New Mickey Mouse Shorts Are Coming

The new Mickey Mouse

     Wow, I did not see this coming! Today Disney announced that they have ordered a series of 19, 2D cartoons for Disney Channel, Disney.com, and WATCH Disney Channel. These shorts are aiming to make Mickey relevant and popular again by sticking to the classic feel of the old cartoons, with a new contemporary look. Each episode will see Mickey in a new place around the world; the first one taking place in France. The director for this project is Paul Rudish, who previously worked on Dexter's Laboratory and The Powerpuff Girls. The project is coming by way of Walt Disney Television Animation and will start rolling out the new episodes starting June 28! Daisy, Minnie, Goofy, Donald, and Pluto will all make appearances and you can watch the entire first episode at this link right now!

http://video.disney.com/watch/croissant-de-triomphe-4d7b3aae690a98650d776d97

Disney is growing up with their audiance by moving away from this...

     Personally, I think this is all amazing news. At first I was very shocked by the art style, the direction of the short, and the immense change from old cartoons. The quality of animation is clearly not as good as the theatrical cartoons, the story not as solid, and the humor not as effective. But don't dismiss this short, for this is truly nothing but a love letter to the Mickey Mouse of old! The time and care that has been put into his new design is amazing; pulling from all of his many looks. The humor and action is in the same style of the old Walt Disney cartoons. The changes are pretty jarring at first, but once you begin to accept it and enjoy it, the short is actually very good! It's beautiful, funny, and great to see Mickey back in action! It threw me off that the entire short was spoken in French, and while being a very cool idea, I felt like I was watching the French version of the cartoon. The cartoon was also a little on the short side, but other than that was absolutly fantastic and a great new direction for Mickey.

.... and more towards the adventureous, brave
Mickey we know and love!

     I think all fans of Mickey Mouse should be very excited for this new series of shorts. Not only are we getting a Mickey who isn't domesticated to home life, but a Mickey of old who is ready for adventure and is always getting himself in trouble! Not only that, but Disney is moving Mickey away from being strictly a preschool teacher. For the longest time Mickey has been stuck as a corporate icon and a character used only for baby and toddler shows. This is the perfect step to make Mickey relevant and popular again. The show's main focus is 6 to 14 year olds, perfect for kids who have grown up with Mickey as their preschool pal for the past couple of years. That also makes Disney Channel the perfect home for these shorts to air! These cartoons are going to please everyone, but the people that are going to get the most out of this are it's target demographic, the 6 to 14 year olds. Clearly Disney has a very long term plan of making Mickey famous once more. Hopefully these beautiful cartoons will be successful and everyone will love them.

     With the success of these cartoons, where do you think Disney would go from there? I believe that these shorts are just the stepping stones to the biggest reintroduction yet, a return to theatrical Mickey Mouse shorts headed by the Walt Disney Animation Studios. Disney is growing their fan base for Mickey so if and when he reappears in theaters, there will be more people ready for him. What did you think of the new short? Are you excited? Do you think this is all part of a bigger plan to reintroduce Mickey? Let me know in the comments below! I can't wait to see more and I couldn't be more excited! "Oh boy!"

Slow News Month

     Sorry I haven't updated in a while, it's been kind of a slow news month! But let's take a look at what has happened shall we? The first animated film of the year was released and it was a success! . . . Well, sort of. Escape From Planet Earth was released on February 15 and it didn't bomb! I thought for sure this film was going to be a gigantic failure and that Weinstein would back out of it's three other animated films it has in production currently. While it didn't light the box office on fire, it didn't tank either. As of today the film has taken in a world wide total of $49,199,308 on a budget of 40 million. Not bad! It will continue to make a little bit more money, but not much. So if you were to add in advertising fees, it probably still lost a little money but not a lot! I'm waiting for the dollar theatre to see this one so you will have to wait a little longer to hear what I think of it.
   
     Sony Pictures Animation released the first trailer for Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs 2! It looks beautiful and funny and should be charming just like the first one. There are a lot of food jokes but there were a lot in the first one as well!! I think this movie will be really funny, cute, and charming but won't quite be amazing or film of the year. Check out the trailer below!

     On the Blue Sky Studios front, Epic has a new trailer. i think this film looks really awesome and that it will be a fun, exciting adventure with a good story. The jokes are what are going to really hit this film hard. A lot of them feel really forced and thrown in to make the kiddies laugh; The slug characters are a great example of that. Blue Sky's last film, Ice Age 4, wasn't very funny either. A lot of the jokes were aimed towards kids and made the film hard to sit through. I think Epic looks like an amazing film, that will be brought down heavily by it's childish jokes. Watch the trailer to see what you think!

      Dreamworks Animation continues to struggle as they have announced 350 layoffs will occur this year. That is not good news for the company and their future isn't looking bright. The Croods is to be released in 12 days and I can't see it making that much money. The film looks beautiful, it has a star studded voice cast, they've had a pretty heave advertising campaign, but the jokes are hit and miss. With Oz The Great and Powerful doing so well, families aren't desperate to go see a movie like they were when Escape From Planet Earth came out. However the movie looks pretty good and I'll wager it will be a mild success for the company. Turbo is set to release in a crowded summer and I think it looks awful. Dreamworks better get things figured out over there or things will continue to look bleak. That's all I have time for today, but I will be updating more frequently so "Stay frosty!"