Great Pics of Frankenweenie in Progress!
We have some great new pics of the artisans in Tim Burton's studio working on his re-imagining of his 1984 short film Frankenweenie. Stop-motion fascinates me. The painstaking attention to detail, not to mention the patience required, must be astounding. The results, at least in the hands of Tim Burton (to be fair Aardman Studios is brills at it as well), usually are. Check out the pics below.
As I said before, when I heard that Burton was not only remaking his own (brilliant) film, but stretching it into a full length feature, I had to wonder why he'd want to mess with perfection?
Well, according to Producer Allison Abate who spoke with ShockTilYouDrop during a set-visit:
“Tim always wanted to make it into a feature and into an animated feature. We had to open the story up a little bit. Pretty much, the whole first act is like the short. We meet Victor and his beloved dog, Sparky. There’s a terrible car accident tragedy and the dog gets killed. Of course Victor, being a clever guy, figures out how to reincarnate him. Where the story diverges is that Victor is now desperate to keep his dog a secret. He doesn’t really know if what he’s done is a great thing. He doesn’t tell his parents and he doesn’t tell his school friends… Of course, the other kids at school get wind of it and kind of want in.”
Apparently this time there will be more than just Victor’s dog Sparky get the ‘reanimation’ treatment. Victor’s friends are all based on icons of classic horror films and each creates their own ‘monster’. In the pics, we can see sketches that point to everything from mummified hamsters to turtles with scales that resemble Japanese movie monster Gamera. Now that sounds funny. A reanimated turtle. How can you tell?
The really good news about any of this, for me, is that Frankenweenie reunites Burton with Winona Ryder, Michael Keaton, Catherine O'Hara, Jeffrey Jones (I thought he was in jail?), and the late Glenn Shadix, who all appeared in Beetlejuice. This is actually Burton's third collaboration with Ryder, who also starred alongside Johnny Depp in Edward Scissorhands. Of course, since Frankenweenie is stop-motion animation (the original short was live-action) like that seen in A Nightmare Before Christmas, only their voices will be featured, including the voice of another Burton alum, Martin Landau.
Frankenweenie, which will be the second of two Burton films for 2012, after Dark Shadows opens in May, comes to theaters October 5.
