animated-news

Christmas Nut Job trailer now online

Merry Christmas! A holiday-themed trailer for The Nut Job is now online and can be seen on Collider. And for those who missed it, a yuletide preview for Disney’s Frozen is also available on YouTube. The Nut Job opens January 17th, while Frozen is now playing in theaters everywhere.

First Paddington poster revealed

Yahoo! Movies has the first poster for the upcoming Paddington, which isn’t set to hit theaters until a year from now. The website also reveals that, although previous reports have indicated that Colin Firth and Nicole Kidman would play Paddington’s “parents,” those roles will actually be filled by Hugh Bonneville and Sally Hawkins. Firth, in […]

Turbo FAST now playing on Netflix

DreamWorks’ new TV series Turbo FAST debuts today exclusively on Netflix. GigaOm looks into the making of the show. Forbes has an in-depth piece about the strategy DreamWorks is employing. And the New York Times has a review.

Animated Oscar contenders

Deadline breaks down the Oscar race for Best Animated Feature. “This year, there are lots of indies entered, but expect the battle to continue among the titans, especially studios who are pouring money into campaigns for their box office behemoths. So when it comes to predicting a surefire winner, there just doesn’t seem to be […]

Frozen to crack Chinese market

The Wrap reports that Disney’s Frozen will reach the Chinese box office in 2014. The Chinese government regulates foreign films, only letting about 34 approved movies in per year. Getting one of those slots in the world’s second-largest movie market is a high priority for Hollywood filmmakers.

Holiday box office numbers: Is Walking With Dinosaurs already extinct?

Christmas started early at the box office this weekend, and movies performed more or less as they were expected to. Saving Mr. Banks got off to a decent start with $9 million, which may seem small on the surface, but it’s important to remember that the movie cost Disney only $30 million to make. The […]

Brrrrrr! Ice Age 5 coming in 2016

Because they just keep raking in plenty of cold, hard cash for the studio, 20th Century Fox has officially greenlit a long-rumored fifth Ice Age movie, ComingSoon.net is reporting. The movie is set to cool down movie theaters on July 15th, 2016, bumping Blue Sky’s previously announced Anubis back to March 23, 2018. Since it […]

An American Tail coming to Blu-Ray

Don Bluth’s An American Tail is finally getting the hi-def treatment, Blu-Ray.com is reporting. Unfortunately for fans, the release appears to be extremely light on bonus content, with a Somewhere Out There sing-along and a theatrical trailer being the only extras listed. The Blu-Ray comes out on March 4th.

Walking With Dinosaurs opens

20th Century Fox’s Walking With Dinosaurs opens today in theaters nationwide, albeit with respectively less fanfare than The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Saving Mr. Banks. The adaptation of the BBC miniseries–which was also adapted into a well-received stage show–hasn’t been faring well with critics, scoring a “freshness” rating of only 24% on Rotten […]

Saving Mr. Banks opens

Saving Mr. Banks opens wide today in 2,110 theaters according to Box Office Mojo. The film is doing well with the critics, earning an 80% at Rotten Tomatoes, where the consensus review of the movie is: “Aggressively likable and sentimental to a fault, Saving Mr. Banks pays tribute to the Disney legacy with excellent performances […]

How To Train Your Dragon 2 trailer online

JoBlo has the full trailer for DreamWorks’ upcoming film How To Train Your Dragon 2. “It’s been five years since Hiccup and Toothless successfully united dragons and vikings on the island of Berk… When one of their adventures leads to the discovery of a secret ice cave that is home to hundreds of new wild […]

Frozen soundtrack breaks into Billboard Top Ten

The soundtrack for Disney’s film Frozen has joined a rare club — it’s beome just the 10th soundtrack from an animated film to crack Billboard’s Top Ten list. The last film to accomplish the feat was Cars in 2006. Meanwhile, Idina Menzel’s version of Let It Go is climbing the singles chart. It’s upo to […]

Seibert innovating with online animation channel

The L.A. Times profiles Fred Seibert, who produced or gave a leg up to shows such as Dexter’s Laboratory, Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls, The Fairly OddParents, and Adventure Time. His latest focus is online video where his company, Frederator Studios, runs Cartoon Hangover, one of the fastest-growing channels on YouTube. “The Internet is ushering […]

Making Mr. Banks

Two articles detailing Disney’s involvement in the film Saving Mr. Banks hit the web this week. The Hollywood Reporter looks at it from the point of view of the writers who worried the studio might kill the project or bury it so it couldn’t be made elsewhere. The Wrap has more from Disney’s perspective, who […]

De Micco and Sanders master class highlights

IGN recently attended an “Animation Master Class” featuring The Croods directors Kirk De Micco and Chris Sanders and animation historian John Canemaker. The filmmakers “used the class to walk a group of NYU animation students through the creation of their awards-nominated cartoon.” You can watch a highlight reel of the class here:

Powerpuff Girls return

Variety reports that Cartoon Network is bringing back the Powerpuff Girls for a special episode on January 20th. The episode will reunite the original voice cast and include special guest Ringo Starr. Titled Dance Pantsed, the special “follows Mojo Jojo as he kidnaps a mathematician, an opera singer and a badger to steal Chemical X […]

The Wind Rises gets its English voice cast

Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Emily Blunt are officially the two leads for the English-language dub of The Wind Rises, Screen Rant is reporting.  Other members of the voice cast include John Krasinski, Martin Short, Stanley Tucci, Mandy Patinkin, William H. Macy, Werner Herzog, Mae Whitman, and Elijah Wood, among others. The Wind Rises comes to the states […]

Oscar’s song shortlist includes 11 animated tunes

Seventy-five songs from 2013 films have been shortlisted for nominations in the Original Song category at the Oscars, according to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Those from animated movies are: Shine Your Way from The Croods Happy from Despicable Me 2 Gonna Be Alright from Epic Rise Up from Epic What Matters […]

Disney breaks their box office record

With Iron Man 3’s billion dollar take leading the way, Disney has broken its company records for best domestic, international, and worldwide box office according to Variety. Along with Iron Man, Monsters University brought in over $700 million worldwide, the latest Thor sequel took in over $600 million, Oz almost reached $500 million, and Frozen […]

Disney, Despicable Me 2 earn iTunes honors

The Disney Animated app was named the iPad App of the Year by Apple in their Best of 2013 Editor’s Choice iTunes Rankings. “This enchanting tour of Disney’s legendary film vault awes with a bounty of animated sequences, interactive character models, and a spellbinding presentation”. Despicable Me 2 was chosen as the Best Animated Movie. […]

Family Guy (already) brings back Brian

Well, that didn’t take long. Only weeks after Family Guy “killed off” Brian the dog–to the outrage of fans on the internet everywhere–, the show has brought the beloved pooch back from the dead, Yahoo! TV says in a recap of last night’s episode. Although some might think the death was “undone” as a response to […]

New How to Train Your Dragon 2 image

USA Today has your first look at a new image from DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming How to Train Your Dragon 2. The article also details many aspects of the sequel’s plot, mainly focusing on Cate Blanchet’s character, Valka, a hermit who has devoted her life to keeping dragons away from people. “Her years of isolation and dealing […]

Critic’s Choice Awards nominations come in

Despicable Me 2, The Croods, The Wind Rises, Monsters University, and Frozen are the five films nominated for Best Animated Feature at the Critics Choice Awards this year. Frozen and Despicable Me 2 both also scored nominations for Best Original Song, while the nominations for Best Visual Effects were Gravity, Iron Man 3, Star Trek Into Darkness, […]

New Nut Job trailer

A new trailer for The Nut Job is online at iTunes. The story “follows the travails of Surly (voiced by Will Arnett), a mischievous squirrel, and his rat friend Buddy, who plan a nut store heist of outrageous proportions and unwittingly find themselves embroiled in a much more complicated and hilarious adventure”. It opens on […]

Sanders discusses The Croods

The Croods director Chris Sanders talks with Deadline about the film, including the film’s theme about family, the original plot, the difficulties in keeping up with star Nicolas Cage’s schedule, his CG learning curve, and much more. “For me, working on this film must be what it feels like to build either a 747 or […]

Legendary actor Peter O’Toole passes away

Lawrence of Arabia’s Peter O’Toole has passed away, The Guardian is reporting. Nominated for eight Academy Awards over the course of his career–but sadly never winning any–, O’Toole was also known to animation fans as the voice of food critic Anton Ego in Ratatouille. In addition, O’Toole was also heard in The Nutcracker Prince and as […]

Animation spirits riding high, but is darkness around the corner?

Bloomberg Businessweek ran down the numbers for animated movies this year and concluded that this was a profitable year for studios. Frozen is projected to make $250 million and the article lists other earnings: • Despicable Me 2 at $367 million • Monsters University at $268 million • The Croods at $187 million Despite the […]

Five 2013 animation directors sit down together for discussion

An L.A. Times interview brings together five of this year’s top animation directors — Frozen’s Jennifer Lee, Despicable Me 2’s Chris Renaud, The Croods’ Chris Sanders, Monsters University’s Dan Scanlon, and Epic’s Chris Wedge — to discuss topics such as “the challenges of female characters, the effect of celebrity voice actors, and the changing economics […]

Book excerpt from The CG Story

Christopher Finch’s new book The CG Story: Computer Generated Animation and Special Effects, “which peels the curtain back on CG pioneers like George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Ridley Scott, and Pixar founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull and their respective contributions to film”, gets an exclusive excerpt this week at Deadline. The extended sample details “the […]

Lasseter discusses Disney 90th birthday

NPR has more on the 90th anniversary of Disney Animation. In an audio interview with John Lasseter (with some printed excerpts as well) he discusses many topics including: the creation of Mickey Mouse, the impact of Snow White, his own first interaction with Disney as a teenager, leaving Disney for Pixar, the recent Disney revitalization, […]