Follow two elf brothers (Chris Pratt and Tom Holland) on a quest “really fast and strange errand” to discover if the suburban area they live in still contains any magic in director Dan Scanlon’s “Onward,” coming in March 2020 for Disney Pixar.
In addition to upcoming Marvel films for both Pratt (Guardians of the Galaxy 3, release tbd) and Holland (Spider-Man: Far From Home, July), Holland also lends his voice to now-Disney-owned Fox/Blue Sky animated feature “Spies in Disguise,” arriving in theaters this December.
Pratt recently appeared as multiple characters in February’s “The Lego Movie 2.”
- Courtney (harmonicacave)
Travel to the carnival of lost toys in this first full-length trailer for Toy Story 4.
- Courtney ( @harmonicacave )
Meet the filmmakers behind Disney-Pixar’s first Spark Short, “Purl,” streaming now on YouTube.
Director Kristen Lester and Gillian Libbert-Duncan created the first of Pixar’s new series of short films, ultimately destined for Disney’s upcoming subscription streaming service, Disney+ (Disney Plus).
According to Slash Film, a set of three shorts — “Purl” (below), “Smash and Grab” and “Kitbull” premiered at Disney’s El Capitan theater in Los Angeles in January in tandem with a one-week re-release of 1989 Disney classic “The Little Mermaid,” and are now released on Youtube on Mondays.
Pixar’s YouTube channel also offers a behind-the-scenes view with minute interviews with the creators of each short, released in two videos on the same day as the shorts.
“Smash and Grab” is the latest short, released on Feb. 11, 2019, a week following Purl. “Kitbull” arrives this Monday, Feb. 18 on the Disney-Pixar YouTube channel.
- Courtney ( harmonicacave )
Ducky (Keegan-Michael Key) and Bunny (Jordan Peele) are back — and still hating on Buzz Lightyear — in the latest “Toy Story 4″ trailer, which also gives us an animated preview of Bo Peep’s new look.
- Courtney ( @harmonicacave )
“You working on any movies right now?”
“Just one.”Monsters University director Dan Scanlon coyly teased an inquiring fan on Twitter this month before announcing at D23 that he’ll be helming one of Pixar’s next projects: an “untitled suburban fantasy.”
Variety.com reports that John Lasseter introduced the project and Scanlon at the Expo by saying, “We love taking audiences to new worlds they’ve never seen before.” An encouraging promise in light of the sequels currently slated for Pixar after original film Coco this year: Toy Story 4 and Incredibles 2, while exciting, won’t be taking anyone to completely new worlds.
The film will cover a very personal topic to Scanlon: a unknown father, lost at an early age. (I am making a note to bring tissues to this one — Pixar films can really make you cry).
Scanlon also explained that “this movie is a mixture of the fantastic and everyday.” The D23 website provides more insight:
The story is set in a world with no humans—only elves, trolls, and sprites—“anything that would be on the side of a van in the ’70s,” said the director. “In the film, we’re going to tell the story of two teenage elf brothers whose father died when they were too young to remember him. But thanks to the little magic still left in the world, the boys embark on a quest that will allow them a chance to spend one last magical day with their father.”
The release date, while not yet set, should be no sooner than 2020, with slots on March 13 or June 19 available for that year. June 18, 2021, has also been reserved by Pixar.
- Courtney ( @harmonicacave )
Pixar has announced the film title:
ONWARD
(via animationforce)
Disney-Pixar announces new film “Onward” from “Monsters University” director Dan Scanlon
Inspired by Scanlon’s “own relationship with his brother,” the film will star the voices of Chris Pratt, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Octavia Spencer and Tom Holland. Long-term Pixar producer Kori Rae will produce.
“Onward” follows two elf teens searching to discover if their “suburban fantasy world” still contains magic, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
The film releases in theaters on March 6, 2020.
- Courtney ( @harmonicacave )
Toy Story 4 First Teaser, With A New Character
The first teaser trailer for Toy Story 4 just dropped, and it truly is a teaser. There’s not much told about the film, other than the obvious reintroduction of all the main characters. However, there’s a new face here. The character looks like a craft made out of a spork, pipe cleaners and some googly eyes.
Toy Story 4 is set to come out June 21, 2019 in US theaters. It’s being directed by Josh Cooley, who previously directed the short, Riley’s First Date?, and has been a storyboard artist on Up, and Cars 2. Toy Story 4 will be Cooley’s directorial debut for feature films.
In case the first Toy Story 4 teaser trailer wasn’t enough — here’s another one, released shortly after! This time, featuring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele:
- Courtney (harmonicacave)
(via berserk-al)
Thank you for your great work, Ed Catmull. Enjoy your retirement next year!
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull announced this week that he is stepping down as president of Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios at the end of the year. He will stay on as an advisor during the transition to his retirement through July 2019, leaving presidents Jim Morris (Pixar) and Andrew Millstein (Walt Disney Animation) to continue in their leadership roles.
- Courtney (harmonicacave)
Disney-Pixar returns with an original short film, Bao, to air ahead of June’s The Incredibles 2.
Pixar finds its first female director of an animated short with Domee Shi, a storyboard artist who shapes her personal experience of her Chinese immigrant parents’ protective style of love to what Entertainment Weekly called a “culinary fable.”
The seven-minute animation follows a Chinese-Canadian woman “suffering from the depression of an empty nest, who gets a second shot at motherhood when one of her handmade dumplings comes alive,” according to the EW preview by Mark Snetiker. Shi said that she felt like she was being treated like “a precious little dumpling” at times growing up.
“I just wanted to create this magical, modern-day fairy tale, kind of like a Chinese Gingerbread Man story. The word ‘bao’ actually means two things in Chinese: Said one way, it means steamed bun. Said another, it means something precious. A treasure.”
Image shared by Entertainment Weekly on March 30, 2018.
“It felt like a really universally appealing story that a lot of people could identify with,” Shi told EW. “We got a ton of e-mails from people identifying with the mom character, or the dumpling character, saying, ‘Wait, that’s me,’ or ‘That’s my parents,’ or ‘I’m dealing with this right now.’”
A short preview of the short is airing now on the official Disney-Pixar Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/p/Bher-_9gna7/?taken-by=pixar
- Courtney ( @harmonicacave )
Oscar Nominations 2018
Despite fears that the new Oscar nomination process could make it difficult for smaller studios to be recognized in animation — or the still more reasonable concern that the Oscars hardly recognize animation anyway — five separate animation studios have been recognized in this year’s Best Animated Feature category:
- The Boss Baby — DreamWorks Animation (pictured above)
- The Breadwinner — Cartoon Saloon
- Coco — Disney-Pixar
- Ferdinand — Blue Sky Studios
- Loving Vincent — BreakThru Films/Trademark Films (pictured below)
Additional nominations for animation include the Best Animated Short Film category, which shines of more unique animation. Click the titles to watch trailers (or, for Dear Basketball, the full short):
- Dear Basketball (animated by Glen Keane; read more about it here!)
- Garden Party (a multi-award-winning student film by Florian Babikian, Vincent Bayoux, Victor Caire, Théophile Dufresne, Gabrie Grapperon and Lucas Navarro)
- Lou (Disney-Pixar’s short offering ahead of Cars 3 last summer)
- Negative Space (An Annecy festival darling directed/written by France’s own Max Porter & Ru Kuwahata)
- Revolting Rhymes (BBC One’s adaptation of Roald Dahl short stories, pictured below)
“Remember Me” from Coco also was nominated for best original song. Read the full list of Oscar nominations from The Hollywood Reporter.
- Courtney (harmonicacave)