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Earlier this week saw the announcement of saw the announcement of two new Disney movies, one that was already rumored in production, and the first stills from another highly anticipated film.
The first is Pixar’s next sequel, the previously titled “Monster’s Inc. 2.” NME Movie News revealed that Pixar didn’t say much about the film, merely that it would again star John Goodman as Sully and Billy Crystal as Mike.
We do, however, have a title for the movie, and it is the most creative yet. Rather than just adding another number to the end, the new “Monster’s Inc.” film will actually be called “Monster’s University.” I don’t know about you, but that sounds to me like we’re getting a prequel.
The title suggests that we’ll see Mike and Sully in their early years, where they (perhaps) meet and begin training to become one of the city’s premier scaring duos. As grumbling as I’ve been about Disney’s supposed orders to Pixar to churn out a series of sequels, I’ve also always said that there’s no one I trust more than the digital animation studio to make a lovely sequel.
I don’t know that I’d want to see a grown-up Boo, but I’d probably feel betrayed seeing Sully bond with another human child. Thus the adventures of collegiate Sully and Mike sound like the perfect option.
Now we come to the opposite of perfect options: Disney’s other new movie announcement this week. There have long been rumors that Disney wanted to try its hand at bringing Agatha Christie’s famous deceptive detective Miss Marple to the screen, but nothing was concrete until now.
I wish the rumors had stayed exactly that. The Daily Mail has the scoop that Disney announced that they’ve cast glamorous 38-year-old Jennifer Garner as the titular character in their Miss Marple movies. My mind immediately sees Garner’s breakthrough role as super spy Sydney Bristow on ABC’s “Alias.”
The brilliance of Miss Marple is that no one expects a supposedly doddering old woman to solve crimes, or really think any relevant thoughts at all, so no one guards their gossip around Marple. Disney’s cast way too young, and that means they’re not planning to properly adapt Miss Marple at all. I just have to stop thinking about it now.
Instead I’ll turn to the final bit of Pixar news that broke this week, one that makes me feel much better about everything (or at least that distracts me from the Miss Marple debacle). Before I’ve briefly brought up Pixar’s 2012 film, “The Bear and the Bow,” and this week we got to see our first concept art stills from the movie.
I learned from “Tangled” that gorgeous pencil concept art doesn’t mean the movie will be hand-drawn, but it’s wonderful to see such beautiful drawings nonetheless. I know before I complained that Pixar’s first female-led film, now re-titled “Brave,” starred a princess. Pixar’s had such inventive women in the past, from kick-butt female robots to adventurous young girls to tough-as-nails female chefs, so why for their first female-starring film do they fall back on an old trope that, Disney standard notwithstanding, they really ought to retire?
But I can’t resist the lure of a Scotland-set fairy tale, Merida being a princess or not, and the concept art looks beautiful. “Tangled” left me drooling for more Disney fairy tales, so I can’t wait until “Brave” comes out in June 2012. You can check out the stunning art from the film at Entertainment Weekly’s site here.
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*(This image by dbking is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License.)
