The Frog Princess to be Disney's next 2D feature?

A friend gave me a little information about the fact that John Lasseter had greenlighted a 2D feature at Disney and it was in the early stages of pre-production at this point. We both speculated that it was John Musker and Ron Clements helming the project but we didn't know anything else.

[The Laughing Place] sheds some light on this subject. It reports:

"The report is that Lasseter first offered director Glen Keane the opportunity to re-tool Rapunzel for production as a traditional hand-drawn feature, if he so desired (pay attention to this unusually supportive and respectful offer of “a choice”), but Keane, who had done so much work in advancing and adapting current CG technology to get the look he wanted for his fractured fairy tale, felt committed to its production in CG. That was fine with Lasseter. Next up was Lasseter’s offer to directing and writing team Ron Clements and John Musker, currently at work penning the screenplay for The Frog Princess. Described as a decidedly “American fairy tale”, the project is currently in the very earliest stages of development, and not yet green-lit for production, per se. Nevertheless, Lasseter was confident enough to have made mention of the project at a division wide meeting held on one of the studio’s sound stages recently, and it is confirmed that the Ron and John project was given the option of being produced in either hand drawn or CG. With a script expected from the Ron and John (and only Ron and John) sometime in the late fall of 2006, and with no artistic staff yet in place for even visual development or storyboarding, its nonetheless official - Musker and Clements have elected to produce their project in the traditional hand-drawn approach, and Lasseter is 100% behind that choice!"

Read the full article here.

I guess you Futurama fans out there will get a new fix, because Comedy Central has decided to pick up 13 new episodes of Matt Groening's other series. Check out the Reuters article.

Box Office Mojo predicts that Cars is to make 22 Million this weekend, down 33% from last weekend's earnings. The bad news? Adam Sandler's "Click" has surpassed Cars in ticket sales. The good news? Cars is now the second highest grossing animated film of the year, and fourth highest film in the year. Ice Age 2 is at 192 Million and will likely be beaten by Cars in a few weeks time so long as Superman doesn't take too much of the earnings off of it. An interesting point is that Cars took 120 million dollars to make, meaning that it's only been in the black pretty much since this weekend. Three more interesting comparisons are: Top 23 Openings for Animated Features, Top 27 Computer Animated Total Grosses, and the top grosses for a Car Racing movie. Ok, the last one isnt' so interesting but it's amusing nonetheless.

And wow, this totally made -my- morning. Amid of Cartoon Brew sent me over a link for posting the Disney Family Album episodes. I'll have the Milt Kahl episode up on Monday. Thanks Amid!