Tuesday, April 24, 2007

The Midweek Studio Roundabout

A few quick snapshots from studios I've recently rambled through:

At Disney Television Animation, board and design crew are on board for the new season of The Replacements, even as more scripts are written...

And DisneyToons (the Mouse House's home screen feature arm) is busy with its new Tinker Bell story line. A draft of the newer tale is finished and fresh boards are being drawn as I write.

Over at Starz Media/Film Roman, the Simpson feature comes into the clubhouse turn; artists say that over half of the flick is now in color, and they don't think there will be any major changes at this point (but what with the writers on the other side of the hill doing their own thing, who knows?)

The crew got to see the picture over the weekend; people I talked to -- who have seen it more than once over the past eight or nine months -- think it's really coming together. As one of them said: "I laughed all the way through. It's a lot funnier than the last time I saw it." (We're told that plot buttons from the feature will work their way into future television episodes.)

Last week there was a test screening of the picture in Tempe, Arizona which apparently went off resoundingly well. Other parts of the internet have talked about the movie shown at the screening, the reactions to it appear to be ecstatic.

Whether Fox likes the "early reviews", we do not know. But it's a truism of the modern era that once your movie is shown to a ravenous public in a public place, somebody is going to blat about it on the internets.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Did the guys say anything about the new draft for Tinkerbell? This is the one Lasseter has guided since he showed his distaste for the original version. I was wondering what the guys working on it thought of the makeover?

Steve Hulett said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Steve Hulett said...

They thought it was better.

I looked at the boards of the story outline that were sitting out, but I'm keeping my mouth shut about them.

Animation story work is no longer my gig.

Anonymous said...

Better? Better as in it's just a little better? Or better as in "Wow, what an amazing difference since John lent his storytelling abilities?"

I had zero interest in this Disney Consumer Products creation until I heard John Lasseter was involved. I hope it turns out to be a good movie. Why don't you get some of the animators to post what they think of it Steve? I'd love to hear directly from them.

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