Enchanted a Franchise?
Director Kevin Lima Ponders Possibility of Disney Animated Sequel
Enchanted director Kevin Lima hopes that his live-action/animated movie is successful enough to spawn an Enchanted 2 . . . and 3 . . . and 4 . . .
(Source: movies.yahoo.com)
When asked if he wanted Enchanted to become a film franchise much like Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean, director Kevin Lima said, "We all hope," and added that he is already working on possible sequel plotlines that feature the same characters.
Here’s Enchanted’s plot synopsis, paraphrased from IMDb: "In an animated fairy tale world, a young girl named Giselle (Amy Adams) meets and falls in love with the handsome Prince Edward (James Marsden), the man of her dreams. News of this romance upsets the prince's mother (Susan Sarandon), the evil Queen Narissa, who uses her black magic to send the girl hurtling out of the animated world into the one place in the universe where there is no true love: modern day Manhattan. Soon after her arrival, Giselle begins to change her views on life and love after meeting a handsome lawyer named Robert (Patrick Dempsey). Can a storybook view of romance survive in the real world?"
Much hijinks – including a spot-on parody of Snow White's song "Whistle While You Work" that rhymes 'determined' with 'vermin' – ensue.
Lima and his co-workers drew on the Mouse House's legendary animation heritage, which includes such classic films as Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and Sleeping Beauty, to develop the right tone and feel for Enchanted. Riffing on Disney's cartoon clichés wasn't easy.
"It's really difficult material," Lima told Reuters following a news conference on Monday. "What it really took is . . . someone who understood the heritage, who loved it. Someone who wasn't afraid of it."
The director, who also directed Tarzan and the live-action 101 Dalmations, said that "the only way this was going to work is if we can take the 'Mickey' out of ourselves, so to speak, so we can look back at who we are and be able to laugh."
Enchanted represents a huge risk for the Mouse House. First off, the studio is betting that there's still life in hand-drawn cel animation, which many pundits believe has no place next to more modern (and less time-intensive) CGI techniques. Disney hasn't disclosed how much the film cost to make.
Also, the film opens Disney to criticism that the studio (once the unquestioned leader in feature film animation) is merely following in the footsteps of DreamWorks Animation's Shrek franchise. That series generated big laughs, and even bigger box office, by spoofing Disney's classic animated features.
Enchanted opens in theatres on November 21st.
