This week on Blu-ray, Wes Anderson’s latest comes to home video, the highest grossing film of all time gets a non-exclusive 3D release, and the Christmas season officially begins with a holiday favorite Blu-ray upgrade. Here’s a brief look at this week’s offerings:
Hit the jump for all the details.
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The DreamWorks Animation panel at Comic-Con 2012 featured chief creative officer Bill Damashke, James Baxter (supervising animator on The Croods), Tom McGrath (director of the Madagascar series), and Patrick Hanenberger (production designer on Rise of the Guardians). The panel started with a clip reel of highlights from the DreamWorks filmography, from Shrek to Kung Fu Panda to How to Train Your Dragon. Given the panel members, the reel and the discussion shifted mainly to Madagascar 3 (currently in theaters), Rise of the Guardians (in theaters November 21), and The Croods (coming March 2013). The Rise of the Guardians section was nothing you haven’t already seen in this trailer, but the Croods footage was brand new, and it looks very interesting. Hit the jump for more.
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We’ve got a bunch of new posters for you on this fine Friday morning. After the jump, you can find international posters for Rock of Ages, Men in Black 3, Iron Sky, Chernobyl Diaries, Ted, and domestic posters for Ted and Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted.
Hit the jump to check out the posters and for each film’s release date and synopsis.
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A new trailer and poster for Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted have gone online. The Madagascar movies aren’t going to redefine animation or family films, but I still giggled thoughtout this trailer. I found the first movie surprisingly enjoyable, but the sequel was a letdown. Judging by the trailer, Europe’s Most Wanted looks like a bit of silly fun, and I’m absolutely fine with that.
Hit the jump to watch the trailer and check out the poster. The film features the voices of Ben Stiller, David Schwimmer, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, Sacha Baron Cohen, Frances McDormand, Bryan Cranston, Jessica Chastain and Martin Short. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted opens on June 8th.
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After years of playing little sister to Pixar, Dreamworks Animation has finally come out on top, securing Oscar nominations for both Puss and Boots and Kung Fu Panda 2 in 2011. Riding high on the financial and critical success of these films, the studio invited press to the Director’s Guild of America the other day for a preview of their 2012 slate.
During the presentation, we saw about 25 minutes of the anthropomorphized crime caper, Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted and the premiere of the first footage from Rise of the Guardians, an epic new William Joyce (Meet the Robinsons) adaptation that focuses on the battle between holiday figureheads and the boogieman. Hit the jump for a breakdown of the footage and some thoughts.
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2012 has begun and that means fresh optimism! Fresh movies! Fresh images from those movies! After the jump you’ll find 21 new images from upcoming movies like The Hunger Games, Men in Black 3, Rock of Ages, The Five-Year Engagement, The Gangster Squad, and plenty more (for our purposes, plenty = 16).
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We’ve got a couple of casting stories to bring you this afternoon. First up, Jessica Chastain, Bryan Cranston, and Martin Short have been added to the voice cast of DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted. It’s a curious bit of news, as the film hits theaters in a matter of months and a full trailer has already been released, but I’m assuming the three are up for minor roles. Heat Vision’s report doesn’t specify what characters Chastain, Cranston, and Short will be lending their voices to, but Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, David Schwimmer, Jada Pinkett Smith, and Sacha Baron Cohen are all reprising their roles from the first two films.
The plot finds the zoo animals yet again trying to make their way back to New York City, but this time they find themselves on the wrong side of the law in Europe. Frances McDormand voices the villain in the pic, which hits theaters June 8th. Hit the jump for casting news regarding Ben Stiller’s directorial project The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.
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The first trailer for the third entry in the Madagascar franchise has been unveiled. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted finds the zoo-friendly characters on the lam in Europe, where they join a traveling circus. It looks as though they might be going the spy thriller route (uh-oh), with Ben Stiller‘s character doing his best Tom Cruise impression. There are a few cute scenes here, especially with the penguins and Sacha Baron Cohen‘s character, and kids are sure to eat this movie up, but there’s really not much to convince your average adult moviegoer that this isn’t a straight-to-DVD cartoon sequel. Noah Baumbach (Fantastic Mr. Fox) penned the screenplay, so hopefully the full film offers something for a more mature audience to enjoy as well.
Hit the jump to check out the trailer. The film also features the voices of Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, David Schwimmer, and Frances McDormand. Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted opens June 8th, 2012.
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DreamWorks Animation has announced their schedule through 2014 and it’s loaded with both original projects and sequels. As far as sequels, the studio has three planned and they include Kung Fu Panda 2, Madagascar 3 and How to Train Your Dragon 2. While I’m very excited for a sequel to How to Train Your Dragon, some of their upcoming original projects also sound great. The two that immediately stand out are Me and My Shadow (which will combine both CG and traditional animation) and director Rob Minkoff’s Mr. Peabody & Sherman - which is based on Jay Ward’s classic cartoon and will feature the voice of Robert Downey Jr.! Here’s the release schedule:
- Kung Fu Panda 2 - May 26, 2011
- Puss In Boots - November 4, 2011
- Madagascar 3 - June 8, 2012
- Rise of the Guardians - November 21, 2012
- The Croods - March 1, 2013
- Turbo - June 7, 2013
- Me and My Shadow - November 8, 2013
- Mr. Peabody & Sherman - March 21, 2014
- How to Train Your Dragon 2 - June 20, 2014
Hit the jump for the synopses:
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by Jason Barr Posted: January 12th, 2011 at 7:05 pm
Oscar-winner Frances McDormand (Fargo) will lend her voice to DreamWorks Animation’s Madagascar 3. Per Heat Vision, McDormand will voice the film’s villain, a “calculating and goal-oriented animal control officer.” Though little is currently known of Noah Baumbach’s script, the report confirms that the third installment will follow the animals as they reunite and attempt to find their way home by way of traveling circus (not a method I would recommend to youngsters watching the film).
In addition to McDormand, Madagascar 3 will also return franchise regulars Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Jada Pinkett Smith, and David Schwimmer. The film is currently scheduled to hit theaters on May 18th, 2012. As for McDormand, she has two films set for release in 2011: This Must Be the Place alongside Sean Penn (release date currently unspecified), and Transformers: Dark of the Moon which opens July 1st.
One of the year’s best animated films wasn’t a sequel. It was DreamWorks Animation’s How to Train Your Dragon. So naturally they’re making lots of sequels. We already knew that Dragon 2 was greenlit with the original cast returning, but Jeffrey Katzenberg has now explained how far his studio’s sequel-mania extends. Katzenberg tells Empire that the studio is planning for a total of four Madagascar movies, at least three How to Train Your Dragon films, and six installments in the Kung Fu Panda franchise.
Hit the jump for Katzenberg giving minor details on how these franchises are going to keep their stories going.
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Here are a couple of quick release date changes for you. First up, Peter Berg’s Battleship is steering away from May 25, 2012 and will now hit theaters on May 18, 2012. If it had stayed on May 25th, it would have been fighting with Men in Black III for the same audience. Now, Berg’s blockbuster action movie will be facing off against the family flick Madagascar 3. Of course, with these films almost two years away, release dates could shift easily.
For a release date change that’s actually happening this year, the schlock horror film Piranha 3D has moved up from August 27th to August 20th. Now it will go up against the comedy Lottery Ticket, the family film Nanny McPhee Returns, and the crime drama Takers. I’d agree that it has a much better shot at winning the box office the weekend of the 20th than it does against the Eli Roth-produced horror film The Last Exorcism and Neil Marshall’s bloody sword-and-sandals flick Centurion. [Box Office Mojo]
DreamWorks Animation is profitable. It has been ever since a billion pop-culture references vomited out of Shrek’s mouth back in 2001. I suppose DreamWorks Animation is useful in that we’ll always have a company that will be wildly inferior to Pixar.
But when reading Variety’s report about DWA’s plans for the future, it’s not hard to see why. For starters, they want five new films over the next two years. Pixar keeps to one really, really good film per year. Second, bragging about their successful franchies of “Shrek”, “Kung Fu Panda”, and now “Monsters vs. Aliens”, Co-President of Production Bill Damaschke says they want two sequels a year and one original movie. Huzzah. And finally, as per CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg’s asinine mandate, all projects will be produced in 3D (you know, because it’s the future and shit. Emphasis on the “and shit”).
I don’t mean to be so down on DreamWorks Animation because they have produced some enjoyable flicks like “Bee Movie” and “Over the Hedge”. But this insistence on arbitrary business guidelines like how many films they’ll make and how many must be sequels and why they all have to be in 3D so that we can breed a nation of cross-eyed children (someone will do a study; mark my words) is the hollowness of Hollywood laid bare. And I’m not saying that Pixar only thinks of stories and lives in a magical world where they don’t have business considerations. But it’s so disheartening to read an article like this because it reads like “Happy Meal First, Movie Second”.
However, they do know the movies they’re making through 2012 and we’ve included a list of them below along with brief synopsis after the jump.
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