Tuesday, June 22, 2010

Toy Story IV!

Lovable toy-size figures. We like them a lot.

The Good Luck Trolls, with their frizzy, pastel-colored hair, are coming to the big screen via DreamWorks Animation. ...

Of course, trolls, elves and dollies don't always make it to the big screen. Disney quietly smothered King of the Elves several months ago, and four years back, some freshly minted Disney cartoon exec cancelled a project about a lawn gnome, one of the executives asking in a meeting:

"Can anybody tell me why we're making this? (effx: crickets) ... Well, we're not making this ..."

(Or as Suite 101 put it: "... [W]hen Pixar co-founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull took over the leadership role at Disney Animation in May of 2006, they took one look at the script and promptly consigned it to the circular filing system ...")

But here's to the Good Luck Trolls. Long may they prosper.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh heaven help us. I hated those damned things when they were popular. Now they are about to make a comeback and will likely have to put up with more of these infernal creatures in my house for my kids.

Anonymous said...

My first thought was, "Wait, didn't they already appear in Toy Story 3?"

Which led straight into the second one: "Oh, now Katzenberg's just deliberately being sarcastic about all those 'stealing from Pixar' jokes...If it was real, he would've at least WAITED a week to avoid suspicion." ;)

Anonymous said...

Oh god. Those things scared me as a kid. I still can't look at them. The idea of them being animated, of actually moving around....aaahhhggggghhh....

Anonymous said...

King of the Elves wasnt "smothered," it was sent back to development, where it is being...developed.

Anonymous said...

And the Gnome movie was given back to it's creator, Elton john's husband, and is in production now. Directed by Kelly Asbury, and coming out next year. And being released by guess who? DISNEY.

Anonymous said...

AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

And the Gnome movie was given back to it's creator, Elton john's husband, and is in production now. Directed by Kelly Asbury, and coming out next year. And being released by guess who? DISNEY.

But only because Miramax (who'll buy any indie project so long as they only have to dub and hype it) is no more, and someone had to clean up after the orphans.
The studio that develops a project from scratch, however, has no one to blame but itself. :)

Anonymous said...

Thanks for reminding us Dreamworks that Kung Fu Panda, and Dragons were just flukes.
Thanks for consistently giving us crap animated features.

Anonymous said...

From the article it's clear it's an announced development deal. Lots and lots of ideas have been optioned and developed at every studio. There's no film in production and may never be.

Mac said...

I attended a test screening of Gnomeo and Juliet (or "the Gnome movie") in February and it was very, very funny. It may change a lot by the time it comes out (very little of it was fully animated), but the version I saw was a lot of fun and should do well.

Anonymous said...

Then, there's that other idea, that possible the studio was hoping to pre-emptively head Sony's Smurfs movie off at the gate.

...No, I don't know why, either.

Anonymous said...

They've named the troll movie "Terry Press."

Anonymous said...

King of the Elves is still being developed? - AWESOME.

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