Alice In Wonderland

[MacGuffin]

Burton To Respect Alice's Essence
Source: SciFi Wire

Director Tim Burton, who will helm a new film adaptation of Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland stories, said that he will stay true to the stories' essence.

"It's just such a classic, and the imagery is so surreal," Burton said in an interview while promoting his latest film, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. "I don't know; I've never seen a version where I feel like they got it all. It's a series of weird adventures, and to try to do it where it works as a movie will be interesting."

Burton will also produce the adaptation, which will use both live action and performance-capture animation.

"The stories are like drugs for children, you know?" Burton said. "It's like, 'Whoa, man.' The imagery, they've never quite nailed making it compelling as a full story. So I think it's an interesting challenge to direct."

Filming on Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is set to begin in early 2008. Burton will work from a script by Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast).

[MacGuffin]

Johnny Depp dons another hat for Burton
Will play Mad Hatter in live-action/CG 'Alice in Wonderland'
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Johnny Depp will preside over the manic tea party in Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" as the Mad Hatter.

Depp and Burton -- who first worked together in 1990's "Edward Scissorhands" and most recently collaborated on "Sweeney Todd" -- have formed one of the longest-running director-actor partnerships in modern Hollywood. And so when Burton committed to filming a new live-action/CG version of "Alice," Depp was touted as the most likely candidate to play the Mad Hatter -- after all, having worked with Burton on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," he's practiced in wearing a top hat.

Disney formally announced the casting Wednesday at a studio presentation.

Mia Wasikowska, the young Australian actress who scored in HBO's "In Treatment," had previously been cast as Alice.

Matt Lucas, who stars in the sketch comedy series "Little Britain USA," which debuts on HBO Sunday, is set to play the dual roles of Tweedledum and Tweedledee.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

Anyone else think Burton is better off sticking to original screenplays that he's written?

His adaptation of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was horrid, hopefully this competes with Jan Svankmajer's 1988 version.

[Jefferson]

has he written many screenplays? im not overly familiar with his early work but i was under the impression he was more a story developer but didn't write the actual scripts.

[last days of gerry the elephant]

Well if he's not independently written a screenplay himself, it's his own conceptions I'm talking about. Edward Scissor Hands, The Nightmare Before Christmas.

His little story book is FULL of ideas he can elaborate on, redundant in theme, but still.

[MacGuffin]

Anne Hathaway books 'Alice'
Helena Bonham Carter also cast in Tim Burton's film
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Anne Hathaway, who is generating buzz for her performance in "Rachel Getting Married," has signed for a role in "Alice in Wonderland," which Tim Burton is directing for Disney.

Helena Bonham Carter also has joined the film.

The movie, which stars Mia Wasikowska as Alice and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, will use a combination of live action and performance-capture technology to tell the Lewis Carroll story.

Hathaway is playing the White Queen, a benevolent monarch who is deposed and banished by her sister, the Red Queen (Carter), who has an affinity for crying out, "Off with their heads!" The White Queen needs Alice to slay a creature known as the Bandersnatch.

Richard Zanuck, Joe Roth and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd are producing.

Hathaway, repped by CAA and Management 360, next appears in the horror thriller "Passengers."

Bonham Carter, repped by Endeavor and Magnolia Entertainment, has frequently worked with Burton, her fiance; their credits include "Sweeney Todd," "Corpse Bride," "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, "Big Fish" and "Planet of the Apes."

[MacGuffin]

Tim Burton talks about Johnny Depp, 'Alice in Wonderland' and 'The Dark Knight'
Source: Los Angeles Times

I got Tim Burton on the phone the other day while he was on the set of "Alice in Wonderland" and I had to admit right off the bat that I was surprised that, with the filming just underway, he was taking the time to chat. "Yeah, well, me too," he said in his droll deadpan, and I wasn't sure whether to laugh or apologize and hang up. Then he let me off the hook. "Actually," he said in a sunnier voice, "we're just about to get going so we'll see how things go. Good, I hope."

I'm guessing things will go quite well for the 50-year-old filmmaker, who seems like the ideal auteur to bring Lewis Carroll's surreal 1865 classic "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" to the screen for a 21st century audience.

Young Aussie Mia Wasikowska will be Burton's Alice, while Johnny Depp is the inspired choice to play the Mad Hatter.

I told Burton that it seems as if Depp (who has other upcoming roles as an Old West hero, a pirate and a vampire) approaches his acting choices the same way a gleeful kid rummages through a trunk of dress-up clothes. The filmmaker let out a loud laugh. "It's true. Yeah we have a big dress-up clothes trunk here. We take it with us wherever we go."

More on a Depp and "Alice" in a moment, but first:  This Saturday night Burton will be at the Scream 2008 Awards at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles, an event that in just its third year has become a signature event in sci-fi, comics, fantasy and, yes, horror, which was is its original mandate but is now just part of its genre cocktail. Burton is getting something called the Immortal Award and the Scream people boldly say that Burton has "contributed more to the genres of fantasy, sci-fi and horror than any other filmmaker of his generation," and there's certainly an argument to made that they are completely right. "Batman," "Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands," "Ed Wood," "The Nightmare Before Christmas"...the list just goes on and on. Burton's film visuals -- a sort of cemetery cabaret ethos -- have put him on an short list (Alfred Hitchcock, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen spring to mind) of filmmakers who have such distinctive on-screen traits that they become evocative brand names to even casual filmgoers.

Burton will be making quite the dramatic entrance on Saturday (which you can see yourself when the show airs on Spike TV on Oct. 21) but he has a reputation as a fairly shy fellow. I asked him if he was looking forward to the trophy night or dreading it.

"I haven't been to the event but I've seen a bit on TV and it looks quite fun, you know, which in itself is different from most of these kind of shows. It looks like a nice big Halloween party, which is always good. It seems like all the type of people that nobody liked in school all getting together for a nice big party. A prom for the kids that didn't go to prom."

I told Burton that, for the night, the venue should change its sign to read 'The Geek Theatre' and he laughed again. "That's very good! I like that. I can't use, that, I can't take credit for that." He said he had a better way to sum up the geek and Goth crowd that will attend: "We're all the people on the yearbook pages devoted to "the most likely to disappear before the semester ends and no one will notice..."

Burton was making "Batman" films when the cape genre was still viewed as a campy ghetto by serious Hollywood creators, so it must be interesting for him to watch the fringe entertainment move so squarely to the center of mainstream film and to finally do so with respectable reviews. "It is a different time now, yes. It's strange to me. At the time back in school when everybody tortured you, it didn't seem quite the same. It wasn't fashionable then. It didn't seem viable and vibrant and accepted at the time. But sometimes those things take a while."

With "Alice in Wonderland," the defining pop-culture version of the story for modern American audiences is the 1954 Disney animated adaptation with its little blond Alice in her blue dress with white pinafore. That film was met with acidic reviews by the literary world (especially in England) for its bland and blunted vision of the Carroll classic. Burton is not a fan of the film, either, and, as with "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," it appears his mission is to reclaim a children's classic, resharpen its edges and remind everyone that sapping the weirdness out of a tale often renders it flat and forgettable.

"It's a funny project. The story is obviously a classic with iconic images and ideas and thoughts. But with all the movie versions, well, I've just never seen one that really had any impact to me. It's always just a series of weird events. Every character is strange and she's just kind of wandering through all of the encounters as just a sort of observer. The goal is to try to make it an engaging movie where you get some of the psychology and kind of bring a freshness but also keep the classic nature of 'Alice.' And, you know, getting to do it in 3-D fits the material quite well. So I'm excited about making it a new version  but also have the elements that people expect when they think of the material."

I told Burton he's right, the Disney movie is a meandering tour of a funhouse without any gripping story arc. "Yeah, I know, it's just, 'Oh, this character's weird' and 'Oh, that character's weird.' I can't really recall a version where I felt really engaged by it. So that's the goal, just to try to give it a gravity that most film versions haven't had."

How easy was it to persuade Depp to conjure up yet another enigmatic oddball? "He loves doing that. That's never a problem. He doesn't like to be the same way twice. That's good, it always keeps it fresh and all. And he likes the material we have here and he gets it. It's nice to have people involved that are fans of the material and all."

Is there a plan yet on "Dark Shadows," based on the vampire soap opera, also set to star Depp? "Oh I don't know. Take one at time, you know? It's something I'm interested in of course. Definitely. But I'm going to start shooting this one first!"

I asked Burton if it's more than a coincidence that over the past decade his live-action films have often revisited and reimagined existing works, be they literature ("Charlie," "Alice," "Sleepy Hollow," "Big Fish"), musicals ("Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"), movies ("Planet of the Apes") or television shows ("Dark Shadows").

"Hmm. That's interesting. I don't know. I think we're all a product of our upbringing, you know, in a sense. I wasn't a very literary person. I loved movies. What you grow up with is what influences you. Whether you were a reader and there's a lot of books that you sort of want to translate to film or if it's other things that took in. I was definitely of a generation where the things I grew up watching still have impact on me. There's something about exercising that aspect of your personality or working with something that's meant a lot to you. It's just another way of processing ideas and all. So it's not really a conscious decision. I don't open up old 'TV Guides' and sit there and think, 'Hmmmm, 'Sanford & Son', that's the the movie I want to do. I watched that when I was a child...' "

Burton said he is ramping up his bravery for the Saturday night event with its hot spotlight and crowd. "I don't do it very often so it's not something I'm very used to. I'm not comfortable in big public situations, but at the same time it's a very nice thing. It's a very nice thing to do. But while it is nice, it's not the thing you think about a lot. For me, it's the people that come up to you on the streets, the people that say something to you in person, something nice and thoughtful, that's so much more interesting than connecting with a sort of staged event. you know? The types of people you grew up with, the people that enjoy certain kinds of movies, there's a connection with people like that. I certainly feel that. I mean, when someone comes up to me on the street and they have one of my drawings as a tattoo on their body, a real tattoo... I mean, that's pretty amazing. That's happened to me a few times."

Then there was a question I had to ask: What did Burton think of "The Dark Knight"? After a bit of fumbling around for words, Burton said: "I haven't seen it yet. I'm just, you know, busy. I do want to see it. I've heard it's very good. And I'm sure it is very good. Mostly everybody that I know that has seen it has said that it's very good and I take their word for it."

I thought it would be good to change the subject. There was a recent anniversary DVD of "Beetlejuice," so I asked Burton how he frames that film in his mind when he looks back on it as both a career and creative moment.

"With that movie, I just remember that back then it was the second film I did and I felt very strange making it because everyone was thinking, 'This movie really has no story and it doesn't move along like a Hollywood movie.' It just felt very funny and strange having the opportunity to make that. i just remember that feeling every day: 'Wow, they're letting me make this, which is really weird.' And it continues to this day, that dynamic. It's still weird."

Seemed like a good place to stop. I thanked for Burton for his time and mentioned that I'm hoping to visit the "Alice" set soon. "That's great, I'll see you out here! I'll be on the green screen. Just look for a load of green. Take care."

[MacGuffin]

Crispin Glover joins 'Alice in Wonderland'
Actor to play Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's adaptation
Source: Hollywood Reporter

Crispin Glover has signed on to play the Knave of Hearts in Tim Burton's adaptation of "Alice in Wonderland" for Disney.

Glover joins Mia Wasikowska as Alice and a cast that includes Johnny Depp, Anne Hathaway and Helena Bonham Carter. Burton is using a combination of live action and performance-capture technology to tell the Lewis Carroll story.

The APA-repped Glover is no stranger to performance-capture technology: He worked in the medium for "Beowulf."

In "Alice," the Knave of Hearts is put on trial for stealing the Queen of Hearts' tarts and is defended by Alice.

[MacGuffin]

Is This Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter?
Source: Cinematical

An image of Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland has arrived online via something called Fangirl Magazine, and my initial feelings are that it's a fake -- something some fan doctored-up in an attempt to have a little fun with the online community. Also, since Depp's Mad Hatter will most likely be presented to us in motion capture, this image (if real) would have to either be concept art or, perhaps, a painting of the character that may or may not show up in the background of a scene. It is quite creepy, though, the way he clutches that rabbit -- and so if this is fan made, kudos to its creator. That said, I'd expect the final version to have a little more color ... but it probably won't be too far off from this.

[Stefen]

haha.

[gob]

Looks like a Dandy Salem's Lot vampire.

[cinemanarchist]

That's probably just Johnny Depp's Christmas card or something. No way that's TMH.

[RegularKarate]

are you the keymaster?

[MacGuffin]

Zanuck Defends Burton's 3-D Alice

Richard D. Zanuck, who is producing the Tim Burton-directed Alice in Wonderland film, told reporters that when the film is released in 3-D, viewers will never know it was shot in 2-D and converted later. On Dec. 2, James Cameron criticized Burton's decision to convert 2-D footage to stereoscopic 3-D in a keynote address to the 3-D Entertainment Summit.

"The 3-D cameras are very clumsy, quite frankly, compared to 2-D cameras," Zanuck said in a press conference on Dec. 3 in Beverly Hills, Calif., where he was promoting the comedy Yes Man. "It would have cost a lot more, and we would have had more crew involved. I didn't see what Cameron said, but I was convinced--and so was Tim--seeing test after test of pictures that have been released in 3-D [that were] shot in 2-D, and you can't tell the difference. I would defy Jim Cameron to see the tests I saw and point out which was 2-D and which was 3-D."

Burton's Alice will be the first film to combine motion-capture animation with live action and stop-motion animation in 3-D. Zanuck said Burton adds his distinct visual style to a faithful representation of Lewis Carroll's classic tale.

"It's everything you would imagine," Zanuck said. "You put Tim Burton into a world where his vision can run wild, and you'll get the result that we're getting. When she goes into the rabbit hole, it's a dream, actually: her dream. It's anything that comes to her mind and then embellished, because we're very faithful to the Lewis Carroll book, but it's Tim Burton being able to really crank up his wild imagination in kind of a dark way, too, as the original material was dark and scary."

Zanuck added that production on the live-action portion is wrapping up. "We're almost through with our part of it, which is shooting the live actors, but they'll be animated," he said. Alice in Wonderland is scheduled for release in 2010.

[MacGuffin]

Disney Meeting Includes Surprise: A Glimpse of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter
By Brooks Barnes

Johnny DeppThere it was, buried in a video montage that kicked off the Walt Disney Company's annual meeting Tuesday: the first true glimpse of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in Tim Burton's upcoming "Alice in Wonderland." Victorian top hat, crimped hair that sticks straight out, and swirl of brightly colored make-up on his eyes, cheeks and lips that resembled the blur of a pinwheel blowing in the breeze.

It was a blink-and-you-missed-it moment but most shareholders seemed to catch it, with a chorus of oohs and ahhs rising from the packed theater. The image even seemed to impress Disney board members, who sat mostly stone-faced in the fifth row during the two-hour meeting. (Except for Steve Jobs and Fred H. Langhammer, who did not attend.)

No, a spokeswoman said afterwards, a picture would not be made available. Presumably the company didn't want to rain on the parade of "Disney Twenty-Three," a pricey new quarterly magazine that was introduced at the meeting and features an interview with Mr. Burton and concept art for his tea party in its $15.95 first issue.

"It's kind of a mixture of some distorted live action and animation," the filmmaker is quoted as saying of the film, set for a March 2010 release. "I'm not sure what to relate it to. It's kind of new territory for me."

The meeting was fairly routine – shareholder efforts to reign in compensation were defeated – but the trip for board members contained a bonus. John E. Pepper Jr., Disney's chairman, said the board spent Monday on an inaugural visit to Pixar's corporate campus in Emeryville, Calif. (The board has never been to Pixar before?) Included in the tour: a 3-D screening of "Up," Pixar's upcoming release about an elderly man's balloon ride to the tropics, and early footage of "Toy Story 3," which was deemed "jaw-droppingly good" by one attendee.