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D23 Expo 2022: Disney Studios Presentation

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Walt Disney Studios kicked off the first day of D23 Expo 2022 in style today with tons of advance looks at what the House of Mouse has in store for fans in the coming days, months, and years. You can watch Moviefone‘s exclusive backstage interviews by clicking on the video player above.

The first D23 Expo in three years began with the president of Walt Disney Studios Motion Picture Production, Sean Bailey, revealing the first-ever footage from ‘Hocus Pocus 2’.

Bailey was joined by the wacky Sanderson Sisters themselves – stars Bette Midler, Sarah Jessica Parker, and Kathy Najimy – who appeared via video to show how their characters are back for the first time since 1993 for more soul-stealing Halloween action.

Battling them this time around are aspiring witch Becca (Whitney Peak) and magic shop owner Gilbert (Sam Richardson).

But the audience’s biggest applause went to the original film’s Billy Butcherson (‘The Shape of Water’s Doug Jones) upon his return from the grave. ‘Hocus Pocus 2’ hits Disney+ on September 30th. The trailer is in the video player above.
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Next up on the panel was another eagerly anticipated sequel, ‘Disenchanted’. Returning stars Amy Adams, Patrick Dempsey, Idina Menzel, and James Marsden took the stage, alongside Maya Rudolph, the film’s new villain. ‘Disenchanted’ finds Adams’ Giselle and hubby Dempsey moving to the suburbs with their infant and teenage children.

“I was a huge fan of the original,” said Rudolph. “I can’t believe I got to be part of this… It’s not easy being mean to Amy Adams.” The new teaser trailer for the sequel is in the video player above.
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As far as live-action remakes of Disney animated classics go, ‘Peter Pan & Wendy’ was the first on deck today: with star Jude Law (Captain Hook) flanked by newcomers Alexander Molony (Peter Pan), Ever Gabo Anderson (Wendy), and Alyssa Wapanatâhk (Tiger Lily).

Expect more empowered female characters this time around, including at least one Lost Girl among Peter’s Lost Boys.

“Disney has worked very hard to give her more depth and a lot more character,” said Anderson of Wendy. “She and Peter are equals in this film.”

Law added that Hook and Pan’s prior relationship is also fleshed out. “We got to mine their back story a little bit more. You get to understand their past,” he said, hinting that the two were once friends.

© 2022 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Another reworking of a Disney classic comes with March 10th’s ‘Haunted Mansion’, directed by ‘Dear White People’ creator Justin Simien. Today’s first look showcased stars Rosario Dawson and LaKeith Stanfield exploring the titular house with a priest played by Owen Wilson and a historian played by Danny DeVito.

“I got to make sure all the little details, all the Easter eggs are there. Because I’m a nerd,” confessed Simien. He then joined another of the film’s stars – scream queen Jamie Lee Curtis – in a Doom Buggy rolling across the D23 Expo stage.

© 2022 Disney Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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Few Disney films are so beloved as 1994’s ‘The Lion King’. And fans will get more of the film’s animal kingdom in the 2024 prequel ‘Mufasa: The Lion King’.

Director Barry Jenkins appeared to explain how “Mufasa is the origin story of one of the greatest kings of the Pride Land… It’s the real story of how Mufasa found his place in the circle of life. What you learn is that Mufasa is great because of the family and the friends he has with him.”

Of course Disney Studios wouldn’t exist without its very first animated classic, 1937’s ‘Snow White’.

Director Marc Webb is tackling the live-action 2024 remake, featuring Gal Gadot as the Wicked Queen and Rachel Zegler as its eponymous heroine. The two were touched by the warm response they received as they presented a first look at their characters.

“Just your reaction means the world to us,” said Gadot.
A visibly moved Zegler explained that, “Snow White is the girl you remember, but she’s definitely made for the modern age,” stating the film redefines what it means to be the fairest of them all.

Rachel Zegler and Gal Gadot at Disney D23 Expo 2022 Getty Images
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While ‘Snow White’ is Disney’s first animated feature, 1989’s ‘The Little Mermaid’ is responsible for the studio’s renaissance. As well as its renewed dedication to musicals, as Rob Marshall, director of May 2023’s live-action adaptation, reminded fans today.

“It was very important for us to honor the original. We went to Alan Menken, who was divine to work with, and also our dear friend Lin-Manuel Miranda. They had never worked together before… There are four new songs. We still retain the beauty of the original score, written by the late great Howard Ashman as well.”

Fans were treated to the film’s entire “Part of Your World” number, featuring a note-perfect Halle Bailey, who appeared on stage with Marshall.

“Three days of filming ‘Part of Your World,’” said Bailey, “that was the most beautiful experience of my life. Just getting to sing a song I’ve loved since I was a child was so exciting.”

“The camera loves you,” Marshall told Bailey. “But it’s more than that. [It] loves what’s inside. [It] loves what you bring.”

The two then unveiled a teaser that recalled ‘Finding Nemo’ in the color and detail of its underwater world. You can find a teaser version of the clip in the video player at the top of the page.
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Pixar’s Elemental © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

It was then time for Pixar Animation Studios’ turn in the spotlight, with chief creative officer Pete Docter introducing next summer’s ‘Elemental’.

Director Peter Sohn spoke of how the film’s Element City was inspired by the culturally mixed New York of his childhood. Footage shown depicted the star-crossed romance of its fire-based heroine Ember (Leah Lewis) and her watery boyfriend Wade (Mamoudou Athie).

Pixar also unveiled its first original long-form series in the form of ‘Win or Lose’, each episode of which follows the perspective of a different character connected to a co-ed softball team, the Pickles.

With this year’s ‘Lightyear’, Pixar returned to the science fiction of ‘Wall-E’. Expect more in this vein soon, starting with ‘Elio’.

Announced today at D23 with star America Ferrera on stage, the film’s title character is an 11-year-old boy who doesn’t feel like he fits in his world. His mom (Ferrera) runs a top-secret military project, which inadvertently results in Elio making first contact with alien life and becoming our planet’s ambassador to the rest of the universe. It’s due out in spring 2024.

Last but by no means least on the Pixar slate – ‘Inside Out’ star Amy Poehler made a surprise appearance alongside Docter to announce ‘Inside Out 2’.

Pixar’s Inside Out 2 logo. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

“Joy and the emotions are back for an all new adventure inside Riley’s head,” said a fittingly ebullient Poehler. “Only this time she’s a teenager!”

New emotions will also appear in the film, as Kelsey Mann takes over the directing chores from Docter, with Meg LeFauve returning to write the summer 2024 release.

To cap off the panel, Disney Animation’s chief creative officer (and Oscar-winning ‘Frozen’ director) Jennifer Lee greeted the D23 Expo audience to show what’s in store for the studio’s 100th anniversary next year.

But first, Disney’s fan-favorite 2016 ‘Zootopia’ will get a spin-off series this November on Disney+. And attendees got an advance look at the aptly titled ‘Zootopia+’, consisting of six short ‘Zootopia’-style spoofs of everything from ‘The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills’ to ‘The Godfather Part II’.

Perhaps Disney’s most unique offering at the Expo was ‘Iwaju’. Coming this year to Disney+, it finds the animation studio partnering for the first time in its long history with an overseas animation studio – Africa’s Kugali. Its three founders appeared today, describing their Afrofuturism fable and its characters as a love letter to their hometown of Lagos, Nigeria.

Disney’s Iwaju. © 2022 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

More sci-fi arrived with a new look at ‘Strange World’, described by Lee as “a film about family, legacy, and what we leave behind for the generations that follow.” Director Don Hall explained how the film chronicles three generations coming together on an alien planet in order to save their world.

Stars Jake Gyllenhaal, Dennis Quaid, and Lucy Liu introduced a rip-snorting clip of an exciting chase through ‘Strange World’s creature-packed planet.
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The Disney Animation segment, and indeed entire panel, concluded with the revelation of the studio’s 100th anniversary feature film – ‘Wish’. The tale of the star upon which so many Disney characters have wished throughout the past century, ‘Wish’ is co-directed by the attending team of Chris Buck and Fawn Veerasunthorn.

Buck, who co-wrote the film with Lee, explained how ‘Wish’ explores a kingdom of wishes, in which wishes can literally come true. Offering a lush, animated watercolor style coupled with CG animation, it stars newly minted Oscar winner Ariana DeBose as 17-year-old Asha, who pleas to the heavens for help, and gets an actual star from the sky, named Star, who communicates through pantomime.
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Disney “good luck charm,” actor Alan Tudyk appeared with footage of his character, a goat named Valentino who wishes to communicate with people. Finally, DeBose saw fans off with a sizzling live performance of “More for Us,” one of the film’s songs by Grammy winner Julia Michaels.

Disney’s Wish. © 2022 Disney. All Rights Reserved.

September 9, 2022
Disney Unveils First Look At ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ opens in theaters on December 16th. Photo courtesy of the movie’s Twitter account.

Though Disney didn’t come to CinemaCon with some giant sequel movie reveal the way Warner Bros. did, the company still had plenty of information (and footage) to share, including about one of the most anticipated sequels in quite some time.

Yes, James Cameron’s first follow-up to his sci-fi hit ‘Avatar’ has an official title and it is… ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’. Not the most inspiring title, but if the world of cinema has learned anything, it’s that you should never count out Cameron.

Though the director wasn’t at CinemaCon, he sent a video message from New Zealand thanking cinema owners for their support and pledging his own backing for the theatrical experience. “We set out to push the limits to what cinema can do,” he said, before adding, “Jon and I are here with you. We can do this.”

“Jon” in this case refers to producer (and longtime Cameron colleague) Jon Landau, who was in person at the event to hype up the movie. “We need to make sure audiences have an experience they can’t get anywhere else, and that needs to be exclusively in theaters,” Landau said, before cueing a teaser.

The impressive footage focuses on Jake (Sam Worthington) and Neytiri and includes gorgeous shots of Pandora’s bright blue water — both above and below the surface; Toruk, the flying creatures introduced in the first film; and new whale-like creatures.

‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ opens in theaters on December 16th. Photo courtesy of the movie’s Twitter account.

And the official synopsis for the movie also revealed a few more details: set more than a decade after the events of the first film, ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ begins to tell the story of the Sully family (Jake, Neytiri, and their kids), the trouble that follows them, the lengths they go to keep each other safe, the battles they fight to stay alive, and the tragedies they endure.

Old friends and old foes will be back, including Joel David Moore’s friendly Norm Spellman and Giovanni Ribisi’s corporate stooge Parker Selfridge. Also returning? Sigourney Weaver and Stephen Lang, though we’ll have to wait and see exactly who they’re playing given that both their characters died in the original film. Which is not to say both Dr. Grace Augustine and Colonel Miles Quaritch can’t return, of course…
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New this time are Cliff Curtis, Edie Falco, Jemaine Clement, Vin Diesel, Michelle Yeoh, and Kate Winslet, who of course starred for the director in ‘Titanic’ and yet somehow agreed to come back and spend lots more hours in water.

And all this, of course, is just the first sequel – Cameron and co. are still hard at work on three sequels. ‘Avatar: The Way of Water’ is finally due to hit theaters on December 16th, followed by the third movie on December 20th, 2024, the fourth on December 18th, 2026, and the fifth on December 22nd, 2028. And to keep the story in our minds, the original film will be re-released in theaters on September 23rd with restored picture and sound.

Finally, backing up his and Cameron’s support for theatrical, Landau announced that the teaser will debut exclusively in theaters, attached before ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’.
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Talking of the good Doctor, Disney had Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige on hand to let slip that he and his team are strategizing about the next 10 years of movies and TV shows from the MCU, though (to no-one’s real surprise) offering no details about what that might entail.

He also brought roughly 15 minutes of footage from ‘Multiverse of Madness’ with him, and the action/cameo-packed footage wowed the crowd, providing a helpful boost for the movie, which arrives in theaters on May 6th (including, as mentioned above, that new ‘Avatar’ teaser).

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Poster. Photo Courtesy of Disney+.
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Team Pixar was present too, and had several minutes of ‘Lightyear’ to show. The movie, which features the “real” space hero Buzz whose cinematic adventures spawned the Buzz toy of the ‘Toy Story’ films, is a throwback to the sorts of sci-fi adventures that dominated the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Directed by longtime Pixar animator and filmmaker Angus MacLane, it stars Chris Evans as the voice of Buzz after he’s marooned on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth alongside his commander and their crew.

As they try to find a way back home through space and time, he’s joined by a group of ambitious recruits and his charming robot companion cat, Sox. Complicating matters and threatening the mission is the arrival of Zurg, an imposing presence with an army of ruthless robots and a mysterious agenda.

The voice cast also includes Uzo Aduba as Buzz’s commander and best friend Alisha Hawthorne, Peter Sohn as Sox, plus Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi, Dale Soules, James Brolin, Mary McDonald-Lewis, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Efren Ramirez, and Keira Hairston. The movie flies into theaters on June 17th.

(L to R) Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) and Alisha Hawthorne (voice of Uzo Aduba) in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Lightyear,’ which opens in U.S. theaters on June 17, 2022. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

On a very different animated front was six minutes’ worth of footage from ‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’. The popular TV ‘toon is making the seemingly traditional leap from small screens to big with this outsize adventure featuring the family-run restaurant.

For the movie’s story, Bob’s (H. Jon Benjamin) plans for a profitable summer are upended when a giant sinkhole opens up in front of his property, and while the kids are delighted to venture within, Bob and wife Linda must explore other revenue avenues. The footage was up to the show’s regular blend of offbeat family interactions, musical moments, and weirdness.

The cast for this one is a blend of the show’s regular voices and some additions, though most have shown up on the series at one point or another. Alongside Benjamin, that includes Dan Mintz, Eugene Mirman, Larry Murphy, John Roberts, Kristen Schaal, Zach Galifianakis, and Kevin Kline.

‘The Bob’s Burgers Movie’ will head to theaters on May 27.
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Lastly, there was a first look at David O. Russell’s new movie, which finally has a confirmed name: ‘Amsterdam’. Described as a ‘romantic crime epic’, Russell’s first film since 2015’s ‘Joy’ is a blend of fact and fiction as three close friends find themselves at the center of one of the most shocking secret plots in American history.

‘Amsterdam’ reunites Russell with ‘American Hustle’ and ‘The Fighter’s Christian Bale, along with an even more veteran collaborator, Robert De Niro (who, including this one, has now appeared in four of the director’s movies). Other stars include Margot Robbie, John David Washington, Alessandro Nivola, Andrea Riseborough, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Rock, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Shannon, Mike Myers, Taylor Swift, Timothy Olyphant, Zoe Saldana, and Rami Malek.

Following a sizzle reel from the movie, Disney announced that it’ll open in theaters on November 4th.

Perhaps not as big a presentation from the company that dominates pop culture at the moment as one might have thought, but certainly big enough.

(L to R) Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington in director David O. Russell’s ‘Amsterdam.’ Photo courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
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April 27, 2022
New ‘Lightyear’ Trailer Lands

(L to R) Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) and Alisha Hawthorne (voice of Uzo Aduba) in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Lightyear,’ which opens in U.S. theaters on June 17, 2022. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.

With each new trailer for Disney and Pixar’s ‘Lightyear’, we learn a little bit more about this latest animated release. And that continues with this third promo for the movie, which reveals that Buzz’s mission has a bigger twist than we imagined.

Pixar describes this new movie as “the definitive origin story of Buzz Lightyear, the hero who inspired the toy.” In case you’re still wondering how this all connects to ‘Toy Story’s plastic Star Command toy, ‘Lightyear’ is a movie that Andy in the ‘Story’ world would have seen and craved the toy from.

The plot follows the legendary Space Ranger (Chris Evans) after he’s marooned on a hostile planet 4.2 million light-years from Earth alongside his commander (Uzo Aduba) and their crew. As Buzz tries to find a way back home through space and time, he’s joined by a group of ambitious recruits and his charming robot companion cat, Sox (Pixar veteran Peter Sohn). Complicating matters and threatening the mission is the arrival of Zurg, an imposing presence with an army of ruthless robots and a mysterious agenda.

In addition to that cast, there’s also Keke Palmer, Taika Waititi and Dale Soules lending their voices to the Junior Zap Patrol’s Izzy Hawthorne, Mo Morrison and Darby Steel, respectively, and James Brolin can be heard as Zurg. The voice cast also includes Mary McDonald-Lewis as onboard computer I.V.A.N., Isiah Whitlock Jr. as Commander Burnside, and Efren Ramirez as Airman Diaz.
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It’s Palmer as Izzy who is one of the key elements here, as the latest promo reveals that Buzz’s mission sends him hurtling, ‘Buck Rogers’-style into the future. Perhaps not as far as Buck, but Buzz certainly ends up a distance from his own time and working with people years ahead of where he took off (62 years and change, to be exact).

Izzy is the granddaughter of Commander Hawthorne, while the others are either part of a prison release program or sign up for the adventure. And Buzz will need all the help he can get with Zurg’s rampaging robots hunting them down.

Director Angus MacLane has been doing the rounds for the movie, talking about his influences for this latest Pixar adventure. “The visual aesthetic is a collection of different things, just stuff that I think is cool and fun and tactile,” MacLane tells The Wrap.

“You can see in the design of sci-fi, well there’s ‘Star Wars’ and then ‘Aliens’ combines real-world tactical military stuff with an industrial design functionality, that’s really interesting,” Maclane continued. “And, then when you get to ‘District 9,’ how it brings in more anime influence into that design aesthetic. And that’s pretty much a straight line from ‘Star Wars.’ And, then before that it’s ‘2001.’ There’s a lot of those feelings, but there’s a pocket in there in the ’80s of consumer electronics and there was just this wonderful sense of goofy push button chunk that I’ve always enjoyed.”

‘Lightyear’ will be in theaters – initially, only in theaters unlike other recent Pixar movies – on June 17th.

(L to R) Buzz Lightyear (voice of Chris Evans) and Alisha Hawthorne (voice of Uzo Aduba) in Disney and Pixar’s ‘Lightyear,’ which opens in U.S. theaters on June 17, 2022. © 2022 Disney/Pixar. All Rights Reserved.
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April 21, 2022
New Trailer for ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Poster Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.

Movie studios like to go big with their Super Bowl trailers these days, and few have the capability like Marvel. The new trailer for ‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ certainly showed that off, as Benedict Cumberbatch’s sorcerer faced creatures and consequences.

The latter come courtesy of his actions in ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home’ in which (for the benefit of the three people who haven’t seen it), Doctor Strange tampered with the multiverse to protect Peter Parker’s (Tom Holland) true identity.

Those chickens have well and truly come home to roost – and some of them look like weird tentacled beasts. Yes, turns out tampering with the multiverse is sort of a bad idea, and now Strange has the bad dreams to prove it. Yet unlike a certain more recent Marvel character, he can tell the difference between waking life and dreams.

Trouble is, his waking life is a real nightmare, since the dimensions are beginning to merge and he’s in big trouble for that little spell. As Chiwetel Ejiofor’s Mordo points out, Strange will be held responsible.

Our favourite Sorcerer (not Supreme – that’s Benedict Wong’s Wong, who looks to be in trouble himself) seeks out Wanda Maximoff (Elizabeth Olsen), who makes her own good point that there’s a real double standard at play: his rule-breaking saw him hailed a hero, she’s been called a villain for what went down during ‘WandaVision’.

Yet Strange will also face some judgement, hauled in front of a tribunal to answer for what he did – and that sounds like Patrick Stewart, AKA the Professor X of Fox/Marvel’s ‘X-Men’ movies.
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The multi-dimensional nature of the story naturally lends itself to plenty of cameos from across the MCU and beyond, and one of the big advantages of Disney owning… well, everything… is that so many characters could potentially appear. Fans have already spotted Captain Carter’s (Hayley Atwell) shield on the poster for the movie, which points to her variant from ‘What If…?’ showing up.

And talking of the animated Marvel series, that scruffier looking Strange who makes an appearance comes from the story that saw him shatter his own existence trying to save Dr. Christine Palmer (Rachel McAdams, who is also on screen here, looking very much alive as she did at the end of the first movie). Will he be a problem or an ally for “our” Strange? Only time will tell.

Making her debut in this movie is a more recent character from Marvel comics, America Chavez (Xochitl Gomez), an interdimensional butt-kicker who is sure to have a big impact going forward.

What this truly represents, though is a big homecoming for director Sam Raimi, who can unleash amazing imagery when he wants (with the music coming from old friend Danny Elfman). And, paired with a script from ‘Loki’s Michael Waldron, anything can happen… And probably will.

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ will open in theaters on May 6th.

‘Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness’ Poster Courtesy of Walt Disney Studios.
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February 13, 2022
We’ve Seen Disney’s First Animated VR Short (And It Is Amazing)

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Walt Disney Animation has consistently broken boundaries and pushed the envelope, both in terms of technology and storytelling. They were responsible for the first animated short with synced sound (“Steamboat Willie“), the first feature-length animated film (“Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs“), and the first animated feature completely inked by computer (“The Rescuers Down Under“).

But as technology advances and storytelling becomes even more immersive and innovative, Disney Animation Studios has taken the unprecedented step of moving into an entirely new dimension — virtual reality. Their first animated VR short, “Cycles,” premiered at SIGGRAPH earlier in 2018 and recently screened as part of the New York Film Festival. (It will play at Unity’s developer conference next week, and the Infinity Film Fest in Beverly Hills on November 1 and 2.)

And we were lucky enough to be one of only a handful of people to have experienced it first hard.

First, a bit of background, as provided to me from “Cycles” director Jeff Gipson (who works at Disney Animation primarily as a lighting artist on films like “Zootopia,” “Moana,” and next month’s “Ralph Breaks the Internet“): Gipson admits that they didn’t really have a pipeline set up for how to make a VR short since, you know, nobody had done it yet.

“We all jumped in and figured it out along the way,” he said. The story was inspired by several aspects of Gipson’s life, including his previous career as an architect (“Where you’re taught that every home has a story”), his off-time hobby of riding BMX bikes through empty swimming pools (he’d take photos of the abandoned houses where he rode), and his relationships with his grandparents (“I loved looking at them when they were young and in love, and she’d write ‘Hubba Hubba’ on the photo”). In fact, the main characters of the short, Bert and Rae, are named after his grandparents.

Disney

To experience the short, you put on the fairly sophisticated helmet rig — which includes headphones that cover your ears — and once the short starts, you’re in a midcentury home on a sunny day. “Look towards the door when you want to start,” Gipson instructed me. So I did. What follows is a truly emotional journey, as Rae prepares to leave her home after Bert’s passing.

Then, through the magic of VR, we do a reverse time lapse, traveling backwards more than 50 years and pausing at important moments in the family’s life. It’s really beautiful and breathtaking; the VR element adds a level of immersive interaction and emotional connection that would have been impossible to capture if told in a traditional, “flat” style. (At one point, the couple dances by you and you want to join in.)

It’s also breathtakingly deep, not just in the dimensionality of the physical space (since you really do feel like you’re in the house) but in the level and detail of storytelling. After I took my helmet off (and, it should be noted, was holding back tears — didn’t know if they would short-circuit the device), Gipson told me there’s a moment where you can see the couple’s daughter climbing over a backyard fence. I didn’t even notice that, mostly because there’s just so much to take in. Most VR experiences that I’ve tried out, to date, have been interested in the visceral physical sensation of a place (you can smell the sulfur outside Darth Vader’s castle, or whatever), but this is the first VR thing that is mostly interested in making you feel something emotionally.

And that, beyond all of the cutting-edge technology, made it feel like an evolutionary leap forward for the medium.

Afterwards, I asked Gipson why he needed to tell the story in VR. “I think the biggest piece of it was being in those homes I showed you and just thinking, ‘Wow, what happened here?’ I was imagining, in my head, going from the present moment, back to when the family first got there, and just seeing it happen around you. I thought it was a cool feeling and wondered, ‘How do you share that?’”

The answer was VR. And it turned out to be the perfect medium, running smoothly at an astonishing 90 frames-per-second (as opposed to the 24-frames-per-second of something like “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” which is animated at that speed) and making you caught up in the storytelling at the same time.

It’s unclear how, exactly, people are going to get to see “Cycles,” but there are a couple of different versions of the short being developed (another great plus about the technique is being able to quickly retrofit content for multiple platforms), including an AR version and an app-based version. And I wouldn’t be surprised if, somehow, you’re given the option to view the short before the new “Ralph Breaks the Internet”-inspired VR experience coming to The Void this fall. (Disney owns a controlling interest in The Void and has Void stations at Downtown Disney in California and Disney Springs in Florida.)

Somehow, very soon, more and more people will get to see “Cycles.” And they need to. It’s just so beautiful.

October 22, 2018
‘Pete’s Dragon’ Star Karl Urban Loves a Great Villain

If you think you’ve heard the name Karl Urban a lot this summer, you are correct.

Not only is Urban co-starring in the August 12th Disney live-action release, “Pete’s Dragon” as Gavin, the villain trying to capture the titular friendly beast, but, earlier this summer, he reprised his role as Bones in “Star Trek: Beyond,” and was confirmed to star in “Thor: Ragnarok” as the villainous Skurge. To say he’s been busy is an understatement.

In fact, when we caught up with Urban to chat about his role in “Pete’s Dragon,” he had just wrapped the first Los Angeles press day for “Beyond,” after having flown in from New Zealand the night before. With his feet up on the coffee table, relaxing on a couch, Urban talked a bit about his role in “Thor: Ragnarok,” what it like working with director David Lowery on “Pete’s Dragon,” and what Robert Redford is really like.

Moviefone: You are a very busy man! “Star Trek” and “Pete’s Dragon,” and and you’re about to start working on Thor: Ragnarok. And, you’re also a dad! Do you find it a little bit hard to juggle everything?

Karl Urban: Yes, it’s tough. That’s the important thing is to try and find that balance and make sure that my family is included in aspects of my career as much as they can be. I just took both of my boys to Sydney to the premiere of “Star Trek” and they had a great time. They both came to the set in Dubai and one of them came to Vancouver, so it’s just about going to lengths to make sure that that balance is maintained.

Did you grow up with “Pete’s Dragon.” Does it have as big a fan base in New Zealand as it does here in the States?

I did not, actually. I never saw it as a kid and I still haven’t seen the original today. It bears no relevance to the film that I made, if it did, I would have watched it but this is a complete re-imagining.

You’ve been involved with major franchises, even in your early work, that have such huge fan followings: “Hercules,” “Xena,” “Star Trek”… What is the difference between going from those big franchise-type stories with a huge fan base to something like “Pete’s Dragon,” which has a bit of a smaller, more intimate feeling to it? How do you approach the character?

The approach is just the same, there’s no difference. Film-making is film-making, and character is character. The only difference I guess is how well that property is known before it’s released. For me, it’s about character, it’s about story and it’s about who I’m working with and where I’m working and those are the things that I concern myself with when I’m making a decision about what I’m going to do.

How different was it working with David Lowery, who comes from more of an independent movie background?

The medium is irrelevant. Every director is different. Every director has their strengths, and, for lack of a better word, their weaknesses. I found David to be a great director. He’s very specific about what he wanted and at the same time he was very willing and open to collaborate, welcoming of ideas, and he was just such a lovely positive guy. You wanted to please him and help him realize his vision for this film. He had a wonderful creative team around him; the writer Toby [Halbrooks] was constantly on set, and it was a rewarding experience.

Can you tell me also a little bit about working with Robert Redford? He’s such an icon in Hollywood.

It was incredible. To tell you the truth one of the appeals of joining this film was the prospect of getting to work with Robert Redford and indeed when I did get to work with him it was so surreal. You’d be in a scene with him and he would smile and you’d have a plethora of classic Hollywood films flashing [in front of you]. And he’s such a warm, generous guy. He shared stories about many things, from Santa Fe to his love of automobiles and bikes and horses — and it was just an incredible honor to be able to work with such an icon.

Speaking of horses, Bryce and David mentioned when they did the trailer launch that he saved a horse on the way to the set — do you have any other stories like that? They said he did plenty of stuff that made them go ‘Wow! He’s really doing that!’

Yes, I think that’s probably the one that I know the best. He was on the way to work and saw an emaciated horse in a paddock and stopped and basically saved the horse. He went and got a trailer and they rescued the horse and then he had it checked out and stabled it and put on a proper regime of feed to try and build some condition back up in this animal and that’s just a real testament to the man that he is.

What does it mean to you to become part of this whole Disney universe? I know you’ve named your son after Indiana Jones, which is part of Disney now, and now you’re in “Pete’s Dragon” and you’re going into “Thor.” So what does it mean to you, personally, to be part of that now?

Well to me … what I personally cherish the most out of any experience are the people who you get to meet and work with, and that to me is the most rewarding experience out of everything. And in both cases of “Pete’s” and “Thor” there are some really wonderful people and it’s my hope that they remain a part of my life from this point forward. I loved working with David Lowery — I’d work with him again in a heartbeat — the same obviously with Wes Bentley and a bunch of the other guys that worked on that, and Mr. Redford. On “Thor” it’s the same thing with Taika [Waititi]. I’m pretty fortunate.

We know you’re playing a villain in “Thor: Ragnarok.” Can you tell us a little bit about what’s going on? Anything we can expect from your character?

I can’t say too much under the bounds of confidentiality, and I haven’t actually started shooting yet; I’ll start in a couple of weeks. So, that being said, it’s a wonderful opportunity to work with Cate Blanchett and Chris [Hemsworth] and Tom [Hiddleston] and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Villains are so much fun to play and you play somewhat of a villain in “Pete’s Dragon.” Do you take any extra … have a little more fun with the villainous characters as opposed to the straight ones?

The villains are always the fun characters to play because, of course, they can get away with saying and doing things that we never can in real life. My favorite villains are the villains that are fun and naughty and the character of Skurge isn’t cut-and-dry in the same way that Gavin isn’t cut-and-dry. The character has his motives and his reasons for doing what he does and I think as long as you imbue your character with that then you’ll avoid being some carbon copy 2D bad guy.

“Pete’s Dragon” opens in theaters everywhere August 12th.

August 11, 2016
‘Pete’s Dragon’ Star Wes Bentley Can’t Imagine a World Without Disney

When you see Wes Bentley‘s name, you wouldn’t typically associate it with a family movie — much less one made by Disney — yet, opening on August 12th is “Pete’s Dragon.”

Bentley stars as Jack, the fiancé of Grace (Bryce Dallas Howard), who happens to find a forest-dwelling boy named Pete (Oakes Fegley), who claims to have a dragon for a best friend. Along with Grace’s dad, Mr. Meacham (Robert Redford), and daughter Natalie (Oona Laurence), they must stop Jack’s brother, Gavin (Karl Urban), from capturing Pete’s dragon.

We sat down with Wes recently to talk about being part of his first family-friendly film, filming “Pete’s Dragon” and “American Horror Story: Hotel” back to back, and what he would tell his younger self.

Moviefone: This movie is a completely different from the “Pete’s Dragon” most of us saw growing up. What drew you to this version?

Wes Bentley: David Lowery [the director] drew me to it. I was a fan of the original, but I knew that didn’t have anything to do with it, really. So I put that out of my mind right away and I had met David before and knew his work, and I really wanted to work with him. I also wanted to do a family film. Those two combined, that’s as much as I knew at the beginning and then I got to see how much more they were going to do. It’s Disney, they’re going to make something special, and they did.

So this is actually, I believe, it’s your first family film.

Yeah, it is.

What is that experience like? Especially because you get to share it with your kids.

My son is almost six, and he’s going to come with me tonight to the premiere. This will be the first time he can really watch me in a film. He’s seen bits of stuff, you know, we freeze framed a moment from “American Beauty” and he stood by it, because he has my eyebrows, so we were trying to catch a freeze frame. So, he knows I do this, but he’s never actually seen anything.

What do you think he’s going to think of dad being up on the big screen?

I don’t know. That’s going to be interesting to find out. You know, I did bring him to the set one time, he was much younger, three, and he was sitting behind the monitor and he kept seeing me on screen and then I would see his head pop around and then he would look at the screen and then his head would pop around. He couldn’t figure out how I could be in both places at once. He couldn’t picture it. Imagining passed a 2D image. I think he just couldn’t see me.

What does it mean for you to be part of the Disney family now? I mean, it’s such a legacy that goes back to our parents, grandparents, and now our children are getting taken by their films.

My wife I were — I think someone brought the question up — we were contemplating it one night. What would the world be without Disney? It’s hard to — that’s how big it is — you can’t really imagine. It’s hard to imagine even in the toughest places on Earth, where things are at their worst, Disney films are still there. They’re a part, in some way, of that — or it’s in there somehow. I can’t imagine what it would be like. I have no idea. It’s big for me, “Alice in Wonderland” and all of the musicals when I was a teenager. They were all big for me.

This is actually pretty different from what you are doing on TV: “American Horror Story.” How was it going from filming something like that, which is meant to induce nightmares. to this, something meant to uplift and give you hope?

Not just “American Horror Story,” a lot of my career has been playing in the dark side of human nature and even the non-genre-esque characters were still dealing with darker elements. So I was excited to do this because it’s a tap into that lighter side. Also, I have children. I got to tap into that and that side of myself. But it was tricky. I actually shot this before shooting “American Horror Story: Hotel.” And the set of “Pete’s Dragon” was a really loving, warm set. We had a great time doing it. New Zealand was beautiful, my kids were there and it was just like — my son was sort of “working” on the film and the ladies had him helping them out in the trailer.

Then I went to shoot “American Horror Story” and it’s also a lot of fun to work on that, but it’s a grueling shoot. We work a lot of hours trying to get a lot in a little amount of time. There are psychologically tough elements to those, definitely. Definitely different from “Pete’s Dragon.” It was definitely tough to jump from that to that. I didn’t want my kids to come to the “American Horror Story” set.

You would be paying for therapy bills, right?

Yeah, exactly. So it was quite a leap.

Speaking of that a little bit, when I spoke to David Lowery last month, he did say that he likes that this film kind of makes kids a little bit uncomfortable, a little bit scared — it makes them feel things you don’t normally want kids to connect to, but at the same time, it’s necessary. How do you feel that is necessary as a parent and also as a storyteller?

I think, in my opinion, as a society we have become afraid to let our kids feel tough feelings at an early age because we think they are going to have psychological problems. I think the opposite. I think dealing with somewhat heavy issues or feeling heavy, deep emotional feelings let you learn how to deal with it, cope with it. Kind of like, in a physical way, falling off the monkey bars teaches you that you need to be careful on the monkey bars. So you sort of learn that about emotions. So I really appreciate David’s opinion about that and the way he made the film because I think a lot of times, children’s films now — the one’s made recently — they have, for the most part avoided that.

We grew up with some pretty serious stuff like the “Secret of NIMH” is not soft, “The Last Unicorn” and “Dark Crystal,” these were the things we grew up with and they touched on some heavy elements with some dark imagery. Not dark meaning like “‘American Horror Story’ dark,” but gothic sort of feeling, literally dark imagery. I feel like it would be nice for our kids to grow up with that. I feel elements of it in some cartoons and some movies, but I don’t think it’s enough. So I am glad that “Pete’s Dragon” doesn’t shy away from some things and some of the emotional difficulties of being five and 10. The reality of life that can come knocking at your door.

It also has a lot messages. There’s the family that chooses you or the one that you choose. There’s some adoption and friendship. What was the most touching element to you about the story between Pete and Elliott?

It’s that love passes through every boundary. That love and friendship, love and life, can bridge those difficult feelings and difficult moments in our lives. It’s so strong, the image of five-year-old Pete. What happens in the beginning and then his first encounter with Elliott being so delicate, but immediately he feels loved. And if immediately he feels loved, things go well for him. Also, as he’s moving on in life and he’s 10 and it’s time to be with, maybe, other people and a family, as he is finding that family feeling the love and what he is leaving and then going into what’s coming next. It’s just about love and how much love can mean when you share it with each other. And support, support is not just, “I’ll be there for you” but, you know, it’s loving somebody.

So I think that’s a huge element here. I think that there’s hidden — there’s one here, too, but I don’t know if it’s an intentional theme, but you’re 10 years old, you have a child who’s turning nine. That’s a big change. There are a lot of changes that happen between eight and 10, you know? Mythologically they call it “losing the golden ball” and that’s something that happens around eight or nine, and it’s big for everyone. We’ve all had, if we look back at our lives, something happen to us at eight or nine or 10 that truly changes you and starts to point you toward adolescence and, I think, the movie, in a strange way, kind of touches on that.

You’ve been very open in the past that you have had some drug issues, and I’m glad to see you’ve overcome them and you’re succeeding. If you were to go back and give yourself advice, knowing what you now know, what would you tell yourself?

Relax, man. Don’t take everything so seriously. I think I got scared because I knew I still had a lot to learn as an actor and as a person. So I got very tense. I tightened up and into all that confusion. So I think if I saw myself again I would just relax and just take it one step at a time. I was afraid to make a mistake because it was so perfect in the beginning in some ways. That movie was so good and people really loved it so much, I just didn’t want to mess up and show who I really was in the next one, which was that I’m not that good of an actor. You know what I mean? It was that fear. Fear is the problem in just about anything. Fear will always lead to trouble. So if you can learn to not be afraid or at least learn how to deal with fear, then you will be fine. I think that the way to deal with fear is to relax and not — just let things happen and be okay with it.

Disney’s “Pete’s Dragon” opens nationwide Friday, August 12th.

August 10, 2016
Why Disney’s Live-Action ‘Jungle Book’ Has Deep Roots in ‘Bambi,’ ‘Lion King’

In anticipation of Disney‘s live-action adaptation of “The Jungle Book,” Moviefone had the opportunity to chat with director Jon Favreau about what inspired him to re-imagine the beloved animated classic.

Opening this Friday, Favreau’s movie takes us back into the jungle with Mowgli and friends using cutting-edge technology that renders an incredible, photo-realistic world in 3D. When you see it, you’ll be shocked by the knowledge that “The Jungle Book” was shot entirely in Downtown Los Angeles using practical sets and Dolby vision laser projection. In other words, if you thought movies like “Avatar” and “Life of Pi” looked amazing, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

We also get some of what we love from the original musical Walt Disney production but fit to reflect the time and outfitted with a stellar voice cast. Newcomer Neel Sethi plays Mowgli and is joined by Sir Ben Kingsley (Bagheera), Lupita Nyong’o (Raksha), Bill Murray (Baloo), Scarlett Johansson (Kaa), Idris Elba (Shere Khan), Giancarlo Esposito (Akilah) and Christopher Walken (King Louie).

With all of this in mind, we couldn’t wait to talk to Favreau about raising the bar on visual storytelling using a tried and proven method: the Walt Disney way.

Moviefone: What I took away the most from your take on “The Jungle Book” was just how steeped in Walt Disney’s philosophy for storytelling it was. You did what he did with fairy tales and the classic Kipling story to create a new take on a beloved movie. How did you go about mining the core of the original film’s narrative to build your own vision?

Jon Favreau: You just can’t make the movie exactly like the old one. It wouldn’t work live-action, so we had to make some changes to it. Hopefully, we honored the legacy of the original one enough that you feel satisfied if you’re expecting that, but yet you’re seeing something that goes further in some ways.

Enough people who love Disney have seen it that I feel comfortable that we didn’t at least put them off — that we didn’t do our homework and embrace the original. That was an important film for me.When tackling this project, what helped you focus on the story you wanted to tell as you researched the original?

It’s interesting because it’s not like going back to the original movie unlocked all those puzzles. The trick that I had done on “Iron Man” that had worked pretty well was: the first thing I do is try to remember and brainstorm for the images and the things I remember most clearly because if it sits clearly in your memory it’s probably been prioritized and is most important. And so “Bare Necessities” was a big one, and “I Wanna Be Like You,” King Louie and the crumbling temple, and Kaa with his hypnotic eyes, and the boy being woozy, and me being scared. And then floating down the river and singing, and Shere Khan and the torch, and the elephants and the baby elephant.

I make a big list of all that stuff, and then I look at the materials because, when you watch it fresh, you’ll connect with different things. I wanted to make sure to include all those images that I had connected to. And then I actually took a lot of cues from the way the plot unfolds the story because that was actually well done. Walt’s a great story man, and that was very different from the book. We looked at the books, too, to get inspiration. Certain things the books were better at. I like the treatment of the elephants in the books. I like the treatment of Ikki, the porcupine, I liked Raksha, the mother. So I kinda pick and choose between the two. I think me being such a fan of the material and connecting with it gave me confidence that my instincts were going to be the instincts of others like me.

With that wealth of information, how did you tread through it and not let it overwhelm your vision for “The Jungle Book”?

They say a book is like designing a boat, and a screenplay is like designing an airplane. It has to lift. Once you hit the end of that runway, the thing has to take off. And if it doesn’t fly under its own engineering, it falls apart. So there are certain rules you have to stick by. You have to keep the pace at a certain rhythm, you have to have the right mixture of emotion and tone, and once you lock into that you could get clues from other movies. Honestly, as much as we looked at “Jungle Book,” we looked at “Bambi,” we looked at “Pinocchio,” we looked at “The Lion King.” For the PG version, we made, there were more clues in those films than there were in “The Jungle Book” for how to present it, because we always found ourselves tonally: a little too young, a little too humorous. So whenever we brought in a musical element or a humorous element from the original, we found ourselves really having to be careful that we didn’t trip up the whole film.On a recent trip to the old Ink and Paint building over at Walt Disney Studios, I saw a multi-plane shadowbox for the opening scene of “Bambi,” which I immediately thought of during the opening of your film in its composition.

We looked at that shot. We looked at the opening of “Bambi” because back, when he was doing Bambi, Walt was still flushed with success and revenue from “Snow White,” which was a huge hit and, unfortunately, over Walt’s career, they were operating to diminishing returns from that point on. But Walt was so passionate that he would convince Roy, his brother, to give him the resources and the people that he needed. “Bambi” was really the one where he wanted to raise the bar like they were able to do in “Snow White” and that was his labor of love for many, many years.

I don’t know if he was ever fully satisfied with the version that came out judging from the notes that I had read, because the studio was coming into a lot of other challenges. I think the war was coming on or the strike. I think it was the strike for that film, and there was definitely a version of the film he was going for and what was nice is that he got stenographers keeping notes of all their story sessions. On the Blu-ray of “Bambi,” you hear them talking about how they were gonna make the animals look photo-real, and the tone of the performance vs. how cartooney they were in “Snow White,” how realistic they were presenting them, and the way there were gonna show the photo-real backgrounds, and how they would stylize things. And the way they would treat the hunter, and the way they would treat the weather. Hearing it in his read-back transcript, it was almost like having him available to us. And he really was wrestling with a lot of things people wrestle with today. Certainly, we did.

So we drew inspiration looking at the shots. The beauty of the shots in “Bambi” were unsurpassed by the time we got to the ’67 “Jungle Book” film. Although character animation was still hitting a high watermark because you had the Nine Old Men around. I think most if not all of them were still around for the animated emotional moments. You didn’t have the same lushness of the multi-plane, nearly the amount of artists designing a project like this. And, although it was a big success for them financially, it wasn’t embraced in the same way the films like “Snow White” were in its day. So I think by trying to channel the entire Disney legacy and then also “The Lion King,” which came afterwards (that was affected very much by “The Jungle Book” if you hear the animators of that one speak). I think that one was essential in having fun musical moments but also having scary moments, where characters are in serious danger.

And taking cues from Walt there makes so much sense, it immerses you in Mowgli’s world, with its practical and CGI surroundings.

He used to do that with his “Alice” and old “Laugh-O-Gram” stuff by having a live-action girl in an illustrated world. It was something he was first drawn to. So yeah, we really tried to honor the legacy but tried to do something new and exciting that just stands on its own two feet.

We’ve got to talk casting; this is an incredible ensemble. What inspired you to approach the talent attached to the film?

That’s a big part of my job. You know Walt Disney in “The Jungle Book” was the only time he did celebrity casting because those people were famous back then before the film, so I think it gave me permission to go after higher people like Christopher Walken or Idris Elba.

Loved the cowbell reference by the way. So meta!Did you catch it? I’m so glad it’s in there. That was an on-set discovery. That was a prop in the background that I pulled and I said, “Oh my god, this is what Mowgli has to use. I knew he had to touch something that would get the attention of King Louie and I saw the cowbell off to the side and I pulled that in and swapped it out for the prop that we had designed for it.

Awesome. Sorry, back to casting…

With Christopher Walken and Bill Murray, I let them really be themselves and be recognizable through the characters. I think that was part of what made the original special as well.

Disney’s “The Jungle Book” opens Friday, April 15th.

April 12, 2016