No Up Teaser With WALL-E
Andrew Stanton's Disney/Pixar Film Opens June 27th
One of the great things about seeing a Pixar movie in theatres is that the audience gets the complete package: there's the feature film, which never fails to rock (Cars came close, but that was still a good time at the movies), with an equally kick-ass short film to whet your appetite for the feature. And if that wasn't enough to get them salivary glands sizzling, Pixar always dropped a teaser trailer for their next film so that fans always had something to look forward to.
Now, Pixar has announced (via JoBlo.com) that they have dropped that tradition: there will be no teaser for Up attached to this year's WALL-E. Instead, audiences will be treated to a piece of Bolt, the Disney animated flick coming to theatres on November 26th.
WALL-E doesn't get Up, just Bolt
This is concerning on several levels. First off, that implies that Pixar is slowly being drawn further into the Mouse House fold, and its films are now considered to be indistinguishable from Disney's.
Certainly the Mouse House was always going to drop its own trailers in front of Pixar films; completely understandable, considering how well Pixar movies do at the box office. But the fact that audiences got to see the (frequently hilarious) trailer for the next Pixar flick gave the current movie some added value, and gave the sense that Pixar was still its own company, even in the midst of the Disney empire. Now that WALL-E doesn't have an Up teaser, that perception is now gone.
This also doesn't speak well of the current state of Up. That Pete Docter/Bob Peterson film is due May 29, 2009, which means Pixar should already have produced some footage for the flick. So far, we've only seen the single image, the news that TV legend Ed Asner was voicing the leading role, and a synopsis. By this point in 2007, there were already posters and online images to promote WALL-E, which means that Docter and Peterson are well behind the curve for Up promo materials.
Does this mean Up is in trouble?
John Travolta, Miley Cyrus in Bolt
Not only that, the jury is still out when it comes to Bolt: with the drama over firing Chris Sanders and replacing him with Chris Williams, plus the worrying casting of frequent Razzie bait John Travolta, plus Miley Cyrus, in the principle parts makes for an animated flick that doesn't have a positive advance buzz.
However, Disney watcher Jim Hill has warned animation fans to keep an open mind about the film, saying that Chris Williams is expert at taking troubled productions and making them work.
"Given that Williams earned his stripes at the Mouse House by first working on Mulan (Which was another Disney Animation production that really had to struggle before it finally found just the right mix of story elements) before joining the story crew assigned to The Emperor's New Groove," Hill wrote in his blog. "This is a guy who actually knows how to turn lemons into lemonade, people."
WALL-E comes out June 27th.
