Princess and the Frog Release Date Moved

Ron Clements, John Musker Write and Direct Disney Animated Film

Mar 10, 2009

Disney's upcoming cel animated film, The Princess and the Frog, is getting a new release date. The animated musical comes out December 11th.

The film, touted as Disney's return to cel animation, was originally going to open on Christmas Day, opposite Fox's Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel (ha. ha.). But instead, it will battle Peter Jackson's murder drama The Lovely Bones earlier in the month.

The Princess and the Frog Stars Anika Noni Rose, Bruno Campos, Keith David

According to several sources, the The Princess and the Frog follows Naveen (Bruno Campos), a jazz-loving prince from the land of Maldonia. Naveen is turned into a frog by the voodoo magician Dr. Facilier (Keith David) after a deal goes sour. The frog prince asks Princess Tiana (Anika Noni Rose) to break the spell by kissing him but it transforms Tiana into a frog too. The transformed two must find the good voodoo priestess of the Bayou, Mama Odie (Jenifer Lewis), while befriending Louis (Michael-Leon Wooley), a trumpet playing alligator, and a hopelessly romantic firefly (Jim Cummings).

The Mouse House is hedging its bets with this flick, getting the famed writing/directing team of Ron Clements and John Musker (The Little Mermaid, Aladdin) to helm the flick and award-winning composer Randy Newman (Toy Story) to do the music. Oprah Winfrey, John Goodman, and Terrence Howard also voice roles in the flick.

The Walt Disney Company is considered the premiere animation studio in North America, having produced the first feature-length animated film, 1937's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Later releases like Pinocchio, Fantasia, Sleeping Beauty and 101 Dalmations received mixed success in their initial theatrical releases: Fantasia and Sleeping Beauty's box office implosions nearly bankrupted Disney.

Eventually they were regarded as classics, and made lots of money when they were re-released in theatres and on home video. However, the studio moved away from animation after Walt's death in 1966, and it was only when then-CEO Michael Eisner and executive Jeffrey Katzenberg shepherded the early 1990's "animation renaissance" that Disney cartoons started returning to the public consciousness.

Unfortunately, Katzenberg's departure in 1994 resulted in another slide into ignominy, and Eisner began gutting the animation division in 2002. However, a boardroom revolt led by Roy E. Disney, and Disney's 2006 purchase of Pixar, resulted in Pixar co-founders John Lasseter and Ed Catmull being placed in charge of Disney Animation. Since then, Lasseter (who studied under Ollie Johnston and Glen Keane while at Disney in the late 1970s) and Catmull have been pushing hard for a return to feature-length cel animation.

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