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!
