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 Monster Mashing: 'Pacific Rim' Sequel Begins Production, Warner Bros. Dates 'Rampage' Movie

For a while, we've heard about an adaptation of the arcade classic Rampage...

I mean, how could one go wrong? It's a game where you get to play as a cartoony giant monster, and destroy the living daylights out of cities! The original game hit arcades in 1986, and got a couple sequels, the most notable being Rampage: World Tour. The film is set to star The Rock, so that makes it cooler. The Rock squaring off against three giant monsters! Or will The Rock be one of the monsters? In the games, the monsters are humans that have morphed into towering behemoths.

Let's just hope they get this one right, because if they take it too seriously and make it a generic gritty monster movie, I won't be a happy camper. Rampage is meant to be over-the-top fun and bonkers destruction, and I think it would honestly work better as an all-animated film, but live-action/HRCG it is (I'm going use that from now on: Hyper-real CG). Brad Peyton, director of The Rock's recent actioner hit San Andreas, is at the helm of this. The same writer, Carlton Cruse, returns as well. I actually happened to see San Andreas, I thought it was just "there". Good, competent action, some thrills, but little else. Hopefully Rampage is not just like that.

Anyways, it's finally seemingly going forward. Turns out, Rampage will be that picture WB will be releasing through New Line on April 20, 2018. That's actually over a month after Wreck-It Ralph 2 opens, and of course Ralph's game world was partially inspired by Rampage. I think that's kind of a cool coincidence, no?

Just as cool is the fact that this will open about two months after Pacific Rim: Maelstrom, which is also now an official thing. Cameras are rolling, production has begun! For a little while, we didn't have many monster movies like this, just a few inbetween... But now we're seeing more and more of them, maybe because of the big success of Gareth Edwards' Godzilla? Pacific Rim - a $190 million-costing giant - was a domestic crawler after a low opening weekend gross, but the overseas markets saved it, and a few other things too. More than anything, this sequel is being made for the country that flocked to see the original: China. If Warcraft gets a sequel, that's also going to be for China.

Anyways, Godzilla had godawful legs after a massive opening bow back in 2014 (I, for one, loved the film), thankfully it made just enough here and elsewhere to ensure a sequel, a crossover with Legendary's own King Kong, and a possible shared universe of giant monsters. Kaiju have returned! Now let's get an animated kaiju movie a-firin', huh? When will Paramount get around to making Trey Parker and Matt Stone's Giant Monsters Attack Japan? What about Original Force's geriatric kaiju comedy OldZilla?

What say you?