Despite reports that The Lone Ranger is looking like it’s going to be a movie that will be featuring it’s title character no more prominently than the former sidekick Tonto, it will still be a huge release with all the power of the Disney marketing machine behind it; so I imagine a lot of actors have been going to bed every night hoping and praying that they would somehow get cast as the masked man. Well, those poor saps can put the rosaries away, because they never had a chance. Armie Hammer has it all locked up. What did you expect? He’s 6’5”, 220, and there’s only one of him. Hammer turned heads playing the Winklevoss twins in last year’s high profile film The Social Network. He managed to catch everybody’s attention not only by being statuesque and charming, but by also playing two roles so convincingly that a lot of people who saw the film thought he must have actually been two people. Just imagine how good he’s going to be when he only has to play one guy. Or don’t imagine. You won’t have to. According to Variety we’ll all find out soon enough, as production on The Lone Ranger is set to start moving forward once Depp finishes shooting on Tim Burton’s Dark Shadows and Hammer completes his work on The Brothers Grimm: Snow White.

What happens when you work your way to the top of the game, and the game changes? You have to change it back. What’s been lovingly dubbed the “Robot Boxing Movie,” Real Steel hasn’t shown much in the way behind the high tech monstrosities that its CGI has brought to life so far, but this trailer gives a more intimate look at what the movie’s really all about: a father and a son connecting in a garbage heap. It’s about an underdog made of metal, an underdog made of flesh, and working your way back up to the top. Check out the trailer for yourself:

So, what did you think of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides? Do you think it was good enough to keep the series going despite the loss of Gore Verbinski in the director’s chair and Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom in starring roles? Oh wait… you didn’t even see it yet? It hasn’t come out? Well, that’s not stopping Disney from getting the wheels in motion for a fifth one. They’ve got visions of that 3D money dancing in their heads. However, all of the pieces are yet to be in place to make a fifth film official. What has already happened is producers have a first draft of the script in their hands. Terry Rossio has once again handled the chores of coming up with more mystical pirate adventures, but for the first time he’s done the work without collaborator Ted Elliott. Now that there’s a story in place, the next step will be for the moneymen to try and get the star and a director in place. Overtures have already been made toward On Stranger Tides director Rob Marshall to keep this train a rolling, but nothing is official on that front.

Disney’s July release Winnie the Pooh is shaping up to become a cross-demographic juggernaut. First off, you have the fact that it’s hand drawn, which is going to draw in a bunch of nostalgia sales from people looking to get a break from the Hannah Montana era of Disney product. Secondly, it’s a new Winnie the Pooh movie, which means everyone is going to take their kids to see it. And now, Zooey Deschanel and her She & Him bandmate M. Ward have been added to the soundtrack, which should send hipsters in their early twenties running to the theaters to have a half ironic, half too precious to pass up time at the movies with Pooh Bear.

There was a time, decades before I was born, where if you were going out to the movies then chances were pretty good that you were going to see something with Mickey Mouse in it. That’s where Walt Disney originally made his mark, in movie theaters. Whereas we sit through advertisements before our big feature films today, back in the days of yore there would be a presentation of news reel footage and animated shorts. Through these shorts enduring icons were born: Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald. These are the franchise players of the Disney Empire. But recently, they’ve felt a bit diminished to me. Sure they still appear in books, in TV shows, on countless numbers of merchandise, but it feels like Disney has walled themselves off from the rest of culture. It used to be that you saw Disney characters everywhere. Now you see them only on the official Disney TV Channel, in the official Disney Store, at an official Disney theme park. When’s the last time you saw some foreign tourist walking around in the US with a faded out Mickey Mouse t-shirt on? It might be time that Disney looks to revitalize the core of its brand. One man who is working to accomplish something like this is Burny Mattinson. His work with Disney goes all the way back to the Winnie the Pooh films of the 1960s, and he’s working as the supervising story artist on an updated Winnie the Pooh that’s set for this year. [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

The director of such celebrated kiddy fare as The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and Coraline is putting together his own production studio in San Francisco. Their first project, Shademaker, looks to frighten children and is already boasting some impressive talent behind the scenes. A job recruitment post for the production dug up by Cartoon Brew says this: “Cinderbiter is a new stop-motion company whose mandate is to make great, scary films for young ‘uns with a small, tight-knit crew who watch each other’s backs. Joining Henry on Cinderbiter’s first production will be veteran team member Eric Leighton and the celebrated production designer, Lou Romano. That’s right – Lou Romano!” Cinderbiter has since been renamed to Shademaker Productions, but clearly the important bit of info in that blurb is Lou Romano. He is a production designer who has worked on Pixar projects like Cars, Up, and Ratatouille. Pixar is probably the most successful movie studio going today and Selick’s films have legions of devoted fans (even if 90% of them think that Tim Burton made his movies).

Deadline Celebration reports that a new 3D stop-motion animated Pinocchio, based on the images from a Gris Grimly illustrated version of Carlo Collodi’s classic fairy tale and co-directed by Grimly and The Fantastic Mr. Fox’s Mark Gustafson, is in the works. The script was written By Del Toro and his frequent collaborator Matthew Robbins (Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark), and every pain seems to have been taken by everyone involved to come up with something that is going to scare the bejesus out of your kids. When explaining why he wants to make little girls cry, Guillermo del Toro said, “There has to be darkness in any fairy tale or children’s narrative work, something the Brothers Grimm, Hans Christian Anderson and Walt Disney understood. We tend to call something Disney-fied, but a lot of people forget how powerfully disturbing the best animated Disney movies are, including those kids being turned into donkeys in Pinocchio. What we’re trying to do is present a Pinocchio that is more faithful to the take that Collodi wrote. That is more surreal and slightly darker than what we’ve seen before.” Okay, so read that again. People tend to forget how “powerfully disturbing” the Disney version of Pinocchio is; yet he feels that they must make something even more dark and surreal. As somebody that was completely freaked out by the concepts of donkey children and starving in the belly of a whale when I was five or so, I say hell yeah. This generation [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

This summer Walt Disney Pictures will release the first big screen Winnie the Pooh movie in more than 35 years. The story will see Pooh Bear gathering together all of the usual cast of characters from the 100 Acre Woods on a mission to save Christopher Robin from something or other. Images from the upcoming animated feature have been released and just a cursory glance at them has childhood memories bubbling up from some dark, disgusting place inside of me. Disney hasn’t looked like classic Disney in quite a while. And by classic Disney, I’m talking about hand drawn animation featuring all of the core characters from back in the day when Walt was doing things. I know the Pooh characters aren’t Mickey and Minnie; they weren’t created by Disney they were acquired by them. But the acquisition happened long enough ago that for my childhood they all stood side by side in the Disney pantheon.

It has been previously reported that both Universal and Relativity are vying to put together competing live action Snow White Films for 2012. Universal has been hard at work on Snow White and the Huntsman which reportedly is going to star Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and Viggo Mortenson, and Relativity is putting together The Brother’s Grimm: Snow White directed by Tarsem Singh, who made 2000’s The Cell. This has made Disney very angry. Sensing a couple of upstarts treading on their fairy tale turf, they have hired Oscar nominated Toy Story 3 scribe Michael Arndt to pen a Snow White film of their own called Snow and the Seven. This version of the popular tale will take place not in its traditional setting, but in 19th century China. The story will center on an Englishwoman who travels to Hong Kong for her father’s funeral only to find that she has become the target of her evil stepmother’s scheming. Oscar winning production designer John Myhre has also been brought on to begin to create the look of the film. While Universal and Relativity will theoretically have the chance to get their Snow White projects made and out to theaters first, this new flurry of activity from the Disney camp can only be sending one message: “Get off of my land!” Source: The Hollywood Reporter

Last week, a Tron fan site claimed that there was going to be a teaser trailer for Tron 3 (or Tr3n if you’re nasty) on the Blu-ray of Tron Legacy when it comes out later this year. That seemed surprising (and a little bit like fanboy wishful thinking), but now an even bigger Tron fan site (Aint It Cool News) has released details about the teaser. According to them, the Tron 3 teaser trailer includes a scene with Alan (Bruce Boxleitner) and Ram (a briefly seen real world counterpart to the program inside The Grid from the original movie, played by Dan Shor). It also includes a scene with Quorra (Olivia Wilde) being mobbed by press outside of Encom for 1) being attractive 2) theoretically dating Sam Flynn and 3) claiming she just spoke with Kevin Flynn (maybe even the human version) the day before. The third segment is the villainous fruition of a single-line cameo from Cillian Murphy in Legacy which sees his character Edward Dillinger speaking with father Ed about how their plans are going according to, erm, plan. Why does this signal a good start for the movie? Because all of these moments, as brief as they are, focus on character and plot. A forged connection from the past, a press anxious to find out information about a woman that wasn’t born in the real world, and two business-savvy men plotting their own self-interest. The teaser could have been more light-based transportation, and while that would have [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

A new promotional image from The Muppets has struck, featuring Jason Segel and his new best pals: a frog, a pig, a beeping scientist, a non-beeping scientist and a giant monster. It’s good to know that the cast is having so much fun during production. Also, it’s great that Beeker is holding up what looks like a screwdriver (the non-alcoholic kind) and staring at it with a look of abject fear. Check out the happy-go-lucky image for yourself:

For those that simply look at domestic box office numbers (and who really does that?), it might appear that Tron Legacy was a failure. Of course, it was a failure in the sense that it didn’t kick the door to the theaters around the country right off its hinges, but it was still a success considering that it pulled in $300 million-ish worldwide and probably sold double that in video games and plastic toys that young children can throw at each other while chanting, “De-rezzzz!” Tron Legacy needs a sequel, and Disney might be in agreement with that statement if the rumors are to be believed. The film itself almost seems secondary to the largest beast – the toy creating machine – but with another sequel, everyone involved has a chance to create something that works on the story level as well as for the soundtrack and flashy images. That would be something to look forward to. [Aint It  Cool]

The movie world is so affected by Jon Favreau’s departure from the Iron Man franchise that there’s even speculation that some sort of BFF break-up between the director and Robert Downey Jr was to blame. That will most likely never be proven (until the tell all book comes out in three decades), but it’s clear that fans are reaching for any sort of explanation that rationalizes why the man who was at the forefront of the Marvel solo launch would choose to walk away from his creation in its adolescent phase. The reason, however, is less important than the simple fact that leaving was absolutely the right thing to do.

Even with 1/3 of the energy that director Shawn Levy displays in person, the trailer for Real Steel that’s smashing its way through the internet is still enough to get the blood pressure rising. The film focuses on Hugh Jackman as a former boxer who turned to Robot Boxing when the sport replaced MMA as the world’s most popular sport that involves punching. Now, he’s washed up twice over and trying to make a come back while reconnecting with his son. That last element is nowhere to be found in this trailer, but the hype sure is. Watch the trailer below:

For authenticity, arrange for someone to rudely call you at dinner time to read this entry and play the trailer for you over the phone. Apparently, the planet Mars needs your mother, and for only the price of a cup of coffee a day, you could be winning back karma points for that hobo you killed in that hit and run last year. The premise of Mars Needs Moms (along with its title) is pretty ridiculous. Martians are coming to Earth in secret to grab women who have taken advantage of their fecundity in order to raise the unruly children of Mars. One young kid (voiced by Seth Green) who doesn’t appreciate his mother, goes on a galactic quest to get her back. I imagine he’ll learn a few lessons along the way about broccoli. Despite the corny (and broccoli-y) nature of it all, the trailer showcases some astounding CGI visuals (the shots of Dan Fogler’s character alone are uncanny). Plus, it looks genuinely funny. It’s got all the standard elements including the adorable robotic dog sidekick that vomits up metal scrap, but a lot of the humor seems to work, and it seems covered in heartwarming goo. So, how much are you willing to donate?[Apple]

Everyday, come rain or shine or internet tubes breaking, Film School Rejects showcases a trailer from the past. Today’s trailer delivers all the thrills and chills you could possibly get from cartoon ostriches, hippos, and centaurettes (whatever they may be) dancing around to classical music. 1940 was the year that this leaped off the stages of Broadway and onto the big screen with as many enchanted mop slaves as you could hope for. Think you know what it is? Check out the trailer after the jump.

The trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides debuts on December 13th, but we’re giving away a chance to see it before anyone else while luxuriating in the magic of Disneyland. You know, the place where you hassled Goofy as a child and proposed to your girlfriend as a man-child. If you live in Los Angeles and need a break from the 104th Annual Complete Shut Down of All Production and Life in the City, enter to win, and you might find yourself finally faced with a free chance to apologize to Goofy and to see Johnny Depp stumbling around Captain Jack Sparrow style before the rest of the planet. Cross your fingers, mark your calendars for December 13th, and take a stab at entering. But how do you enter?

Chances are that you stumbled upon a video recently where Disney paraded their animated films from 1 to 50 in celebration of the release of Tangled. You might have marveled at the pristine quality of Snow White or clutched at your chest in childlike wonderment at the Lion King’s roar. You might have even had a flood of childhood memories wash over you like the sun on a cold day. There’s something to be applauded in creating their 50th animated feature film, but Disney is celebrating a little bit late because there’s one movie that’s missing from that video roster.

A few weeks ago I attended a screening of Tangled, the 50th animated feature out of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Tangled, of course, is the tale of Rapunzel — though with the expected tilt and sing-a-long twist that is a hallmark of every Disney feature. For those not in the know, the story of Rapunzel and her long locks was most famously told by the Brothers Grimm — though the fairy tale was decidedly darker than the Disney telling, and with key plot details shifted for benefit of an extra happy ending. Instead of Rapunzel (Mandy Moore) being the daughter of a peasant couple stealing vegetables from the garden of an enchantress — she is the daughter of nobility — the king and queen of an unnamed kingdom. Her hair imbued with the ability to restore youth to whomever control its power, Disney’s Rapunzel is stolen away by Mother Gothel (Donna Murphy) for just this purpose, and raised in a well hidden tower in the middle of the forest.

This week, Fat Guy Kevin Carr loosens his belt and falls asleep on the couch after eating too much turkey. But with three days left in the weekend, there’s always the opportunity to brave the hoards of crazy holiday shoppers to see a movie. It’s time to look at a new Disney princess with Tangled, dance with the divas from Burlesque and go Faster with a piece of the Rock.