New Frankenweenie image

A new image from Tim Burton's upcoming animated horror comedy Frankenweenie has just been revealed at Yahoo! Movies. In other news, a first trailer for the film is expected to go online tomorrow, and be shown on the big screen this Friday with 3-D prints of The Lorax. The Walt Disney Pictures release comes to theaters this October.

NEW IMAGE from "Frankenweenie"

Get Ready! Disneyland and Walt Disney World to stay open 24 hours for Leap Day!

Disneyland is celebrating Leap Day on Wednesday with a 24-hour opening of the Anaheim theme park -- 6 a.m. Feb. 29 through 6 a.m. March 1. 

Called "One More Disney Day," Disney says it is the first time both Disneyland in California and the Magic Kingdom park in Florida will be open 24 hours straight. Disney's website, however, warned there could be limitations based on capacity restrictions.

Disney began its marketing push for its 24-hour marathon on New Year's Eve, when it announced the Leap Day special on ABC's New Year's Eve show.

Disney has already manufactured hooded sweatshirts and T-shirts that say, "I took the leap and didn't sleep. I pulled an all-nighter at Disneyland." Depicted is a silhouette of a jubilant Mickey Mouse waving his hand in front of a crescent moon.

The forecast for Anaheim is chilly. The low on Wednesday morning is expected to be 42 degrees, and the after high should hit 61 under mostly sunny skies. By Wednesday night, there is a 20% chance of showers, and the low could fall to 47 degrees, the National Weather Service said.

(In contrast, at Orlando's  Magic Kingdom, the low Wednesday morning is expected to be 62, with the high at 85.)

On Thursday, after closing at 6 a.m., Disneyland will reopen at 10 a.m., according to its calendar.

"Man or Muppet" Wins at the Osacrs!

 On Sunday night "Man or Muppet" from Disney's The Muppets won the Academy Award for Best Original Song! Watch below...

And Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy were on hand to introduce the Cirque du Soleil performance and its very funny as always!

Disney threw the years at the Academy Awards!

The Academy Awards are tonight (7pm EST.) on ABC, and in honor of this here are some past "Disney Stars" who presented awards! Also did you know that Walt Disney has won more Academy Awards (26) than anyone else in the history of motions pictures? He also holds the record for most nominations (59) as well! 

enJoy!l

The Muppets Are Oscars Bound! & Disney Classics Weekend Event on ABC Family!

Sunday’s Oscars will mark the Muppets’ fifth appearance at the Academy Awards. Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, stars of 2011′s The Muppets, which is the third Muppet movie to receive an Oscar nomination for Best Original Song, will be at the ceremony to introduce a surprise. “Something very special,” Kermit told EW yesterday. 

Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy talk about their new roles while director Jason Bobin celebrates 'The Muppets' Best Song Oscar nod and Miss Piggy's inimitable sense of style. 

And - 

Don't forget that ABC Family will be presenting there Disney Classics Weekend Event, Saturday (today) starting at 6:30 EST.

Disney World to close Snow White attraction!

ORANDO, Fla. -- Walt Disney World officials say Snow White's Scary Adventures at the Magic Kingdom will close for good on May 31, 2012.

Officials announced Thursday that the attraction, which has been at the park since its 1971 opening, will be replaced by the previously announced Princess Fairytale Hall, where guests will be able to meet Disney Princesses.

The Orlando Sentinel ( http://thesent.nl/yCXRhy) reports that the closing comes as a result of the park's expansion of Fantasyland. Disney says the first segment of the Fantasyland expansion - a portion of Storybook Circus - will open to guests in late March. The new attractions will include one carousel of Dumbo the Flying Elephant, a re-themed Barnstormer rollercoaster starring the Great Goofini and the Fantasyland Station of the Walt Disney World Railroad.

Disney's New Brave trailer now online!

A brand new trailer for Pixar's upcoming animated adventure Brave is now online and can be watched here!


Directed by Mark Andrews and Brenda Chapman, and featuring the voices of Kelly MacDonald, Emma Thompson, Billy Connolly, Julie Walters, Kevin McKidd, Craig Ferguson, and Robbie Coltrane, Brave hits theaters June 22nd, 2012.

More ‘The Avengers’ images released by Disney! & Arrietty Biggest Profit for a US Release of a Studio Ghibli Film!

The Avengers are assembling!

Disney released two more stills from its superhero superteam movie Tuesday night, amping up fans who are eagerly awaiting the answers to the age-old question, who would win in a fight between The Incredible Hulk and The Mighty Thor.

The first image shows Captain America (Chris Evans) in full updated costume and shield, flanked by Avengers teammates Hawkeye (Jeremy Renner) and Black Widow (Scarlett Joahnsson), the three heroes walking as if they mean business. The second still is slightly less dramatic, simply showing Thor (Chris Hemsworth) gripping a conference room chair, pondering heavy thoughts next to S.H.I.E.L.D. Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg).

"When you walk out of your trailer and you bump into Chris Hemsworth with the cape on and you see Downey in the Iron Man suit and that’s when you really get excited and you start geeking out a bit,” Evans told The News last year from the film's New Mexico set.

Fans are already starting to geek out, more than two months before the film's May 4 release date.

The Marvel Studios movie, which is directed by fanboy favorite Joss Whedon, unites three franchises (Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and The Hulk) within an even bigger franchise that’s expected to be one of the biggest box office hits of all time.

And - 

The Secret World of Arrietty has wowed both the US and Japan by finishing 8th in the President’s Day weekend box office. The Studio Ghibli film earned $8.1 million within four days, which is a much, much bigger profit for than the 2002 release of Spirited Away (it had a smaller theater release and anime was still in its early stages of popularity). 

Hayao Miyazaki and his team thanked Disney for releasing the dubbed version of the film on the Studio Ghibli website.

Disney and Tim burton's Frankenweenie Poster Revealed!

Here’s the first look at the poster for Tim Burton’s return to Frankenweenie, a 3D adaptation of his short film from 1984.

It’s a little discouraging, though completely understandable, that Disney would use Alice In Wonderland to represent Tim Burton’s work and yet there’s a distinctiveness even to this brief look at the Frankenweenie world that is Tim Burton through and through.

The animated poster for the film was thrown up on the film’s Facebook page, so click here to have a look at its delights - and it is delightful.

Here’s the poster for Tim Burton’s Frankenweenie...

Is Disney's $250 Million 'John Carter' the Next 'Ishtar'? (and Happy Presidents' Day!)

Around Hollywood, Disney’s quarter-billion-dollar 3-D epic John Carter holds a dubious renown: it’s the film with Avatar-size ambitions that’s being greeted sight-unseen as the next Ishtar.

The sci-fi thriller lands in theaters March 9, and if you’ve seen the billboards or commercials, you’d be forgiven for wondering what it’s all about. A hunk in a leather chest harness (Taylor Kitsch of NBC’s canceled sports drama Friday Night Lights) battles aliens in a coliseum, faces down a stampede of four-armed beasties, and seduces a princess who resembles a va-va-voom version of Jasmine from Disney’s Aladdin. Is this Gladiator meets Clash of the Titans meets Star Wars?

Early box-office tracking estimates for the film are extremely weak. “The geek generation isn’t responding. It’s too weird for the family audience. Then it has the Disney brand and PG-13? I’m not sure who it’s for,” says a rival studio executive who requested anonymity for fear of burning bridges in Hollywood.

Already heads have started to roll right out of the Team Disney building and onto Dopey Drive in Burbank. In January Disney Studios worldwide marketing chief MT Carney, who arrived with much fanfare in 2010 from the New York product-marketing world, was out (she said at the time she was returning to New York to be with her kids). Meanwhile, at studio commissaries around town, the long steak knives are already out for Disney Studios chairman Rich Ross. Neither Carney nor Ross was available to comment.

Fortunately for Ross, John Carter is a problem he inherited from his predecessor, and that has provided him some insulation from the slings of detractors—even though the film needs to make $400 million just to break even. Based on novels by Tarzan creator Edgar Rice Burroughs, the project had been kicking around Hollywood since the 1980s with various directors and stars attached, including Tom Cruise. In 2007 Disney’s then studio head, Dick Cook, gave the project the green light, with Pixar’s Andrew Stanton writing and directing.

While Stanton’s animated films Wall-E and Finding Nemo grossed nearly $1.4 billion combined, the choice to hire him for the live-action John Carter stunned many in Hollywood. “To make something on this big a budget with no stars? Unless you’re Peter Jackson or Jim Cameron, it’s unheard of,” said an executive at yet another studio. “We have an incredible storyteller in Andrew Stanton, and with the bulk of our media campaign left to go, we’re putting all of our resources into making sure this movie is a success and embraced by our global audience,” a Disney spokesperson said.

Ross has managed to deliver at the box office on several movies put into production before he took the helm, including Toy Story 3 and the $1 billion blockbuster Alice in Wonderland, and the newest Muppet film hit, Disney's The Muppets. But the studio has also racked up a number of expensive flops and critical misses since 2009, including the animated fiasco Mars Needs Moms (budget: $150 million; box office: $39 million) and the first film that Ross greenlighted as the studio’s chairman, Prom. Ross’s tastemaking won’t really be put to the test until 2013, when the first so-called tent-pole movies he gave the go-ahead to—such as the Wizard of Oz prequel Oz: The Great and Powerful—reach the screen.

“If John Carter flops, he’ll blame it on the old regime and live to fight another day,” a rival executive at a third studio says. But all eyes will be watching to see if Ross can deliver on the May 4 release of Marvel’s The Avengers. “Now if The Avengers looked like s--t, that’d be another story,” the executive says.

Also - Happy Presidents' Day from "TDDF" team!

Disney has a John Carter sequel already in the works?

Although it doesn't come to theaters for a few more weeks, Screen Rant is reporting that Disney is already having a script for a John Carter sequel written. With a production budget of over $200 million, the sci-fi adventure is a gamble for the studio to say the least, but the Mouse House is apparently at least somewhat confident that film will be a hit. 

Deadline, on the other hand, isn't quite as optimistic, stating that Disney has done a poor job marketing the film and is anticipating a huge bomb. Time will tell if John Carter will be a blockbuster or not, but Pixar fans will finally be able to see WALL-E director Andrew Stanton helm his first live-action feature when the movie opens in theaters and IMAX on March 9th.

Bowser, and Others to Cameo in Disney's Wreck-It Ralph & Kermit and Piggy to appear at the 2012 Oscars!

The koopa king joins other villains in a "bad guy support group."


Bowser, Zangief, Dr. Eggman, and Dr. Wily are making cameos in Disney's upcoming animated film, Wreck-It Ralph.

The reveal was made in Disney's D23 magazine, and shows the four in a "bad guy support group", alongside a previously revealed Kano and Pac-Man ghost. The appearances mirror those made in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, when Disney and Looney Tunes characters were also given cameo roles. The actual extent of these roles (and whether other video game cameos will occur) is unknown.

Wreck-It Ralph is a film by Walt Disney Animation Studios, which follows the titular character, the villain of an arcade game, attempting to prove that he has the ability to become a hero.

The film is scheduled for a November 2 release date.

And - According to Disney’s official Twitter feed, the Muppets won’t be left out of the Oscars  after all!  Here's what they said:

BREAKING NEWS: Hollywood’s “IT” couple, Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy, will 

present at the 84th Academy Awards® on 2/26 on ABC!

"The Secret World of Arrietty" a slow, sweet charmer for Disney fans!

Disney may have made most of its recent fans — and much of its money — from the CGI geniuses at Pixar and a long parade of tween stars on TV. But someone at the Mouse Factory must still love the old ways.

You can see it in the studio’s occasional return to classic animation in movies like “Tangled.” And it has to inspire their constant imports from Japan’s Studio Ghibli.

That company’s films — “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Ponyo,” “Spirited Away” — don’t rake in what a new “Toy Story” does. But they connect Disney to old-school animation, and storytelling.

Studio Ghibli films tend to be slower paced than even classic Disney ones.

There are no power ballads and less slapstick, and even the look is softer, closer to the smudgy shades of water colors.

For small children, this can all be a bit of an adjustment.

For adults, too. One of the traditions in Japanese anime is to draw all the characters as Caucasian — even in a film like this one, where they’re clearly meant to be Asian. It’s a strange convention and, in many ways, a slightly sad one.

But adapt to the pace, and try to ignore the question of race, and the films can reveal their charms — particularly when they start with a good, solid story.

This one comes from that children’s classic “The Borrowers,” about tiny people who live in the crawl spaces and between the halls of full-size humans, and pilfer tiny objects — a cookie, a pin, a bottle cap — to feed themselves and build their homes.

They have to worry about many things, but their greatest fear is discovery. So when a new boy moves into the house above one Borrower family’s nest, they expect a dangerous new enemy.

Of course, what they get — or, at least, their spirited daughter, Arrietty, gets — is an unexpected friend.

The story is gentle, if not a little tame — apart from one nasty crow, who thinks the Borrower girl looks like a tasty grub, there’s not much in the way of excitement here.

But the animation itself is lovely, particularly the exteriors, which are alive with the colors of summer flowers and the shimmering shades of bubbling rivers.

Disney has re-dubbed the cartoon, which seems a simpler, more sensible process than adding subtitles to a foreign-language soundtrack (which some imported cartoons insist on doing — even though a large portion of their audience can’t read).

The film had already been dubbed for a British release, though, and it’s unclear what’s added by this American cast — which includes Will Arnett and Amy Poehler as the Borrower parents, and Carol Burnett as a full-size, nosy housekeeper. (Poehler, called upon to voice an incessantly hysterical mother, actually detracts from the magic.)

But the visual details are inventive, and the animation — particularly the colors — is lovely.

         Cast Members: Amy Poehler, Bridgit Mendler and Carol Burnett in Los Angeles to promote the film.

Busting a few Disney myths!

SAN FRANCISCO -- Walt Disney died of complications from lung cancer on Dec. 15, 1966, just 10 days after his 65th birthday.

But he was not cryogenically frozen and stored under the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland. That is just one of many urban myths and vicious rumours that plague the memory and legacy of one of America's greatest entertainers.
"There are a lot of ugly myths out there," his grandson, Walt Disney Miller, told me recently. Another is that Disney was a fascist and anti-Semite. There is no evidence whatsoever that this was true, although Disney was an arch conservative and Republican who waged a bitter battle with unions at his studio in the 1940s. Disney also testified during the U.S. Congress' infamous Communist witch hunt run by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC).


"There are a lot of myths out there and I don't think you hear that about a lot of other people," says Diane Disney Miller, Disney's only surviving daughter. "I've never heard that Bing Crosby was frozen."
Diane Disney Miller, along with her son Walt and other members of the Disney clan, are doing something creative about the situation that so rankles them. Instead of hiding out and getting angry, they are speaking out ... sometimes forcefully, always lovingly.


Disney Miller, for example, hosts an engaging featurette about her parents on a new DVD and Blu-ray combo pack, Lady and the Tramp: Diamond Edition. It was released this week. Remembering Dad, the title of the featurette, allows her to describe in detail the little Victorian apartment that her father and her mother, Lillian Bounds Disney, kept on the second floor of the firehall on Main Street at Disneyland. It is still there, although it is now an attraction, not a functioning dwelling as it was in the 1950s and '60s. Disney Miller tells amusing stories of life there as Walt's daughter.
Even more significantly, the Disneys have turned the two-year-old Walt Disney Family Museum into a facility with historical significance.


While it remains tons of fun for Disneyphiles of all ages, the museum takes a vigorous approach. Amid the vast collection of memorabilia -- including Disney's Oscars -- and not far from television screens showing Mickey Mouse and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons plus excerpts from Disney's most famous animation features, an exhibit tells the story of the strike. Both sides are represented. Another exhibit recounts the HUAC fiasco, with Disney's testimony transcribed word-for-word.


"We don't do anything in here that smacks of a PR blurb," Disney Miller says in an interview. No hyperbole, not even about the astonishing body of work that Disney created himself or supervised during the glory years of Walt Disney Studios. "I myself cannot call him a genius because I don't know," Disney Miller says. "He was my Dad."


The museum is located in The Presidio, the urban park that was created out of a former U.S.
Army post that dates back to 1776. George Lucas' Industrial Light & Magic building is a neighbour. For the second time, I visit the museum to sit down with Disney Miller, this time without her son at her side. She is 78 but still spry, articulate and eager to talk about her father as a man, not a myth. Given the restoration and Blu-ray re-releases of Disney's animation classics -- and given this year's 75th anniversary of the legendary Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs -- the timing is perfect.

So I ask her about those urban myths, the misconceptions about Walt Disney, and why they persist.

"I don't know, I don't know," she murmurs. "I don't know why they select him. You would think it was impossible because he was very accessible from the beginning with anyone who wanted to talk to hi mor interview him or photograph him. That's why we have so much to work with. I don't know how anyone thought they could get away with it. But they have."
The cryogenic myth is the most galling. "It is!" Disney Miller says. "You know, I think it began in News of the World in London."


News of the World is the sleazy British tabloid that was put to death in 2011, during another scandal, after 168 years of fabricating stories.


As for accusations of fascism and anti- Semitism, Disney Miller says that began during the labour dispute which crippled Walt Disney Studios in 1941.
"That was the strike," she says. "That was a smear thing and that was a tactic of Herbert Sorrell and that element."
Sorrel was a leading union organizer at Hollywood studios during that era. He was instrumental in getting the new Screen Cartoonist Guild to rally against Disney and his paternalism.


The accusations have stuck for decades, much to Disney Miller's chagrin. "People want to believe the worst."
So everything -- good and bad -- is dealt with at the museum.


"Because the Disney company is so big and the brand is so big, it's everywhere," Disney Miller says of the House of Mouse. "But the man!" She pauses to reflect on the difficulty of maintaining her father's honour, referring to biographies of her father that perplex her, especially when her mother Lillian has also been attacked in print. "One was just deliberately evil and untruthful," she says with disdain.


"I want people to know these things about him because I feel I owe it to him. And I can tell it but nobody else can (except other surviving Disney family members). I don't think anyone else could do it like we could because it has to be completely honest."

Disney and Warner Bros. at war over Oz!

With Disney's upcoming Wizard of Oz prequel Oz: The Great and the Powerful coming to theaters next year, it was only a matter of time before Warner Bros.--the studio responsible for the beloved 1939 Judy Garland film--decided to speak up about it. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Warner Bros. has a trademark on the words The Great and Powerful Oz, which is slightly different--but different all the same--from the title of Disney's movie.

 Although it's highly unlikely that this will stop the film from being released, it could cause a problem for any merchandise that Disney wants to put out for the movie. Warner Bros. has already gone after possible merchandise to go with the upcoming animated movie Dorothy of Oz, which, according to the article, carries a higher than anticipated production budget of $60 million.

Happy Valentines Day! (and Music Video) - from "TDDF"

 

Miss Piggy at BAFTA 2012 & Angelina Jolie is Maleficent!

Last night world-renowned superstar and diva Miss Piggy talked to BAFTA 2012 hopefuls on the Red Carpet, check out her funny moments!

And lastly -  After months of rumors surrounding the subject, Angelina Jolie has confirmed that she will in fact be playing Maleficent in Disney's upcoming live-action movie, Screen Rant is reporting. Originally said to be directed by Tim Burton, the movie is now being helmed by Alice in Wonderland production designer Robert Stromberg, making his directorial debut. The project is currently without a release date.

First Lady Michelle Obama visits ESPN Wide World of Sports at Walt Disney World

First Lady Michelle Obama and a few Disney Channel stars visited Walt Disney World yesterday to speak to hundreds of local children and parents about the importance of exercise and eating right. But they not only talked about it, they got some exercise themselves as they did the The Platypus Walk and played some sports.

On a tour to celebrate the second anniversary of her Let’s Move! initiative, Obama was at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex. She also recognized the efforts of Disney Magic of Healthy Living, which partners with parents in their quest to raise healthy, happy kids.

“I want to thank Disney for all that they’ve done to support ‘Let’s Move’ and to make sure our kids are eating right and being active,” Obama told the audience before joining Disney Channel and Disney XD stars for the new dance, “The Platypus Walk,” inspired by the hugely popular “Phineas and Ferb” character Perry the Platypus.
U.S. Sen. Bill Nelson welcomed the crowd of nearly 1,500 children and families, demonstrating his own commitment to physical fitness by completing 50 push-ups on stage.



After addressing the audience, Obama welcomed the children to visit five Disney Magic of Healthy Living activity stations along with Disney Channel Stars Debby Ryan (“Jessie”), Roshon Fegan (“Shake It Up”), and Disney XD stars Doc Shaw and Kelsey Chow (“Pair of Kings”) and Olivia Holt (“Kickin’ It”). There, professional athletes helped children hone their physical fitness skills. Children ran sprints with renowned football coach Tom Shaw, completed drills with members of the Orlando City Soccer team and practiced their tennis serve with tennis professional James Blake.


Brandon Delfosse, a 13-year-old student at Orlando Science School and member of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Central Florida, attended the event and was pleased Obama and Disney supported healthy living. “It’s very cool knowing someone cares about you… It’s smart. Disney is popular, and it helps get the word out.”
The 2010 launch of Disney Magic of Healthy Living included a series of public service announcements featuring the first lady that inspire children to take control of their own health, fitness and nutrition, and encourage their families and friends to do the same.


For more information about the program, as well as recipes, tips and videos, visit Disney.com/TryIt. For details about the Let’s Move! initiative, visit LetsMove.gov.

MUST READ: the Top 5 Tips for Collecting Disney Merchandise!

All Disney collectibles are valuable. False!

All Mickey Mouse collectibles are the most valuable. False!

Nothing new will ever be worth anything. False!

Just how many false impressions are there out there about Disneyana collecting? Probably as many as there are Disneyana collectibles! Antique dealers count on misinformation and sentimentality to slip that extra percentage on your purchase. Don’t let them rip you off!

Follow these five tips for collecting Disneyana:

Number Five:

Buy only what you like and plan to keep. Collecting anything is about possession, not profit. This holds true for most of us, excepting the professional collector who buys for resale. Only he can truly know the market and what it can bear, so only he should play the money game.

The benefit of this tip is that you will only spend what you think something is worth to you. So you will avoid high price tags, or if you do splurge, you won’t feel ripped off because the item will bring you sufficient satisfaction to compensate.

Number Four:

Do your research. If you must have every Donald Duck collectible on the market, make sure to educate yourself about current market pricing.

The benefit of this tip is that you will always know the true value of any item you are interested in. Books and websites abound for this purpose, so make use of them, perhaps on your mobile device.

Number Three:

Relax. There is more Disneyana out there than one person could ever collect in one lifetime! So don’t even try. Don’t think that if you miss buying this one item that it will never come around again. Believe me, with the proliferation of antique shops and online selling sites, it likely will come around again. And if that exact item doesn’t, one of a million others that you’ve just got to have will!

The benefit of this tip is that you won’t be pushed into a purchase that you’re not comfortable with because of panic.

Number Two:

Age doesn’t necessarily increase value. Just because something was made in 1947, it doesn’t mean that the item is worth more than a similar item made in 1987 or 2007. Popularity is the ultimate price maker!

The benefit of this tip is that you can be aware of trends. For example, a chaser Vinylmation figure could very well out sell a mass-produced item from 1950. For example, if more people currently want Vinylmation figures over Disneykins figures, age isn’t going to matter!

Number One:

Mickey doesn’t always mean big money. Most amateur collectors, and too many antique dealers, fall into this erroneous thinking. Undoubtedly, Mickey is the oldest Disney character to receive extensive merchandising, but that is also the problem! There is just too much Mickey out there for all of it to be valuable. Rarity and condition will determine price more than anything else.

The benefit of this tip is that you will know to buy secondary characters who’s merchandise is harder to find, but that non-Disney retailers may not recognize, and so under-value in their sale price!

OK gang, are we ready to get out there and do some informed Disney buying?