The Walt Disney Studios previewed 10 new animated movies on
Monday that would be released by 2012, including further installments in “Cars”
and “Toy Story” series and two new fairy tales. It appears that except “Wall. E,”
a robot love story due to open on June 28, and “The Princess and the Frog,”
opening on Christmas 2009, the remaining eight movies will be made in digital
3-D, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The studio is known as a 3-D pioneer, with computer-animated
3-D fare including “Chicken Little” in 2005 and “Meet the Robinsons” in 2007. Besides
“Toy Story” and “Cars,” the animated release schedule includes six films from
Pixar Animation Studios, four from Walt Disney Animation Studios and a series
of direct-to-DVD movies featuring Disney Fairies from DisneyToon Studios.
“We're excited to be pushing the boundaries of 3-D and
computer technology to tell our stories in the best possible way,” chief
creative officer for Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios John Lasseter
said, quoted by Reuters.
“Bolt,” the story of a dog who thinks he has superhero
powers, is the first Disney digital 3-D movie for release, due to open on
November 26. John Travolta is voicing Bolt and Miley Cyrus voices Bolt’s owner,
Penny. The studio’s 2009 animated slate starts with “Up,” opening May 29, from
director Pete Docter and co-director Bob Peterson.
The 2010 slate contains Pixar’s “Toy Story 3” and Disney’s
“Rapunzel,” the classic Brothers Grimm fairy tale about a beautiful girl
trapped in a tower, whose hair is the only way for anyone to climb up to her
and save her. The voice cast for “Toy Story 3” includes Tom Hanks, Tim Allen,
Joan Cussack, Don Rickles, Wallace Shawn, Estelle Harris, John Ratzenberger and
Ned Beatty.
New original fairy tale “The Bear and the Bow” features a
royal family in rugged and mythic Scotland, and is slated to open
Christmas 2011 starring the voices of Reese Witherspoon, Billy Connolly and
Emma Thompson. Dysney’s 2001 schedule will also include “Newt,” which revolves
around the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet.
“King of the Elves” is due to open on Christmas 2012. The
film’s basis is a short story of Phillip K. Dick, about an ordinary man living
in the Mississippi Delta who becomes the king of a band of elves in order to
escape from an evil troll.
Summer 2012 will bring “Cars 2.” Brad Lewis, the producer of
“Ratatouille,” will direct the movie, in which the characters Lightning McQueen
and his best friend Mater bid to take on the world’s fastest cars.
