Strange Magic to be Released January 23, 2015

Strange Magic, a new animated film from Lucasfilm Ltd., will be released by Touchstone Pictures on January 23, 2015.

The film is a madcap fairy tale musical inspired by A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Popular songs from the past six decades help tell the tale of a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies and imps, and their hilarious misadventures sparked by the battle over a powerful potion. Lucasfilm Animation Singapore and Industrial Light & Magic bring to life the fanciful forest turned upside down with world-class animation and visual effects.

With a story by George Lucas, Strange Magic is directed by Gary Rydstrom, produced by Mark S. Miller and executive produced by George Lucas, with a screenplay by David Berenbaum, Irene Mecchi and Rydstrom. An extraordinary roster of film, television and Broadway stars lend their voices to Strange Magic, including Alan Cumming, Evan Rachel Wood, Kristin Chenoweth, Maya Rudolph, Sam Palladio, Alfred Molina, Elijah Kelley, Bob Einstein, Peter Stormare and newcomer Meredith Anne Bull. Well-known music producer Marius de Vries serves as both the musical director and composer.

Go Into the Woods with Exclusive Cast Interviews and More in the Winter Issue of Disney twenty-three

To celebrate Disney’s big-screen adaptation of the hit Broadway musical Into the Woods, Disney twenty-three, the publication of D23: The Official Disney Fan Club, got all the thrilling details from the stars and creative team behind the new breathtaking, upcoming film.

In exclusive interviews with Disney twenty-three, stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine, along with director Rob Marshall and screenplay author James Lapine, detail the excitement and challenges of bringing the Tony^® Award-winning musical to the big screen, including explaining how they played a game of hide-and-seek with some (fake) witchy fingernails and how the team gracefully—and sometimes hilariously—handled Blunt’s pregnancy during filming.

Disney twenty-three‘s Winter issue, available exclusively to Gold Members of D23, also includes a fascinating look “behind the seas” at Disney Cruise Line, with dazzling photography that reveals places guests never see while on board, as well as interviews with the people who keep everything shipshape. “It’s Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas” unlocks the secrets that enable the creative teams at Disneyland to bring the holidays to life, seemingly overnight. Director Steve Purcell unwraps the newest Disney•Pixar television treasure, Toy Story That Time Forgot, which airs on ABC December 2. Star Hayley Atwell and producer Jeph Loeb unleash the action of Marvel’s Agent Carter, also coming to ABC, which brings one of Captain America: The First Avenger‘s most thrilling stars to the small screen.

Also included in the Winter issue of Disney twenty-three:

The fascinating tale of Herman J. Schultheis, whose personal notebooks detailing Disney’s first golden age of animation are showcased in a new book by Disney animation scholar John Canemaker
A Frozen-influenced Adventures By Disney vacation in Norway
Twenty-three reasons fans will love the new Disney Infinity: Marvel Super Heroes game
Festive holiday content to kick off D23.com’s “D23 Days of Christmas”
Regular columns including A Walk with Walt, D Society, and Ask Dave

All D23 Members are invited to visit D23.com for additional features and members-only content, including our “D23 Days of Christmas” celebration, where members can unwrap stories, videos, printables, and more beginning December 1.

Other features coming to D23.com include:

Additional Into the Woods tales including a “character who’s who” and a discussion with James Lapine and Rob Marshall about the changes made in taking the show from stage to screen.
A gallery of photos from our backstage exploration of the Disney Dream
More about the mysterious tale of Herman Schultheis

Disney twenty-three, which is delivered directly to fans’ doorsteps, is offered exclusively to D23 Gold Members as a benefit of their membership. The publication will begin arriving mid-November.

Big Hero 6 Now Playing in Theaters

From Walt Disney Animation Studios comes Big Hero 6, an action-packed comedy-adventure about the special bond that develops between plus-sized inflatable robot Baymax, and prodigy Hiro Hamada, who team up with a group of friends to form a band of high-tech heroes.

Disney Hero Trivia on the Big Hero 6 Red Carpet

Big Hero 6 opens this weekend, and we quizzed guests on the red carpet at the film’s Hollywood premiere about what it means to be a Disney hero. Thanks to all who played! And sorry to the El Capitan Theatre and The Walt Disney Studios for causing a scene on the red carpet. We had a lot of fun with everyone!

Toy Story 4 Announced! Your Favorite Toys are Returning to the Big Screen

Woody, Buzz, and the rest of the gang are coming back to a theater near you!

Disney Chairman and CEO Bob Iger today announced that plans are underway to bring Toy Story 4 to the big screen. John Lasseter, who helmed the first Toy Story movie in 1995—the world’s first computer-animated feature film—is returning to direct the new film, which opens a new chapter in the lives of Woody, Buzz Lightyear, and the Toy Story gang. The story was dreamt up by Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, and Lee Unkrich, the storytellers who have been the driving force behind all three Toy Story films.

“We love these characters so much; they are like family to us,” Lasseter said. “We don’t want to do anything with them unless it lives up to or surpasses what’s gone before. Toy Story 3 ended Woody and Buzz’s story with Andy so perfectly that for a long time, we never even talked about doing another Toy Story movie. But when Andrew, Pete, Lee, and I came up with this new idea, I just could not stop thinking about it. It was so exciting to me, I knew we had to make this movie—and I wanted to direct it myself.”

Writing team Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (Celeste and Jesse Forever) came on to the project, which is being produced by Pixar veteran Galyn Susman.

We’ve been excited to continue Woody and Buzz’s adventures with their fellow playthings in shorts and TV specials like Toy Story of TERROR! and the upcoming Toy Story That Time Forgot, but this will mark their first feature film appearance since Toy Story 3 in 2010.

The film is slated for release on June 16, 2017, and we can’t wait!

Watch a New Into the Woods Trailer

Starring Meryl Streep, James Corden, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine, Into the Woods is a humorous and heartfelt musical that follows the classic tales of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Jack and the Beanstalk and Rapunzel—all tied together by an original story involving a Baker and his Wife, their wish to begin a family and their interaction with the Witch who has put a curse on them.

The film hits theaters December 25.

Big Hero 6’s Ryan Potter Talks About Why He Loves Working in Disney Animation’s World

Hiro Hamada isn’t your average teenager. And neither is Ryan Potter, who provides the voice for the boy genius in Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Big Hero 6 (in theaters Friday, November 7). The 19-year-old actor has been on a whirlwind tour to promote the film, traveling just about everywhere between Hollywood, California, and Tokyo, Japan.

Q&A with the Creators of Big Hero 6 ►

D23 was lucky enough to sit down with Ryan and talk to him about bringing Hiro to life in the film. Oh, and we had to sneak in a question about his favorite Disney “thing,” too! Check out the Q&A below to see what this up-and-coming star had to say.

D23.com: What was it like to voice Hiro Hamada?
Ryan Potter (RP): Surprisingly enough, I didn’t have to do anything special to voice Hiro. I just walked right in and lent my voice; it worked out pretty perfectly. I’d say Hiro may seem like your average teenager, but his brain ends up getting him into a lot of trouble. I related to him on so many levels and that’s what made the job easy and fun.

D23.com: What about immersing yourself in Big Hero 6‘s world of science and technology? Were you ever interested in the subjects as a kid?
RP: Growing up, anything futuristic, tech, robots and Super Heroes were my thing. And San Fransokyo just happened to be a city that’s a blend of the place I grew up in, Tokyo, Japan, and a city I visited every holiday season, San Francisco, California. There are no two other cities that would have been more perfect for Hiro to live in.

D23.com: Is Big Hero 6 your first Disney project?
RP: It is, and I think it’s kind of like jumping into the pool. I’m not wading around at all. And it’s a Walt Disney Animation Studios film, so I’m very excited! To put it simply, the team knows what they’re doing. It’s a lot of fun to play in their world.

D23.com: What are we going to love about the film?
RP: I think every single audience member can relate to one of the characters in one way or another, whether it’s a personality or their look. I hope everyone can walk out of the theater and say, “Hey! I saw a little bit of myself in one of those characters.” That’s what I love so much. It’s just such a diverse cast.

D23.com: Last question! What is your favorite Disney “thing”?
RP: I spent my first birthday at Tokyo Disneyland, and Disneyland is my absolute favorite Disney “thing.” I actually haven’t been to Walt Disney World yet!

Director Patrick Osborne Talks About the Latest Disney Dog in Feast

As Winston joins the dogs of Disney past (and future), director Patrick Osborne reflects on the influences of what’s come before. “There’s this idea of a story that can be told through pantomime, that doesn’t need the words at all,” he continues. “It’s all part of a Disney tradition: You can show it to people and they can connect to it in any language.”

Q&A with the Creators of Big Hero 6 ►

“There’s something special dinner.” According to Patrick, that’s the simple inspiration for the charming new Walt Disney Animation Studios short Feast that debuts in front of Big Hero 6.

With its graphic shapes and bright colors, Feast, as the title suggests, is a tale about food. But it’s also a love story and a life story experienced through canine eyes, as peppy pup Winston accompanies his human on a relationship roller coaster.

The concept for the short was simple, but the planning was complex. Everything had to be boiled down to its most essential form. “The first couple iterations ended up being more conventional, camera-wise.” Patrick adds. “It wasn’t until we came back to the focus of the pitch, that we realized food should be the center of every shot.” The menu included everyday favorites like pepperoni pizza versus a barbeque chicken pizza, for instance. “You want to tell as much story as you can in as little time as possible,” production designer Jeff Turley explains.

Feast‘s epicurean storyline aptly transcends language. After all, what’s more universal than food?

How Science Influenced the Creators of Big Hero 6

The visionaries behind Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Big Hero 6, directors Don Hall and Chris Williams and producer Roy Conli, immersed themselves inside a brand-new world…

. . . one that sounds somewhat familiar, yet slightly off—San Fransokyo. This Friday, November 7, audiences around the world will travel to the high-tech locale, and meet Hiro, Baymax, and the rest of the Big Hero 6 cast.

Director Patrick Osborne Talks About the Latest Disney Dog in Feast ►

But before the film hits the big screen, the trio talks to D23 about their experience (they went to Tokyo and San Francisco for their research trips!) and other stories from production.

Live-action superhero films often make audiences feel like their movies’ powerful figures exist in our world, but you don’t quite have those constraints with animation. How does that affect the direction you take with this kind of story?
RC: I wouldn’t say we don’t have those constraints because one of the big tenets that we work under is we want to make our story logical. We did an amazing amount of research, from the medical aspects of Baymax to the powers of what superhero suits can do; it’s all kind of based on actual science. And early on, we spent a fair amount of time at Carnegie Mellon and MIT. I think it’s really important to base your story in the truth.

How were you able to find a perfect balance between Eastern and Western styles?
Don Hall (DH): It was actually kind of a fun challenge. John [Lasseter, chief creative officer, Walt Disney and Pixar Animation Studios] is always encouraging us to create new worlds, and we could’ve set the story in San Francisco or Tokyo, but the idea of kind of making up our own world was far too enticing. We feel that it’s creatively more fun to set this story in a world that’s more of a mash-up. And once we went on our research trips to Tokyo and San Francisco, things would just start popping up. It gave us nice guidelines to follow.

How did your team work together with Marvel to bring this story to life?
DH: Marvel really encouraged us to take Big Hero 6 and just do our thing with it. And from the beginning, they were very, very gracious with their property to let us do that.
Roy Conli (RC): It’s been great because Joe Quesada and Jeph Loeb, who are two major creative players at Marvel, would come to all of our screenings and share notes with us. It’s just been an amazing relationship.

What was so special about the journey of making Big Hero 6?
Chris Williams (CW): I’ve been here 20 years, and every movie is exciting because each presents us with its own set of challenges. And a lot of this journey involved finding the personality of this movie that would be all encompassing, that would make everything play nicely together. We challenged each other a lot, and there was a lot of wiggling, changing, and adjusting. Then we got to this place where it’s like, “Hallelujah, it works, all these things work!” It’s like a meal. You can have all these wonderful ingredients, but you can’t just pour them in the same amount in the meal and expect it to taste good. You have to kind of balance it out and figure out what’s there!

What did you find that you could do with a superhero story through animation that makes it unique and different from live action?
DH: It was really important early on that nobody’s really super powerful. Nobody can fly; nobody got bombarded with gamma rays or, you know, cosmic rays or anything else. The characters are all normal people who are really smart and have access to technology. And so I thought that was important because I wanted to ground it in a certain reality and put limitations on the characters. Go Go, for instance, racing around on these sort of magnetic wheels at supersonic speeds, gave animators a lot of freedom to come up with really cool ways to make her move. And even Baymax—making him so simple and elegant, and not having a mouth. This challenged our team and enabled them to express things with very few of the sort of bells and whistles that they normally do with that. These are things that wouldn’t have been pulled off in live-action that we could pull off better in animation.
CW: We were able to caricature a little bit more as well. We pare things down to a more simple truth, and sometimes that can just mean that the particular action scene or an action moment is really crystallized down to its most awesome form.

Could you maybe give us an example from a Story Trust meeting of an “Aha!” moment that helped shape what you were doing with Big Hero 6?
RC: I could relate one incident where there was a spark that actually drove everyone to start thinking in a different way, and that was when we had an off-site—a day after a screening when we put ourselves in a room and just start brainstorming. For this day in particular, we brought in several social workers to talk about loss amongst teenagers [spoiler alert!]. At the end of those three hours, we were buzzing and the Story Trust was there at the time, and we just started throwing out ideas. I think it really helped focus the film in terms of the thematic [elements]. And certain things evolved or devolved. It was just a really exciting time though, because we found the root of who Hiro was and what Hiro was going through, and how Baymax could help him.

Watch a Trailer for McFarland, USA

Inspired by the 1987 true story, McFarland, USA follows novice runners from McFarland, an economically challenged town in California, as they give their all to build a cross-country team under the direction of Coach Jim White (Kevin Costner), a newcomer to their predominantly Latino high school, with whom they ultimately bond to build not only a championship cross-country team but an enduring legacy as well.