Disney's Convention Rundown

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Disney's answer to ComiCon is currently taking place in Anaheim, California, in a four-day event known as D23, named after their ($75 a year) fan club and the year Ol' Walt moved to Hollywood - 1923.

So far in the conference there have been some pretty huge announcements, so let's run through them:

Disney puppet current teen icon Miley Cyrus is to star in next year's The Last Song, in a role conference speaker Dick Cook said was written specially for her. Expect it to involve miming singing to annoying pop records and flogging yet more purple merchandise for her already wealthy masters.

The Travolta family made their first public appearance since the death of son Jett in January to promote November's Old Dogs, a film that sees two middle-aged business parter's lives turned all sorts of crazy when they end up having to take care of two seven year old twins. "I always appreciate the audience's love for me," says John Travolta, clearly hoping we've all forgotten Battlefield Earth. The movie is his daughter Ella Blue's film debut.



The next Muppet movie is just around the corner, in what Cook jokingly said will be called, 'The Cheapest Muppet Movie Ever Made.' Let's just hope they don't have wrong-sounding muppets for once, eh?



Tim Burton showed off some 3D Alice in Wonderland footage, stating, "I've always loved the imagery" of the classic novel and described the film in 3D as "trippy and great." Not that you'd expect anything else from Burton. He also announced that his next project is a feature-length version of his short film Frankenweenie. Being the nice types that we are, we have the full short right here:





Nicolas Cage promoted his forthcoming live-action movie The Sorcerer's Apprentice, an adaptation of the classic Fantasia short starring Mickey Mouse. Cage called Fantasia "the most beautiful movie ever made."



The Hobbit director Guillermo del Toro is teaming with Disney to create Disney Double Dare You, a production team that will exclusively make scary animations. The first in production is Trollhunters, from a story written and produced by del Toro.

Robert Zemeckis showed off footage for his latest motion-capture fest A Christmas Carol which, terrifyingly, features Jim Carrey in seven or eight different roles. He then announced that his next project is a motion-capture remake of Yellow Submarine, the 1968 Beatles animation, that Zemeckis will write and direct.



Finally, and most excitingly, Johnny Depp appeared in full Jack Sparrow get-up to announce that Pirates of the Carribean: On Stranger Tides will be released in 2011. Depp will also star as Tonto in the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced The Lone Ranger, that begins production soon.

D23 ends today (Sunday) with a conference from Pixar head honcho John Lasseter. Expect plenty of beautifully animated goodness coming soon.

No mention of anything to do with the Marvel buyout. Presumably Disney just wanted to buy it away from WB. Maybe they'll tell us more when they're finished bathing in money - the conference cost $37 for the day and $111 for all four days.

Sources: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/hr/content_display/film/news/e3idc1bbdb02d3e920606be6d8aa730019d, http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118008494.html?categoryid=13&cs=1

[dnwilliams]

frankenweenie was really good! hopefully it's a return to form for burton. edward scissorhands form.

[Sheridan Passell]

My ex-girlfriend used to call me Frankenweenie, I never could work out why.

[dnwilliams]

[dnwilliams]

on a serious note, they really should rethink the title, if only because they're bashing you over the head with the frankenstein parallel. we get it already. call it sparky the undead dog or something.