Beginning June 6 through July 3 at McDonald’s restaurants in North America, and then rolling out across the globe, McDonald’s Kung Fu Panda Happy Meal program features exclusive characters from DreamWorks Animation’s upcoming. McDonald’s young guests will receive one of eight Kung Fu Panda toys with the purchase of a Happy Meal at participating McDonald’s […]

Angelina Jolie told Digital Spy in a recent interviews that she finds Disney films offensive because they lack cultural diversity. The actress told OK! that she was reluctant to show her daughters movies from the animation giant because they don’t feature African princesses. “Even the colour of the children in the cartoon matters. There still […]

Coming Soon!‘s Heather Newgen talked exclusively to Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman and Lucy Liu about voicing Po the Panda, Master Shifu and Viper, respectively, in DreamWorks Animation’s new film Kung Fu Panda which will be kicking its way to conventional theaters and IMAX this Friday.

USA Today unveils this morning nine new photos from DreamWorks Animation’s sequel to Madagascar which will roar in conventional theaters and IMAX on November 7, 2008. Don’t expect a sneek peak at new characters though since the gallery is made of screen captures from the featurette that debuted a few months ago on the Bee […]

The Simpsons cast has sealed a four-year deal that hands it more “D’oh” and solidifies the animated hit’s 20th season, says Variety. Production on the show has been delayed for several months as voice actors and 20th Century Fox TV hammered out a deal. New pact bumps the stars’ salaries up to about $400,000 an […]

Elstree Screen Heritage strikes back again this year with Elstree Film Festival 3, another week-long celebration of the movies made at the historic studio just outside London in the UK. Topping the bill is a double feature matinee specifically geared towards a family audience, featuring screenings of Jim Henson’s 1981 directorial debut The Great Muppet […]

An in-depth interview with John Stevenson, co-director of DreamWork’s upcoming animated comedy Kung Fu Panda, can be read at ComingSoon. In the article, Stevenson discusses the process of making an animated film, how he got into his position, and his future plans now that he has finished his work on Panda. The martial arts adventure […]

Variety has posted an article featuring Academy award nominee Sylvain Chomet and his new feature film The Illusionist. The article suggests how the Scottish capital seduced the French director and his wife in 2003 when they visited the place for the screening of his film The Triplets of Belleville at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. […]

Slash Film unveiled 8 new images from the upcoming Pixar film this morning. Enjoy!

“Forget about fright. Now it’s all about being polite.” Jim Hill warns you in his latest Monday Mouse Watch and talks about the new spiel that Magic Kingdom cast members are expected to recite whenever they work at the Haunted Mansion.

Sun Microsystems today announced the online release of the 3D animation film Big Buck Bunny rendered using Network.com’s Sun Grid compute utility service. The movie is created using open source 3D software suite Blender, available from blender.org as well as Network.com Application Catalog, a collection of online grid-enabled applications that can be used in an […]

No Angelina Jolie or Jackie Chan in sight, but actors Jack Black, Dustin Hoffman, Lucy Liu, James Hong and Michael Clarke Duncan hit the red carpet yesterday at the Los Angeles premiere of their new film Kung Fu Panda at the (where else?) Grauman’s Chinese Theater. Also in attendance were the movie’s talented directors John […]

It’s no secret China’s cost advantages make manufacturing toys, clothes and fake designer watches a useful option, but now animation producers are waking up to the fact that cheap production costs combined with a love of anime make it a great country for making animated movies as well, reports Variety in yet another Annecy-related animation […]

In an interesting article about independent animation producers working without the traditional pipelines and high overhead, Variety reveals that Vanguard Animation, which plans to unveil its Space Chimps at the Annecy animation festival, is “finalizing the script for its next feature, an action-adventure version of a contemporary Oz story with Corpse Bride‘s Mike Johnson attached […]

Debate flares whenever someone tries to identify the world’s first animated film, which means some will surely take exception as the Annecy fest gives the honor to Frenchman Emile Cohl this time, celebrating 100 years since the debut of the artist’s landmark toon Fantasmagorie. It was on Aug. 17, 1908, that Gaumont released Cohl’s two-minute […]

Variety thinks India may lead medium’s next creative wave and tells you why. The online article also offers an exclusive first look at the Disney short Glago’s Ghost, about a Russian border guard spies an alien during his shift.

Sigourney Weaver suspects that director James Cameron’s epic science fiction adventure, Avatar, will change Hollywood forever because of the stunning new 3-D technology that Cameron has perfected. “It was quite an adventure,” the actress tells CanWest News Service. “We were in New Zealand for a lot of it, where I’d never worked. We were working […]

Dustin Hoffman gave some advice to the makers of Kung Fu Panda via the Hartford Courant: “Anyone who does animation, who is involved with this extraordinarily intricate process, has to have real emotional issues and I hope you get help.” And if his Panda performance didn’t work? Hoffman smiles. “It’s the animators’ fault!” The 70-year-old, […]

Do not expect a teaser for Pixar’s Up to be attached to copies of Wall•E, according to JV Pixar News. Instead the first trailer of Disney’s own Bolt will debut in front of Pixar’s latest film. Check out JV Pixar News for more updates on everything Pixar, including the new soundtrack cover artwork for Wall•E.

Check out the trailer for the first animated film created from scratch for 3-D at Cartoon Brew, which also links to the official Fly Me To The Moon blog.

The DreamWorks Animation blockbuster will debut on Blu-ray this Fall, says DVD Town, 6 weeks before the theatrical release of its sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

The New York Times takes an interesting look at the surprisingly smooth integration of Pixar into Disney two years after their merger. Among other victories, the paper points out that while Cars racked up a relatively low (to Pixar’s standards) $460 million in global ticket sales, the franchise generated $5 billion in sales of related […]

An exclusive new clip from Kung Fu Panda has appeared on Latino Review. This clip centers on the Furious Five, a group of martial arts masters, and their intense training room. Kung Fu Panda hits theaters on June 6th.

Variety takes a look at “newer, less-obtrusive options” for performance capture.

The actor tells Daily Camera that “in a way, I feel like this is my most fleshed out and the most satisfied I’ve been with a role. Where a lot of times, on most movies, I have a lot of leftover stuff that I didn’t feel I totally nailed as much as I wanted to. […]

The L.A. Times takes a look at the challenge that Tinker Bell might represent for the John Lasseter-run Disney studio: “The female character’s success should be an interesting test for Lasseter, whose Pixar animated films over the past decade have largely catered to boys. Somehow Pixar and parent company Disney have managed to largely overlook […]

Head over to the SF Gate to check out Charles Solomon’s reviews of two new books about the Pixar studio: David Price’s The Pixar Touch and Karen Paik’s To Infinity and Beyond: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. Meanwhile, AWN takes a look at Don Peri’s new book Working with Walt: Interviews with Disney Artists.

Radio stations nationwide are hosting online contests, giving you a chance to win some cool Mattel toys from the upcoming DreamWorks Animation film.

The official site for the upcoming animated comedy Igor currently has a new contest titled “Be An Igor”. The grand prize winner of the contest will get the chance to lend their voice to the new film, as well as be featured on the eventual DVD release. Four runner-ups will also have their entries included […]

Bye bye Brittany Murphy! Tinker Bell will magically get a new voice in her first feature film due October 28th on DVD and Blu-ray. MovieWeb reports that Tinker Bell now stars Mae Whitman as the title character, along with the voices of Raven-Symone (Iridessa), Kristen Chenoweth (Rosetta), Angelica Huston (Queen Clarion), America Fererra and Lucy […]