AWN reported on the celebrity studded showcase Walt Disney Studios held at the Kodak theater Wednesday. The announcements included information on all of their upcoming live action and animated films, with some changes made to scheduling. The big news was that Johnny Depp is far from over working for Disney. He is slated to act as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton’s “Alice in Wonderland”, become Tonto for a live action film based on “The Lone Ranger”, and reprise his role as Jack Sparrow in a fourth Pirates movie.
Scenes were shown from the sequel to Tron “TR2N”, “Prince of Persia”, and Pixar’s “Up”. The press also got a look at Robert Zemeckis’ new motion capture film “A Christmas Carol”. John lasseter presented “Bolt” and it was screened in 3-D for the audience. In Pixar news,
CARS 2 has been pushed up a year, and will open summer 2011. Cook also announced a series of animated shorts surrounding the CARS characters called “Cars Toons” They will premiere on the Disney Channel and in theaters up until the release of the new feature. The shorts previewed on Wednesday — “Mater’s Tall Tales” — focused on lovable tow truck Mater and his hero fantasies as a firefighter, surgeon and matador.
Disney’s ambitious slate consists of 16 3-D live action and animated films scheduled, with five to be released in 2009.
