Since today seems to be the day for screen grabs, follow the “More” link for four captures from the preview Chicken Little, Disney’s first completely computer-generated movie produced sans Pixar, as seen on disc 1 of the upcoming Brother Bear 2-disc set, due out in Region 1 on March 30.

Laughing Place has a great new in-depth interview with Disney’s dynamic directing/writing duo Ron Clements and John Musker who helmed The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Hercules, and Treasure Planet. Thanks to Kristin for the alert.

Follow the “More” link for a story sketch from The Chronological Donald, one of the DVDs in the 3rd wave of collectible Walt Disney’s Treasures scheduled for release on May 18, 2004.

Follow the “More” link for three images from Buena Vista Home Entertainment’s Paul McCartney: The Music and the Animation Collection which is due out on DVD and VHS April 13, 2004.

Coming Soon! has some casting news on the upcoming Fat Albert movie. Kenan Thompson of Barbershop 2: Back in Business and cast member of NBC’s long-running late night comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live has been cast in the title role. “The film will start with animation, move into live-action and end in the animated […]

The Big Cartoon DataBase reports the sad news that everybody’s favorite corncob pipe-smoking sailor has been dropped by Cartoon Network. The timing is particularly bad because this is the year of Popeye’s seventy-fifth anniversary. Maybe they have one of those mandatory retirement age clauses like Disney has for its board of directors. Follow the link […]

Saddle up your horses and take a ride on down to your local online general store because the first wave of Home on the Range merchandise has recently been made available at DisneyStore.com. The collection includes several plush toys, a Lincoln Logs-style cabin building set, the soundtrack CD, a Game Boy Advance game, and the […]

Yahoo! News has more information on the latebreaking news. “The Walt Disney Co.’s board voted late Wednesday to split the roles of chairman and chief executive, hours after shareholders delivered a stinging rebuke by withholding 43 percent of their votes for CEO Michael Eisner’s re-election to the board.” Under the new arrangement, which is immediately […]

Follow the “More” link to read the text of an e-mail to subscribers of Variety on the recent events regarding the Disney shareholder meeting. The UK’s {{link http://media.guardian.co.uk/city/story/0,7497,1161679,00.html Media Guardian}} has more, including a full report on the meeting.

The Big Cartoon DataBase has the scoop on a new Paul McCartney tune accompanying the new animated film Tropic Island Hum, to be released worldwide on April 19 as part of the Paul McCartney: The Music and Animation Collection DVD.

This is the site I have literally been waiting to find. In the interest of objective and unbiased journalism I have felt bad that we here at Animated News seem to only post stories which favor Roy Disney and Stanley Gold’s view of the future of The Walt Disney Company and who its CEO should […]

Although determined to not allow any more live action movies based on Dr. Seuss characters, Audrey Stone Giesel, the widowed wife of the good doctor, has given the nod to production of a new animated movie based on Horton the big-hearted elephant. Read the full report at The Big Cartoon Database. No word yet if […]

For fans of the Justice League who reside in Region 2 (since our world is now divided into regions based on what type of DVD format you are likely to be able to view), Toon Zone reports the good news that all three Justice League DVDs that have been released so far in Region 1 […]

Jerry Beck’s Cartoon Research points out a Roy Disney/Stanley Gold interview with USA Today business columnist Jon Swartz at Yahoo! News. Read on for straight talk from two men with a mission.

Animation Blast has updated with information that the new Disney animated film Lorenzo, directed by Mike Gabriel from a Joe Grant concept, will be showing as a short feature with Joel and Ethan Coen’s film The Ladykillers, which stars Tom Hanks and Marlon Wayans and is set to open in wide release March 26th, 2004.

Animation World Network has the scoop on a new Disney short entitled Lorenzo, which is set to premier at the Florida Film Festival in Orlando, March 6, 2004. The short is a 2D/3D hybrid inspired by Joe Grant’s idea of “a fat and sassy cat terrorized by its own tail into a fit of ballroom […]

Many reviews of The Lion King 1½ have made mention of the similarity between The Lion King‘s Timon and Pumbaa and Hamlet‘s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Now, thanks to an alert from Kristin, we have proof that this analogy was made all the way back in 1994. Check out the transcript of an interview with voice […]

Coming Soon! reports on an upcoming computer-animated feature from Walt Disney Feature Animation entitled The Wild about a boy who spends a late night at the New York Zoo and accidentally gets trapped in a crate and shipped to Africa along with some of the animals. The movie is set to appear summer 2005. Looks […]

Amid Amidi’s Animation Blast reports on censorship run amok in the form of “the US Department of Education is declaring nearly 200 TV programs inappropriate for close-caption funding and denying federal grant requests to make them accessible to the hearing-impaired.” If you think it’s adult cartoons such as Stripperella getting cut, think again. It’s mainstream, […]

Check out Jerry Beck’s online version of a recent Variety article on the upcoming Curious George film. The most significant part of this article for the animation industry is the fact that they mention that they did try computer-animated tests of the inquisitive simian and none of them looked quite right (they tried puppetry as […]

Animation Insider has a report on Disney’s plans to release sequels based on Pixar films even without Pixar’s aid. According to Dick Cook, Walt Disney Studios Chairman, “We will nurture and grow these franchises with new stories.” If they can do it with the same verve and creative flair as Pixar more power to them […]

Not only have current issues facing The Walt Disney Company and its CEO Michael Eisner caught the entertainment industry’s attention but that of political cartoonists’ as well. Follow the “More” link to see Mike Shelton’s imaginative cartoon featuring Michael Eisner on a Disneyland-type ride swerving around and through Roy Disney, Pixar, and ComCast, which was […]

“The Walt Disney Company said Sunday that it has refused to let the daughter [Abigail Disney] of former board member Roy Disney, along with other individual investors, attend a two-day meeting for institutional investors and analysts planned to begin Wednesday in Orlando, Florida.” Go to The Big Cartoon DataBase for the full report.

According to the Big Cartoon DataBase the Disney Board has recently been discussing the issue of replacing CEO Michael Eisner. The discussions do not appear to be a crisis response to the Save Disney/Oust Eisner campaign spearheaded by former board members Roy E. Disney and Stanley Gold but the beginning of confronting the fact that […]

Broadway.com reports the sad news of the apparent suicide death of Jason Raize, who was the first to portray Simba in The Lion King on Broadway and also supplied the voice of Denahi from Disney’s Brother Bear. Thanks to Kristin for the alert.

Toon Zone has recently posted the content of a letter from Roy Disney and Stanley Gold to the Disney Board of Directors. Many of the points raised in it are not new but we get the impression they are very serious about their campaign.

Animation Insider has the scoop on the new Batman animated series coming soon. The series will focus on the young Bruce Wayne and his dual roles as trust fund playboy/uber-obsessed crime fighter as well as encountering many of his dastardly and fiendish nemeses (watch Mystery Men for the correct pronunciation of “nemeses”) for the first […]

Jim Hill Media updates with a first hand report by Chuck Oberleitner of Friday night’s Annie Awards held in Hollywood, CA. The public will see that Pixar won many more awards than Disney, but those who gain the insider’s view this article presents will see that animators and creators from each side are very respectful […]

Dalboz has provided links in the Animated News Forum to several posters to designed to generate awareness for Oscar nominees including two posters for Finding Nemo and one for Tokyo Godfathers.

Check out the opinion piece by Motley Fool Rick Aristotle Munarriz on the advantages to a merger between The Walt Disney Company, Apple Computers, and Pixar Studios with Steve Jobs at the helm of the superconglomerate. “Eisner isn’t ready to step out. Jobs isn’t ready to step in. That still doesn’t detract from the tantalizing […]