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[Kristof]

From http://www.mickeynews.com

Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon will star as a wicked queen intent on destroying true love in "Enchanted," a Walt Disney Pictures fairy tale that will blend animation and live action.
Sarandon has signed on to play Queen Narissa opposite a star-crossed princess (Amy Adams of "Junebug") and prince (James Marsden).

The story centers on a princess-in-waiting who is banished from a classical animation world by a vainglorious queen and dumped into a modern-day, live-action Manhattan.

Sarandon's role calls for her to demonstrate versatility in various media forms. Her transformations for traditional toon sequences are being created by Disney animator James Baxter, best known for his supervision of the character Belle in 1991's "Beauty and the Beast." Sarandon's likeness also is being re-envisioned by Oscar-winning makeup effects artist Rick Baker. The actress recently attended prosthetic modeling sessions at Baker's Cinovation Studios.

"Enchanted" begins production in April, with Sarandon expected to begin working in May. Kevin Lima directs.

Sarandon next appears in New Line Cinema's "Mr. Woodcock" and as heiress Doris Duke in Bob Balaban's upcoming "Doris and Bernard" opposite Ralph Fiennes. She most recently starred in John Turturro's "Romance & Cigarettes."

[Anthony]

I like the idea behind this film, it sounds cool.  It's nice that the characters go from an animated world to a live-action one for a change, instead of the other way around (like Mary Poppins, etc.).

I hope Disney pull it off!  What kind of animation will this film use?  It says there "classically animated" - does that mean traditional, hand-drawn animation?   I was expecting CGI...

[Kristof]

That part got me excited too ;-)

[Kristof]

Welcome back Alan!!

Eight-time Academy Award-winning composer Alan Menken (The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame) has signed a non-exclusive, multi-picture deal with Walt Disney/Touchstone Pictures to score non-animated films and compose for live-action projects, it was announced today by Mitchell Leib, President of music and soundtracks for Walt Disney Pictures & Television/Buena Vista Music Group. For his first assignment under this new deal, Menken will score as well as write five original songs for Walt Disney Pictures' upcoming romantic musical-fantasy, Enchanted, which is being directed by Kevin Lima (Tarzan, 102 Dalmatians). For that project, Menken will reunite with Tony and Oscar-winning lyricist Stephen Schwartz, his collaborator on Pocahontas and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Menken recently completed scoring Disney's upcoming live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog, due in theaters on March 10th.
Under the terms of this new arrangement, Menken is expanding his role from within other divisions of The Walt Disney Company. For Disney Theatrical Productions, he is currently in preproduction on the stage version of "The Little Mermaid." Menken is also developing a new animated musical, The Frog Princess for Walt Disney Feature Animation. For Disney Creative Entertainment, he is creating a stage musical of "The Snow Queen" set to debut at Tokyo DisneySea with Amon Miyamoto directing and John Weidman as the bookwriter and Glen Slater the lyricist. He is also writing music for a Sinbad attraction in Japan for Walt Disney Imagineering.

Menken's current slate of projects also includes composing an original score for the stage musical adaptation of "Sister Act" (based on the hit Touchstone Pictures' film) premiering this October at the Pasadena Playhouse.

Commenting on Menken's new expanded role, Leib said, "Alan is one of the greatest music composers and songwriters of all time, bar none. There is simply no one like him. The only reason he hasn't done more work for us in live-action to date is because the rest of Disney keeps him so busy working on animated films, theatrical stage plays, and theme park attractions. I feel very fortunate to now have him working on our live action films too."

Chris Montan, president of Walt Disney Music, added, "Alan became part of our world with 'The Little Mermaid' and has been making beautiful music for us ever since. He was an important part of our animation renaissance here at Disney and continues to be one of the most exciting, original, and prolific composer/songwriters of our times. We're thrilled to be working with him on such a wide variety of projects, and look forward to seeing him stretch his talents in new and innovative ways."

Dick Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, said, "Everyone is familiar with Alan's incredible talents when it comes to writing songs for animated projects and theatrical productions, but he is also a great film composer in his own right. He has written a terrific score for 'The Shaggy Dog' and has expressed interest in writing music for other live-action films. Alan is a true Disney legend, and his music has enriched so many of our films."

Menken is best known for his hit animated musicals including The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, Hercules, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Beauty and the Beast as well as the stage version on the latter which has the distinction of being the longest running American musical. Menken is also known for the stage and film version of Little Shop of Horrors

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[Patrick]

Well it's great to hear Alan's back, he is such a great musician, really quite amazing how much he is coimposing for Disney, this movie sounds like it could be great if he is composing the soundtrack .  Plus what's that I hear a Little mermaid musical, always thought that could be transformed into a great stage show, hopefully it will be great like beauty and the beast and the less beautiful in my mind, but still extremely popular Lion King

[Dlrpfan]

This is fab news!!
Hopefully a realy good song or two will apper in future films :?:

[Anthony]

Woooooo! Alan Menken!!! *continues cheering*  Get Disney a few more music Oscars, Alan, please!

Also, it hasn't been mentioned in this topic yet that the animated parts of Enchanted will be TRADITIONALLY ANIMATED!!   Not by Disney, but by a really small seperate studio (there's info about it on JimHillMedia.com somewhere).

This is shaping up to be a brilliant film...  I hope they don't mess it up!

[Kristof]

It's James Baxter's company that's doing the animation.  He was the Supervising Animator for Belle in Beauty and the Beast, Quasimodo in the Hunchback, and in almost all 2D and 3D Dreamworks animations.

[Kristof]

There's some footage from Enchanted at the end of this videoclip.  Looks promising :

http://progressive.playstream.com/scree ... 37_b2z.mov

[Mansion Staff]

IdinaMenzel is in this!!!
I cant wait!

[DisneyBud]

^^^^Do you like Wicked by any chance?

[Patrick]

Idina Menzel is amazing, so I'm hoping that her role in this movie she plays as well as she did in Wicked and Rent etc etc.  But this movie is definately starting to look really great, cannot wait to see finally a partly 2D animated movie again on the cinema screen .

[Kristof]

Did you notice how the witch resembles the Old Hag from Snow White?

[Patrick]

Yeah she does seem to resemble her rather a lot, seems maybe they are trying to prove a point.  Such as Walt Disney are up to another age of animation, after all the old hag was the first ever animated fairytale villain in a disney movie .  Or it could simply be a big coincidence.

[Anthony]

I love the idea of the film as a whole, but I don't really like the animation.  Great that they're doing a bit of tradional animation, but it looks far from groundbreaking to me.  It reminds me a bit of a DisneyToon movie, or if Disney made their own 2D animated Shrek.  Maybe it's meant to be like that though, like the most stereotypical fairytale animation possible?  We'll have to wait and see.

I hope this is 2007's Christmas hit though, like Narnia was in 2005.