Burton and Disney team up for 3-D
Disney confirms Tim Burton's 3-D Alice & Frankenweenie films.
Walt Disney has signed Tim Burton to make two 3-D films for them, Alice in Wonderland and Frankenweenie, the Mouse House confirmed to Variety's MARC GRASER.
Alice goes into production in January '08, from Beauty and the Beast scribe Linda Woolverton's adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic. Burton's version will combine live-action and performance-capture animation, such as that used in the new Beowulf.
"When the script came to us from Joe Roth, there was one name on my list and it was Tim," said Oren Aviv, prexy of Walt Disney Motion Pictures Group, for whom Burton previously produced Nightmare Before Christmas and directed Ed Wood.
Producer Richard D. Zanuck, veteran of every live-action Burton flick since 2001's Planet of the Apes, teams with first-time Burton collaborators Roth and Suzanne & Jennifer Todd.
Disney expects production on Alice to be finished by the end of May '08.
Then, Burton will turn his 1984 short Frankenweenie--about a dog returned from the dead--into a full-length stop-motion animated feature, in the style of Burton's Corpse Bride.
Disney's announcement confirms the rumor, which made the rounds in October, suggesting a Frankenweenie feature remake.
Both Alice and Frankenweenie will be presented in Disney Digital 3-D, as was The Nightmare Before Christmas in 3-D previously. These pictures are part of Disney's efforts to ramp up its 3-D pic offerings, which began with Chicken Little in 2005.
Burton is currently wrapping his movie musical Sweeney Todd, which stars Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman, and hits theatres Dec. 21.
[Thanks to Animation World Network for the tip; and to Playbill's ERNIO HERNANDEZ, First Showing's ALEX BILLINGTON, and The Tim Burton Collective for additional info.]