Last month Emma Watson was linked to new live-action fairy tale remakes: Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella.  Playing both Belle and Cinderella is probably too much princess for any one actress, so Watson has understandably ruled out one project.  Variety’s Marc Graser tweeted, “Emma Watson has decided NOT to star in Disney’s CINDERELLA.”  Graser did not explain Watson’s reasoning, but did tweet in reply, “Details to come.”  So stay tuned.

Disney may go back to the drawing board with the original shortlist: Saoirse Ronan (Hanna), Gabriella Wilde (The Three Musketeers) Alicia Vikander (A Royal Affair).  Cate Blanchett is expected to play the evil stepmother.  Kenneth Branagh (Thor) will direct.  The studio hopes to get Cinderella in front of cameras in London this fall for a possible 2014 release.

Fresh off the rather large opening weekend for Sam Raimi’s fantasy pic Oz the Great and Powerful, Disney is ready to put a new spin on yet another classic story.  Deadline reports that screenwriter Joe Ahearne, who most recently wrote Danny Boyle’s upcoming psychological thriller Trance, has been tapped to pen the script for a live-action reimagining of Beauty and the Beast called The Beast.  This seemingly sets off yet another Snow White-esque race between two fairy tale-themed pics, as Warner Bros. has long been developing a new take on Beauty and the Beast with Guillermo del Toro directing and Emma Watson set to star.  Hit the jump for more on Disney’s latest move towards world domination.

We may have seen the last days of hand-drawn animation.  It’s not going to come from DreamWorks Animation (all of their 2D endeavors flopped), BlueSky, or Sony Pictures Animation.  The last refuge was Disney, who had released the hand-drawn Winnie the Pooh in 2011.  But that looks like the end of Disney’s 2D animation for the foreseeable future.  According to /Film, at “Walt Disney Company shareholder’s meeting, CEO Bob Iger revealed none of Disney’s animation companies, which includes Disney Animation, Pixar and Disney Toons, are currently developing, or have plans to develop, any 2D, hand drawn animation for the big screen. He’s not ruling it out, but the current slate—which probably stretches 3-4 years—has none of it.”

Hit the jump for my thoughts on this sad state of affairs.

Disney has released the first trailer for their Cars spinoff, Planes.  The film was originally set to go directly-to-DVD, but now Disney is sending it to the big screen.  The story focuses on Dusty, “a small town dreamer who longs to enter the most epic around-the-world air race… despite his fear of heights.”  The original plan to send the film direct-to-DVD isn’t necessarily a bad sign.  Toy Story 2 was originally set to go to straight-to-video, and that’s one of Pixar’s crown jewels.  However, Planes comes from Pixar’s two weakest films, and the studio has no involvement in the spinoff.  Still, Planes will probably serve its main purpose, which is to keep the Cars merchandise train rolling.

Hit the jump to check out the trailer.  Planes opens August 9th. [Update: Disney has informed us that this is the same trailer that played at the D23 Expo last year, and thus is not new. Expect an official theatrical trailer soon.]

Disney is on the hunt for a new director for its feature film adaptation of the popular children’s book Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.  The project has had a fairly rocky road to production, as The Kids Are All Right director Lisa Cholodenko first signed on to direct in May of 2011 and after securing Steve Carell to star, Fox decided to put the film into turnaround.  Disney picked the project up last fall and development continued with Cholodenko writing the script alongside Rob Lieber, but now Deadline reports that Cholodenko is exiting the film.  No specific reason is given, but one assumes creative differences of some sort are the culprit.

The book is about a kid who wakes up with gum in his hair, and whose day goes downhill from there.  Carell is still attached to play the kid’s father with Shawn Levy producing, and Disney has started the search for a new director with an eye towards beginning production this fall.  I was excited about the prospect of Cholodenko tackling a family film because I figured she wouldn’t talk down to the audience and would hopefully turn out a thoughtful and entertaining feature, so hopefully Disney finds a suitable replacement.  Read a synopsis for the book after the jump.

Another day, another Star Wars rumor.  As anticipation for Disney and Lucasfilm’s upcoming Star Wars: Episode VII continues to rise, fans are clamoring for every tiny bit of information concerning the new trilogy.  Firm details are incredibly scarce at the moment, and things will likely stay that way for some time now that “Mystery Man” J.J. Abrams has officially signed on to direct Episode VII.  The most recent unconfirmed rumor concerning the film states that Harrison Ford is in talks to reprise his role as Han Solo, and now a new rumor has surfaced that suggests Solo will be joined by his pals Luke and Leia, as Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher may or may not be returning in a storyline that focuses on the trio’s children.  Hit the jump for more.

David Fincher will require a massive budget if/when he gets 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea into production.  Fincher courted his Benjamin Button/Fight Club/Seven star Brad Pitt to headline, partly to secure a big name that would push Disney to greenlight the project.  Pitt even said he’d love to do it if “schedule and time allocation” allowed.  Contrary to reports posted earlier today, Pitt is not set to star.  However, Disney may have found a way to forge on financially with or without Pitt.  The Australian government is ready to offer a 30% tax rebate worth almost $20 million if Disney shoots the remake Down Under.  Hit the jump for details.

This summer will see the return of some of the most famous characters from Pixar’s catalogue with the prequel Monsters University, but in a few years the studio is poised to revive its most popular film yet: Finding Nemo.  We learned last July that Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton had signed on to helm Finding Nemo 2 as the follow-up to his infamous live-action debut John Carter (it’s really a good movie!), and shortly thereafter Ellen Degeneres signed on to reprise the character of Dory.  Now, six months later, the other major piece of the puzzle has fallen into place as Albert Brooks has finally closed his deal to return.  Hit the jump for more, including the possibility of another live-action film from Stanton.

We’ll dedicate more time to this topic after the jump, but in just a few sentences I want to share a quick thought I had while watching Netflix’s House of Cards last weekend. It’s not just that I think the show is great. When you involve talents like Kevin Spacey and David Fincher, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where quality work is in short supply. It’s that this level of material was birthed by and is only consumed via the Internet. I’ve been in debates where the question was whether or not the web would foster an age of amateurs. A future in which the training and dedication required to further perfect one’s craft would fall by the wayside leaving audiences with less than stellar work produced by those made lazy by the eased production and distribution technologies afforded by the Internet. While the fact that I’m writing to a considerable audience today via this site is evidence to that very argument, the overall quality of HOC is a strong rebuttal against those concerned about the quality of entertainment work in a digital age.

All thinking out loud aside, this week’s Top 5 features an editorial response to Disney’s announcement that Star Wars spinoff films are in the works, Side Effects interviews with Steven Soderbergh and more, a word about Hulk’s movie future, Matt’s editorial on Netflix and the affect time shifting has on viewing habits, and the latest news out of The Amazing Spider-Man 2 camp. As you’re probably expecting, a brief recap and link to each waits after the jump.

We knew that Disney was developing Star Wars movies outside of the sequel trilogy, and a couple days ago, it was rumored that one of those spinoffs would focus on Yoda.  Today, we’ve received the news that we’ll be getting a spinoff focusing on a young Han Solo, and a new adventure featuring Boba Fett.  Even though George Lucas has removed himself from the new movies, it seems like Disney and LucasFilm are continuing one of the key mistakes of the prequel trilogy.  They’re taking the gigantic, rich world of Star Wars and making it smaller by clinging on to old characters as if audiences would stay away unless there were familiar faces.  Holding on to Yoda, Han Solo, and Boba Fett could weaken the Star Wars legacy as the mystery and allure of the characters is washed away.

Well that was fast.  Just yesterday Disney CEO Bob Iger confirmed that the studio is developing standalone Star Wars films that will exist outside of the new trilogy, with a rumor surfacing that one such film could focus on Yoda.  Though Star Wars: Episode VII will be the first new movie out of the gate, with J.J. Abrams at the helm, fans have now started to speculate on the nature of these new standalone Star Wars films.  We know that screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan (Empire Strikes Back) and Simon Kinberg (Sherlock Holmes) are working on the spinoff movies, and the larger question has been whether they would focus on new characters in other parts of the Star Wars universe or whether Disney and Lucasfilm would instead focus on existing favorites.

It appears that the answer is the latter, as word now comes that two of the standalone Star Wars films in development center on the separate adventures of Boba Fett and a young Han Solo.  Hit the jump for much more.

We’ve got some Star Wars news to report on today.  We recently (and finally) learned that J.J. Abrams will be helming Star Wars: Episode VII, and today Disney CEO Bob Iger took part in a television appearance where he provided some updates on the studio’s Star Wars franchise.  It was previously reported that screenwriters Lawrence Kasdan and Simon Kinberg had been brought into the fold not only to work on this new trilogy, but also possibly on some standalone films centered around other characters in the Star Wars universe.  Iger confirmed today that that is indeed the case, as Disney is working on Star Wars films that are not a part of the overall saga.  Hit the jump for more.

New posters for Disney Animation Studios’ Frozen have been released, and they show off our first look at the protagonist, Anna (Kristen Bell) and her wicked sister Elsa (Idina Menzel).  You can see that the filmmakers have kept the evolution of the Disney female character with the large pupils, thin irises, high cheekbones, and thin chin.  We tend to ignore these similarities as long as the plot is good, and hopefully Disney will have another animated hit on their hands with their upcoming feature.

Hit the jump to check out the posters.  The film also features the voice of Jonathan Groff and music by Robert Lopez (The Book of Mormon) and Kristen Anderson-Lopez (In Transit).  Frozen opens in 3D on November 27th. [Update: Disney has informed us that these are fan-made posters created from some unapproved character art, so we've been asked to take them down.]

A rather highly anticipated Young Adult feature film adaptation is undergoing a director change.  Last September we reported that David Slade (30 Days of Night, Twilight: Eclipse) had been set to direct Disney’s adaptation of Ally Condie’s futuristic novel Matched, but now it appears that Slade is out and G.I. Joe: Retaliation director Jon M. Chu is in.  The book is the first in a trilogy that centers on a young girl living in a highly-controlling society (ie. people are told what to read, watch, believe, etc.) who makes a rebellious decision to reject an arranged romance and follow her own heart.  Hit the jump for more details.

The best animated film I saw this year wasn’t feature length.  It was John Kahrs‘ short film, Paperman.  The short follows the story of a lonely young man in New York City, whose destiny takes an unexpected turn after a chance meeting with a beautiful woman on his morning commute. Convinced the girl of his dreams is gone forever, he gets a second chance when he spots her in a skyscraper window across the avenue from his office, and sets out to get her attention.  Using a revolutionary technique of blending 2D and 3D, Paperman isn’t only gorgeous, but it’s also hopelessly romantic.  I felt bad for Wreck-It Ralph since it had to follow this short.  Disney has now posted Paperman online, and while it’s only 2D, you need to take the 6 minutes and 34 seconds to watch it right now.  It will make your day.

Hit the jump to watch Paperman, which is nominated for Best Animated Short Film.