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D23 Day Two: Disney Studios Steals the Show

By Stacy Conradt

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So, remember when I told you yesterday that I had a trio of things on tap for today? Yeah, not so much. Because of the crazy lines - you pretty much need to be at an event a good two hours before it starts if you even want a shot at getting in - we only made it to one presentation. But it was a big one - a two-and-a-half hour update on all kinds of cool stuff Disney Studios is working on, including tons of sneak previews and guest appearances.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTURYLfZwaI&feature=youtube_gdata_player

First up was John Lasseter, and judging by the audience reaction, this dude is a bigger star than any of the actors and actresses who voice Disney-Pixar characters. And his enthusiasm for his work is infectious - you can see why people want to work with him. So, on Lasseter's agenda:

  • Planes, a movie that takes place in the Cars world. Jon Cryer is the voice of Dusty, the main character. It looks cool, but what I got really geeked out about was...
  • Wreck-It Ralph. You've got John C. Reilly voicing an 8-bit bad guy from an old arcade game. Think Rampage (man, I loved Rampage) - Ralph goes around busting holes in buildings, and annoying Fix-It Felix (Jack McBrayer) runs around with his magic hammer and fixes the damage. Ralph doesn't want to be a baddie, but he can't help it - when a guy is 9'2", accidents just happen. My favorite part of the preview was the self-help group for video game villains - "Just because you're a bad guy, doesn't mean you're a bad guy." It's out in November 2012.
  • Coming out a little bit sooner is Brave in June 2012. I know little girls love the princesses, and I do think female Disney royalty has come a long way since the days of Cinderella and Snow White when all the girls wanted in life was a handsome prince. But the little Scottish heroine of Brave outdoes all of them. Throw in Billy Connolly and Craig Ferguson as voices, and well, I'm sold.
  • Billy Crystal popped up for a minute or two to promote Monsters University, a prequel to Monsters, Inc.

    • The big news was really two totally new projects that had previously not been announced. They don't even have names yet, but one is about dinosaurs - what happened if they never really went extinct - and the other is about what goes on inside the human mind.

    Then, to celebrate Pixar's 25th anniversary, everyone in the audience (thousands of people) received cupcakes. Awesome.

    After that, it was on to the live-action movies. I'm not going to lie - most of these didn't excite me as much as the animated stuff did. There's John Carter, a movie based on the old Edgar Rice Burroughs novels. There's The Odd Life of Timothy Green, a tale about a married couple who can't have kids, so decide to write all of the amazing qualities their son would have had if they had had him, then bury it in a box in their backyard for closure. The next morning, their son appears to have grown out of the ground.  There was also The Great and Powerful Oz, the backstory of the man behind the curtain. Not a whole lot of information out yet about that one - apparently it's being shot in Detroit as we speak.

    But you know the big crowd-pleasers were The Muppets and The Avengers. I was happy to see a trailer for The Muppets that wasn't a spoof. There's a pretty detailed description of the clip over at Tough Pigs for the Muppet fans who want the play-by-play. Highlights: Kermit lives in a mansion and owns an '80s robot that insists on offering guests Tab cola and New Coke. And hopefully you'll be as thrilled as I was to see a montage of Muppets cleaning, singing and dancing to Jefferson Starship's "We Built This City."

    I'm not a big comic book movie person, but even I think The Avengers looks pretty awesome. We got to see the trailer not once, but twice - after it was shown once, about half of the cast came out (including Scarlett Johansson and Robert Downey, Jr., so both my husband and I were happy) and RDJ announced, "Should we see that again?" and the clip rolled again, with the audience going appropriately wild for scenes that included the present cast members. Want a transcript of the sneak preview? ComingSoon.net captured it perfectly.

    I'm sorry I don't have the exclusive clips to share - no cameras, phones or electronics were allowed in the Arena and it was like going through TSA to get in.

    I expect to see amazing costumes in full force tomorrow because the big presentation of the day is without a doubt Marvel at 10:15.