embarrassed soon after when the duo’s programming made ABC into the #1 network. It’s well-documented that Iger hated their Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy andLost. But he also succombed to complaints about Braun’s personality (and Lyne just found herself collateral damage). Same thing happened after Iger inexplicably fired Dick Cook. The then Walt Disney Studios Chairman wouldn’t be around to see Disney reap the rich worldwide rewards of films Alice In Wonderland, Toy Story 3, and Pirates Of The Caribbean 4. And that was a case where Cook had the right personality for the job – except for the fact he obeyed his filmmaker’s demands over Iger’s.
History has shown Hollywood’s parent companies often wait a beat or two before firing its movie moguls for being boobs. Sony axed the self-promoting and self-immolating Mark Canton just before he gave the studio a history-making box office gross. Universal at least waited until the much-dissed Marc Shmuger released a string of film disasters before showing him the door. And Viacom didn’t react prematurely when TV-turned-movie guy Brad Grey was the target of slings and arrows for his preening personality during his first years as chief of Paramount. By 2011, Paramount led all studios in market share (but not profits).
In fact, as recently as yesterday, a rumor swept the Disney lot that Marvel Studios President Kevin Feige would be replacing Ross on the eve of the May 4th release of that Disney-owned studio’s hotly anticipated and surefire blockbusterThe Avengers. (“He’s a creative. I don’t know that Kevin wants a desk job,” an insider tells me today.) But already under the studios’ umbrella are other possible Ross replacements: Snider, Lasseter, Participant Media’s Ricky Strauss recently named Walt Disney Studios’ worldwide marketing chief, and yes even Bruckheimer who cut his teeth as a Paramount exec. Names of outsiders like Mary Parent are in the mix as well. In the meantime, the studio will be topped by Ross’ production head Sean Bailey and president Alan Bergman who are also in the running. With Disney’s earnings report coming May 8th, Iger must surely announce Ross’ replacement before meeting with Wall Street analysts. And Iger firing Ross shows investors that he’s blaming someone — however fairly or unfairly (see story to come)– for Disney’s recently announced $200M writedown of the John Carter.Even though the film wasn’t greenlit by Ross (it was greenlit by predecessor Dick Cook and championed by John Lasseter), it was still overseen by him and mismarketed by his studio — and became one of the most public and expensive film failures in Hollywood history. As a Marvel insider tells me, “We all expected Rich to not make it. But no one expected it to be this quick.”
When Iger was fitting Ross with the studios’ glass slipper, the Disney chief loved this guy who managed the global kiddie’ TV business — a total of 94 kid-driven, family-inclusive entertainment channels and feeds available in 163 countries and 32 languages. Camp Bob hailed the hiring as a ‘creative’ choice back then. But Disney’s culture is so cult-like and cut-throat that even when the Mouse House promotes from within it distrusts insiders as well as outsiders. Immediately Ross was labeled an “incredible political maneuverer and quite a back-stabber” who’s “into retribution”.
True, even his detractors found it hard to deny that Ross had made major moolah for the company and needed to be promoted before somebody finally stole him. (And many tried. Which is why Viacom should put Ross in charge of its flagging Nickelodeon where he worked once upon a time.) Ross’ specialty was branding and synergizing and coordinating different parts of the Disney machine. He also placed #5 on Fast Company‘s 2009 list of the “100 Most Creative People In Business”. Iger even promoted Ross to Marvel’s Perlmutter as the exec knowledgeable about tween boys because of Disney XD. But film vets scoffed, “he’s a TV guy”.
With Iger’s blessing, Ross was in charge of pretty much firing everybody and then replacing them. His choice of Sean Bailey as his No. 2 was out of the box yet quietly popular. But his hiring of MT Carney decidedly not. After more than a year and half in the job, and speculation since her arrival that she was going to be canned, MT Carney was officially ousted in January as President of Worldwide Marketing. She had been handplucked by Ross despite her having no movie biz experience. (Instead she had experience promoting packaged goods.) Like with Ross, the knives were out for her from Day One by Hollywood’s tight-knit film marketing community which didn’t want outsiders to succeed on its turf. But Ross did himself in by choosing her. He also found disfavor by seeming to publicly take credit for Cook’s movies. (he said he was only marketing them to the hilt.) Ross then demonstrated a frustrating slowness to make his own mark on studio filmmaking by taking way too long to start greenlighting. Now that he’s ousted, his legacy consists of only Prom. Will his other movies become blockbusters or bombs?
