Tidbits: Ralphie's Title, STX Animation & 'Leap!' Leaps Again

Two of today's bits come from CinemaCon, one didn't...

Walt Disney Animation Studios' sequel to their 2012 video game adventure Wreck-It Ralph finally has title...

It is...

Next year, he's gonna break it 👊. Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 opens in theatres on March 9, 2018. pic.twitter.com/u1qQn7TUUI

— Disney Animation (@DisneyAnimation) March 29, 2017

Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2...

Ummm... I don't know what to think of this title. Right now, I'm thinking, take off the "Wreck-It Ralph 2" subtitle, or move it to the front, and it's a bit better. The placement is what's bothering me, not so much the title. The logo is also giving me an Emoji Movie feel, which isn't... Quite... Good...

But this is from Disney Animation. This is from Rich Moore and Phil Johnston. They've been working on this for a while, so... A title is just a title. I still think it could be better, though.

Someone also happened to snap a photo of the big slate Disney showed off during their presentation, which looks exactly like the one they showed roughly two years ago...

So now we know what The Incredibles 2's logo looks like. No more Roman numeral. Disney Animation's second 2018 release, Gigantic, didn't see a logo change. I say they should stick with it. Interesting that the "untitled fairy tale" slated for 7/28/2017 is still on there... It's less than four months away, and no title, no info, no this, no that. What could it even be? I thought it was going to be this currently-filming pic called Magic Camp, but I hear that's not it. Hmmm...

Next up... STX has their animation plan...

Earlier, STX - quietly making the waves as a distributor amongst the heavies - went over some animation plans. For a while, we've known that they've been planning an animated film based on the Uglydolls toyline. Illumination was once set to do that film, but after abandoning it, STX got a hold of it. Simply titled Uglydolls, STX plans to release it on May 10, 2019. Robert Rodriguez is set to direct it... A very interesting choice! Rodriguez has quite the resume, though not all of his family films were winners.

Anyways, I still think it's quite the pick. I have few feelings about this project, being something based on a toyline and all. The dolls themselves are certainly odd-looking, and it's a nice break from the typical character designs you see. It looks like something Illumination would've sunk their teeth into, but... I'm interesting to see how Rodriguez pulls this off.

STX also has an original animated movie on the docket, one starring Eddie Murphy. Apparently titled Bo the Bull, all we know is this: It's about a bull who wants to be a clown.

Another animated picture on their slate is a planned adaptation of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, the nearly 50-year-old stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. A psychedelic update of the Biblical story of Joseph, it falls in line with STX's apparent need to make family-friendly animated features. Of course, we animation fans know that Rice got around long after this production... Doing such minuscule things like... Writing the lyrics for Aladdin and The Lion King's songs...

Not the most thrilling slate, as I was kind of (naively) hoping that STX would break the mold and do bolder animated pictures... But it looks like they'll playing the same game everyone else is in on. I still wish them luck, though.

Lastly, the Weinstein Company - to no one's surprise - has delayed Leap! yet again.

The film, delayed for the second time, will now debut on August 30, 2017. No real compelling reason was given, it's probably just an excuse for Harvey Weinstein to further destroy the film. That's nothing new in the world of Weinstein. It probably would've been so much easier for them if they had just left Ballerina (the original film) alone, and just released that here back in March, like they had initially planned to do. As far as I'm concerned, Leap! really ain't Ballerina... Just like how Doogal ain't The Magic Roundabout. I don't understand how the guy doesn't get it...

All of the non-American animated films he has hacked up have sunk like stones. The one family film he didn't destroy, Paddington, did pretty well at the domestic box office. It was leggy, it got outstanding reviews by US critics, how could he not learn from that? How could he not learn from Arabian Knight and Doogal?

Anyways, Leap! is looking to be Underdogs Deux. Underdogs is his "re-imagined" version of the Argentinian animated film Metegol, which already got a halfway-decent English dub (released in the UK) before he got his hands on it. It was delayed roughly four times, and then it just went straight to video. I think Leap! will suffer the same fate... Of course, they wouldn't ask themselves, "Was the 're-imagining' of it even necessary?"

Well, if ya had only left it alone...

More Movin' Movies: The Weinsteins Delay 'Leap!'

The American release of the French animated film Ballerina has been delayed...

Titled Leap! here in the US, it's been moved - even though there's a trailer out - from March 3rd to April 21st... The week after the release of ToonBox's Spark, which opens a week after Smurfs: The Lost Village and the American release of Your Name., which is a week after the release of The Boss Baby. Talk about a train of animation!

This is no surprise because the Weinstein Company's last all-animated release, Metegol, was delayed... And delayed... And delayed... And was eventually relegated to the direct-to-video market. Leap! could share the same fate, I wouldn't put it past them because every time they delayed Metegol (titled Underdogs here, just as bland as Leap!), it was pretty much at the last minute. One of the delays occurred after the release of a trailer!

Unlike Underdogs, Leap! is Ballerina. At least for now. The film we're currently getting is the same film the UK got months ago, and that's the only English-language dub of this movie to exist. It's a not a rewritten pile of slop, thankfully. Given the Weinsteins' usual ways with animation, I fear the delay could lead to more delays, and a redubbing, because they just can't leave well enough alone. Doogal apparently taught them nothing, nor did their false starts with theatrical animation.

Will Leap! eventually come out unaltered? Or do you think Harvey Scissorhands and co. will be up to their usual tricks?

What say you?

Scissorhands Strikes Again?: 'Ballerina' Gets US Trailer

Ahhh, the Weinsteins... Not quite a great track record of animation you got there. Their latest, however, seems to be an exception.

The French production Ballerina was released in October in its country of origin, and its English dub received a general UK release a few weeks back. The picture, so far, has been met with pretty positive reviews. Here, in the states, the Weinstein Company is releasing it under the rather dumb new title Leap!, but their trailer for it indicates that we will be getting the film the UK saw.


That's a shocker!

As many an animation fan may know, the Weinsteins have butchered and sliced up animated films from other parts of the world. The Magic Roundabout is perhaps the best example, a 2005 CG adaptation of a popular 60s European stop-motion series. When brought here a year later, the whole script was rewritten and an all-star American cast did the voices. It was a disaster. They did the same thing not too long ago to the Argentinian Metegol, and constantly delayed it till it was sent straight to video back in July. Two years after it was set to debut in the US! Three years after it came out in Argentina! And get this... The film already had an English dub made up of UK actors that got released overseas!

Then of course, brother Harvey himself had to nerve to try and cut a Hayao Miyazaki masterpiece! That ended quite well, I'd say...

It's good to see that Ballerina (sorry, still calling it that) won't be just that, though anything is possible. Perhaps they've finally gotten the memo? They didn't scissor up and re-imagine Paddington, which ended up being a good-sized success in America, and won excellent reviews. This guy quite liked it, too - reminded me of an old-school live-action family film that you don't see too often these days. The sequel is out in Europe in the fall, hope we don't have to wait too long for it.

The trailer is pretty bad, though. The editing, the way it's put together, makes the film look like a run of the mill kids' flick... Watch the superior UK trailer instead, it makes the film look good, has more on the story, and it makes it seem a little heartfelt.


TWC is releasing Ballerina/Leap! on March 3, 2017, so I expect it to just come and go. Not a huge success, but it could be something of a tiny sleeper. I think the date does it little favors, having it right after Rock Dog (not saying that's gonna be a Finding Dory-sized titan, but you get the idea) and a few weeks before the live-action Beauty and the Beast. I just hope it does well enough, and that Weinstein gets it together when it comes to future animated releases.

Them dumping the American Underdogs and not tampering with this seems to suggest that lessons have been learned.

What say you?