Movie Minesweeper - The Colder Than July Edition

- You can download and enjoy the My Blueberry Nights press kit in pdf form. The Hollywood Reporter Hollywood report that at the first press screening "a few fans tried to generate some applause, but the screening room quickly fell silent."

- Sean Hughes is to appear on Coronation Street.

- Thomas Jane won't be The Punisher again, and he's told Aint it Cool why. I don't really know a great deal about the comic books, but I can see how a good Punisher film would work. Chan Wook Park would be very at home with the material, for example.

- There's a rumour going round that 50 Cent might be the next Terminator.

- Lionsgate will pimp The Spirit in the UK and the US. Shooting is likely to start this summer, unless Sin City 2 isn't pushed back again. Though, apparently, it will be.

- Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont are to direct Red-Tails in Love, but they won't script it - at least, not the formal last draft. The writers are to be Peter Speakman and Michael Gavin.

- What Happens in Vegas is to star Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. Chances are, we'll wish it stayed in Vegas.

- Richard Curtis' The Girl in the Cafe has been remade in German with Julia Jentsch in the Kelly McDonald role.

- Apparently, the zombies in Steve Miner's Day of the Dead rapemake - sorry, remake -
are 'sexier' than in the original. Like, literally. But are they sexier than in Return of the Living Dead Part 3?

- Screendaily are reporting remakes of The Long Good Friday and Mona Lisa. The directors attached? Paul W. S. Anderson and Larry Clark, respectively. Both stories are being relocated to the US. No director is yet attached to the Time Bandits remake from the same producers - which, hopefully, will mean it never happens. Ever.

- Jim Brown's Pete Seeger documentary is to open Silverdocs 2007. Springsteen has boosted Seeger's profile somewhat, this may be something of a minor hit - if only on TV.

- Has David Goyer cast Justin Chatwin as Magneto? Possibly. I heard Ben Whishaw was up for it, but I don't really know about that for sure either.

- Roger Moore, Ioan Gruffud, Alice Evans, Ruby Wax and Brian Blessed are to provide voices for Agent Crush, a CG spy spoof toon.

- Eliza Dushku has signed on for Rob Schmidt's The Alphabet Killer. Bet it isn't as pedestrian as Zodiac - but I doubt it will be as ambitious either.

- William Macy is to star in, produce and co-write Family Man for TNT. The show will be directed by Stephen Schachter, Macy's co-writer and frequent collaborator.

- Ye Olde Times is a film about Medieval fairs and re-enactments, set to star Jack Black and Tim Robbins, and it's up for sale at Cannes this year.

- MoviesOnline have a piece about the casino set for Ocean's 13.

- Hank Azaria is to direct Outsourced. If he can hold it together, he'll probably have a smash - the film stars Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson, will likely be marketed as a Wedding Crashers reteam.

- Glenn Close, Larry Fishburne and Djimon Honsou are apparently up for the Death Race do-over. Joan Allen is reportedly a back up plan for - yeah, that's right, Larry Fishburne. No - Close, obviously.

- Jennifer Garner is cooking up a TV show 'by moms, and for moms' - The View with nappies?

- Development of The Princess and the Frog and Rapunzel is progressing nicely. Each of them is about to be done as a story reel, which brings them close to the actual animation process, providing all is in order. The reels for American Dog have been completed and screened, and the signs are good.

- Today is the anniversary of Jim Henson's death, in 1990. I've missed him ever since.

Shifting Sands For American Bunny, Buttons

Thomas Haden Church has been telling Sci-Fi Wire about his role in American Dog, the Disney toon originated by Chris Sanders, now being directed by Chris Williams.

We had a session, they went away, I went to Pittsburgh to work, and then I didn't hear from anybody for quite a while. Then I talked to Clark, the producer, at the beginning of January and he told me that Lasseter had replaced the director and they were just starting to completely rewrite the movie. So I used to play a one-eyed rabbit named Buttons. I'm not really sure what I'm playing anymore. I'm kind of kidding. I think the characters are going to remain intact, but the story is shifting. So I'm waiting, waiting for a script to arrive at my ranch.

Second Director For Rapunzel

Glen Keane is to get a co-pilot for his upcoming Disney toon Rapunzel, formally Rapunzel: Unbraided. The new guy is Dean Wellins, who was a story artist on The Iron Giant and has been heading the story department on American Dog. I think thi smakes perfect sense - somebody with over-arching-narrative and character-line focus to team with Keane's eye for images, performance and sense of tone and atmosphere.

Disney Beans Aplenty Are Spilled

At Disney they have meetings, and in meetings they use Powerpoint, and from a Powerpoint slide show came all of the above. The artwork you can is all pre-production work for Prince of Persia, which suggests things have moved along somewhat on that one already. All can be clicked an enlarged, so grab your mouse and knock yourself out.

Chris Sanders Out At Disney, New Director - And Plot! - For American Dog

Jim Hill Media have a very intensive break down of the comings-and-goings at Disney over American Dog, their big release for next year. Many of the characters we've seen in test footage have now been axed, the lead character redesigned and the plot radically revamped. Curiously, the story (which you can read at Jim Hill Media) seems like a weird hybrid of Buzz Lightyear's arc in Toy Story and the direct-to-DVD 101 Dalmatians sequel Patch's London Adventure.

According to the report, John Lasseter was not a fan of Lilo and Stitch. I love the film, for the most part - it's the visual style and set-pieces, mainly - but it is obvious that the third act was severely lacking and depended on some dry, overlong dialogue scenes and a touch of deus ex machina to get the loose ends anything like tied up. That film's director Chris Sanders is an obvious talent however, and I think Disney might live to regret losing him.

American Dogs' new director is reported to be Chris Williams, a story artist on Mulan and The Emperor's New Groove. If he's had the nod from Lasseter, I'm sure he's a good guy but, for now, we can only cross our fingers and hope that he has the odd wit and idiosyncratic style of Sanders.

American Dog For 2008

Chris Sanders' American Dog will be the next Walt Disney Feature Animation film, due for release in 2008. Where's that champagne again?

Bloomberg confirmed it today, quoting John Lasseter. He's full of good news, that Lasseter.

Who Is Writing Toy Story 3? And What Is Going To Happen To Chris Sanders An American Dog?

Reuters have the straight scoop from a Disney-Pixar press conference. Most exciting news? That Lee Unkrich is directing Toy Story 3 from a script by Michael Arndt, the screenwriter of Little Miss Sunshine. Unkrich is Pixar's master of montage and was a co-director on Toy Story 2.

Several clips and pre-production reels were shown from a number of films, including Ratatouille, Wall-E, Toy Story 3 and Chris Sanders' feared-dead An American Dog.

Ed Catmull confirmed that hand-drawn animation was indeed retruning to Disney, but that the 'main studio', Walt Disney Feature Animation, would also be making CG films quite seperately from Pixar's.

I'd open a bottle of champagne if I had one.

The Real Reason American Dog Has Been Canned

Chris Sanders, the writer-director behind Lilo and Stitch was, until very recently, working on American Dog for Walt Disney Feature Animation. Scheduled for 2008, all that had been seen of the film so far was some production art, very short clips - including a lovely one of the Dog catching a ride on a box car - and a couple of rendered images. Advance word was, however, very good indeed even though the film was still only in development, not even officially greenlit.

And then, in the last few days, the news broke that Sanders was being removed from the project.

Jim Hill Media now has the skinny on why this really happened - and I found it really quite surprising.

Apparently, there are to be no more CG animated films from the Walt Dinsey stable after next spring's Meet The Robinsons. Pixar are to monopolise the CG medium, while the Disney label is to be once more attached only to cel-animated movies. I read at Jim Hill's that Glen Keane's Rapunzel Unbraided is likely to be retooled as a hand-drawn work rather than axed outright while, presumably, either Sanders or American Dog were not proving so flexible - but this does not explain why development on the film couldn't be shifted over to Pixar. There is always a small chance it will be revived there, I suppose - but at the moment, that doesn't look very likely.

If Lasseter and Catmull can convince Iger, this will be the way ahead from now on and so-called-2D animation will be back in full force at the Mouse House. Personally, this sounds like a very good thing in almost all ways with just a few details not sitting quite right with me. I'm going to miss American Dog, that's for sure; and I don't know if, truthfully, Rapunzel Unbraided should be cel-animated. Maybe it needs to be a CG film?

All we can do is trust in Lasseter...