With director Chris Wedge’s animated adventure comedy Epic set to debut at the end of May, we were recently granted a behind-the-scenes preview of the Blue Sky and 20th Century Fox production.  While the trailer gives a nice idea of the world the film exists in, the footage we were shown – some of it still a work in progress – was absolutely beautiful.  On a storytelling note, many have drawn comparisons between Epic and that of 1992′s FernGully: The Last Rainforest and 1989′s Honey, I Shrunk the Kids and those comments are certainly not unfounded.  Though Epic is aimed at audiences too young to have seen either of those films when they opened, there is much more to the story here than just a rehashing of familiar elements.

Featuring the voices of Amanda Seyfried, Josh Hutcherson, Christoph Waltz, Beyonce Knowles, Pitbull, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, Aziz Ansari, Blake Anderson, and Judah Friedlander,  Epic opens in 3D on May 24, 2013.  Hit the jump for more on our behind-the-scenes preview and here’s the new trailer. 

The second full trailer for Ice Age: Continental Drift has been released.  The fourth installment in the Ice Age franchise finds the kooky characters attempting to survive the breakup of Pangea, when Earth’s supercontinent begins to rift.  Though I’m not the biggest fan of the series, there are more than a few laughs to be found in this latest trailer.  The MVP of the franchise has always been John Leguizamo’s Sid the Sloth, and he shines in this latest clip.  We also get a glimpse of the film’s antagonists, a gang of pirates led by a prehistoric orangutan voiced by Peter Dinklage.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer.  The voice-cast includes Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Wedge, John Leguizamo, Aziz Ansari, Nick Frost, Joy Behar, JB Smoove, Alan Tudyk, Heather Morris, Josh Gad, Kunal Nayyar, Alain Chabat, and hip/hop artist Nicki Minaj. Ice Age: Continental Drift opens in 3D on July 13th.

A new trailer for the fourth installment in the Ice Age franchise, Ice Age: Continental Drift, has gone online. In this adventure, Scrat accidentally triggers the breakup of Pangea and thus the splitting of the continents while pursuing that ever-elusive acorn (seriously, there are other acorns in the world, Scrat). This trailer highlights this entry’s newest inhabitants: the Gigantopithecus (an extinct genus of ape). I’m not the biggest fan of the series, but kids seem to love it and the movies make a great deal of money at the box office so I guess there’s an audience for the fourth entry.

Hit the jump to watch the trailer. The voice-cast includes Ray Romano, Queen Latifah, Denis Leary, Jennifer Lopez, Chris Wedge, John Leguizamo, Aziz Ansari, Nick Frost, Joy Behar, JB Smoove, Alan Tudyk, Heather Morris, Josh Gad, Kunal Nayyar, Alain Chabat, and hip/hop artist Nicki Minaj. Ice Age: Continental Drift opens in 3D on July 13th.

Chris Wedge is the respected co-founder of Blue Sky Studios and director of Robots and Ice Age.  You, however, probably best know him (however indirectly) as the voice behind Ice Age character Scrat, the saber-toothed squirrel willing to risk his life for an acorn.  Wedge is looking to make the move into live-action features: Variety reports the producer/director has acquired the to the Paul Hoffman book Wings of Madness: Alberto Santos-Dumont and the Invention of Flight and may direct the film adaptation.

Santos-Dumont is described as a “dashing, impeccably dressed inventor” who entertained Parisian audiences with early aeronautic antics in 1906 before word of the Wright brothers’ Kitty Hawk success had reached Europe.  Read the official book description after the break.

WedgeWorks, the production company of Ice Age director Chris Wedge, has picked up the feature film rights to Kirsten Bakis’ Lives of the Monster Dogs.  Per Heat Vision, the story “revolves around a group of soldier dogs genetically engineered by mad Prussian scientists hiding in a Canadian village. The hyper-intelligent dogs, who walk erect and use voice boxes to communicate, revolt against their masters and, dressed in 19th century formal wear, show up in modern New York. The book is told through the eyes of a NYU student who becomes the chronicler of the dogs’ glamorous lives, which, as they revert to their animal states for longer and longer periods, turn tragic.”  That sounded amazing until the tragic part.  Why go all Flowers for Algernon?  Leave it at dogs in 19th-century formal wear.  That’s a perfect movie right there.  It makes me think of an Up spin-off that centered on Muntz’ dogs.

Adam Kline (who recently did a rewrite on the adaptation of Artemis Fowl) will adapt Monster Dogs with Wedge looking to make his live-action directorial debut.

It was less than fifteen years ago that Toy Story debuted for the Holiday season of 1995. At the time Disney was taking a chance with an entirely computer animated film, especially after their amazing resurgence and recent run of cel animated films – they were only a year off of The Lion King. Now, Pixar essentially runs Disney animation and cel animation is the experiment – completely out of fashion in part due to Disney ruining the brand name (and to some extent DreamWorks making equally mediocre films). But you can’t blame Pixar for being good, and it was the wild success of the Toy Story films that helped cement their legacy. They tell the story of Woody (Tom Hanks), a cowboy doll who is ousted from his position as the sole favorite toy by Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and how the two go on an adventure in the real world. The sequel has the duo facing a toy kidnapper (Wayne Knight), who wants to send Woody to Japan with the toy line he originally came from while Woody confronts his own mortality. My review of Toy Story and Toy Story 2 on Blu-ray after the jump.

While it’s been nowhere near as successful as “The Sims”, Will Wright’s follow-up effort “Spore” did attract generally favorable, if not enthusiastic, reviews despite being five little games in one.  The best part was being able to create your own creatures which isn’t so much a game but it was still fun which is more than I can say for most video games that sell millions upon millions of copies.  But “Spore” isn’t a no-name game and so THR is reporting that Fox is going to adapt it into a CG animated feature.  While I’m negative on almost every video game movie, I have some hope for this one because it requires creativity sincer there’s no plot.  No princess to save, no gritty crime to uncover, nothing that lazy writers can pad and then collect their paycheck.  Plus, with “Robots” director Chris Wedge at the helm, I think the movie will be at least visually impressive since I still think “Robots” is one of the best animated CG movies I’ve seen.

A little over two years after the project was originally announced, Fox Animation has recommitted to producing “Leaf Men,” Chris Wedge’s (“Ice Age,” “Robots”) latest animated movie. Based on an illustrated children’s book by William Joyce, “Leaf Men” centers on a group of bugs who turn to the mythical Leaf Men in order to save their garden from an evil spider queen. In other words, it is “A Bug’s Life” but waaaay better. Find out who watches the leaf men after the jump.