Mousekingdom Blog

Sao Feng will be my favorite Pirates of the Caribbean character. I know, I haven’t seen the movie yet, but being a big Chow Yun Fat fan (from way back during his Hong Kong movies fame) I can’t help it. So while I try to follow all the stories around his character I was also anxiously awaiting any news for a Sao Feng action figure. It was obvious to me that he would be part of a “Pirates of the Caribbean; At Worlds Ends” Action figure series (together with Jack Sparrow and the rest of the cast). Now, during the Toy Fair in New York (I was lucky enough to have been able to visit this fair in the past) the new Pirates figure where being shown to dealers from around the world.

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Nicolas Cage might be playing the Sorcerer in a live-action version of Disney Classic “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” from the Fantasia Film.

“Sorcerer” is being envisioned as a fantasy adventure set in contemporary New York, where a powerful sorcerer is in need of an apprentice. (The Hollywood Reporter)

Sounds like a fun project with a great actor attached to it.

A man from Clearwater claims to be the owner of the very First original Mickey Mouse drawing from Walt Disney. He had the artwork, ink and paper tested to authenticate the drawing. He has been trying to contact Disney since 1989, but they refuse to even look at it. Well maybe because this is not even close to the very first Mickey cartoon we know making this either a fake, a work from somewhere later in Mickey’s life, or a cause to try (and I stress try) to get a quick buck out of Disney as he is suing them for $50 million.

“I’m suing them for $50-million, the copyright on Mickey Mouse, and the right to tell the Walt Disney story,” (Fox)

He might have only paid $3 for this “original” (Claiming with it the copyrights to the mouse) but once he is done suing Disney it will cost him a lot more when he will have to pick up the bills of his lawyers after loosing the case.

Picture from FOX

Aint it Cool News has 4 awesome pictures of the “Pirates of the Caribbean; At Worlds End” movie, including the one from Chow Yun Fat, the most awesome actor in the world…

Many of you contacted us regarding the technical problems the RSS-feeds here on the Mousekingdom Blog. Let me say that we regret the problems you encountered in the past weeks. We finally solved the technical riddle (a plug-in of the blog-software somehow broke our rss-feed) and got the two feeds back up online. So good news for all of you, who wan’t to stay up-to-date with the recent posts and comments without any hassle!

Now we are so free and will use this opportunity also for some advertising … and kindly point out that there are three more feeds you might be interested in: the DLP.info News & Updates feed, the Clickmagique’s PicParade feed and the DLP.info-Boards feed! With these feeds you won’t miss any new posts on the DLP.info boards, news and updates published on DLP.info or photos uploaded by fellow Disney fans to the free photo hosting site Clickmagique’s PicParade … or did you know that user Androland just uploaded 14 photos of the construction of DLRP’s Space Mountain over at Clickmagique’s PicParade?

More info about all five feeds and for webmasters - who are invited to integrate the feeds on their sites - can be found on the RSS-Feed-overview page.

Many of us Disney fans love to hop from one park to the next one. While this can take some time when you are at Walt Disney World and go from one park to the next, at Disneyland Resort Paris this is a little bit easier. It takes you a 5 minute walk (or less if you have a good pace) to go from one gate to another. This is of course a little advantage if you want to visit both parks at the same day but might give some other disadvantages for the visitors. While you are at Walt Disney World you are pretty much enclosed into the park without obstructing views from the outside (except maybe for the Contemporary Hotel that can be seen from the Magic Kingdom) at the Disneyland Park in Paris you will be confronted with the outside life…

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Jay Rasulo spoke about some concepts for future Disney parks and hotels that have attracted my interest. Let’s have a look at the Disney Parks eyes stand-alone hotels article and see what could well be a concept that could ad even more Disney magic around the globe…

The Walt Disney Co. is considering “blue sky concepts” of creating smaller theme parks and stand-alone hotels, retail, dining and entertainment centers, Jay Rasulo, chairman of Disney’s Parks and Resorts told analysts at a conference on Wednesday.

Building stand-alone hotels in urban areas where families already travel would give Disney the chance to reach out to parents who feel their children are still too young to appreciate a trip to a Disney theme park, Rasulo said.

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It looks like it’s confirm now and we are going to get the third installment of Toy Story. John Lasseter will not be the director of the third one…

Lasseter said Lee Unkrich will helm it with Tom Hanks and Tim Allen returning as the voices of Woody and Buzz Lightyear. (ComingSoon.Net)

I did enjoy the first two movies a lot, the second one even more then the first one. Being a comic book and Toy collector myself I thought the second movie was especially funny. (I too get excited over an action figure mint in the box, although I don’t look like the Store owner and don’t eat like him).

It’s another 2 years plus but if done in the style of the first two it is something to look forwards too.

Ok you though the Super Bowl craze was over? Afterall the traditional winner’s ”I’m Going to Disneyland” / “I’m going to Walt Disney World” spot has aired, Head Coach Dungy and Running Back Rhodes from the NFL Superbowl Champion Indianapolis Colts have visited Walt Disney World and the regular tv prgramming is back on? Well, not so fast … we can’t let you go without coming back to the one reason many viewers actually tune in: the unique tv ads!

As mentioned in a recent post Disney had entered the fiercy ad-battle that wages around the Superbowl with a 30 second trailer for the upcoming animated ”Meet the Robinsons” feature. With 30 second ads costing up to 2.6 million US-$ (not to produce, just for the airtime!) and roughly 90 millions in front of their TVs in the US every advertiser tries to come up with its best. So how did Disney fare with its spot for “Meet the Robinsons”, which aired as 36th spot of the evening (out of a total of 65)?

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Disney fans can be found around the globe … and we bloggers here at the Mousekingdom Blog love to believe that there are readers from around the globe as well … so today a short post for all our readers and Disney fans living in or close by Seattle (or visiting Seattle at certain dates). Still reading? Ok, so I assume you are either totally bored, really love this blog (THANKS!) or are actually living in the area / visiting the area.

Maybe you already now that the EMP (Experience Music Project) is currently (till September 9, 2007) running the special exhibition “Disney: The Music behind the Magic 1928 - today“. If not: there is a great website for that exhibit with plenty of audio clips that is worth visiting also (or: especially?) for those of us who can’t make it to the exhibit. E.g. one can listen to Tom Schumacher, President of Disney Theatrical, talking about the origins of the company’s Broadway productions. Anyway, back to the topic. In connection with this special exhibit a series of three great lectures in February, March and April has been announced.

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The new Disney.com has gone live since a couple of days and looks great. The first page shows you a lot of options to choose from like Movies, TV, games, and so on. However, the first section I checked out was the Travel section. All the little trailers of the parks and other Disney locations where fun to watch (and makes me want to be there even more as before).

Parents and adult will have a lot of fun planning their next trips… but beware of the children’s section; before you know it you will be playing the games. (I was playing Mickey’s Tool Shed game and it was fun – I’ll never grow up)

As is already well known 2007 is the year that Disney Theatrical finally gets the long talked about project of a stage version of Disney animated musical The Little Mermaid up and running. I really don’t want to rehash all the information here about the try-out tour or the fact that the show will replace Disney’s Beauty and the Beast on the great white way (aka the Broadway) in New York City. For that there is actually a really great source that I would like to present to you: a special blog dedicated to The Little Mermaid on Broadway. So if you look for updated news about the try-outs, casting, tickets, … right now this is a great place to go. The blog also seems to have gotten hold of some demo recordings of an earlier broadway workshop for the production…

CNN Money reports about an article of Bahrain’s al-Waqt newspaper which based on un-identified sources states that Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal is supposed to be in talks with potential investors to build an $8 billion Disneyland theme park in Bahrain based on existing Disney theme park concepts and to be called tentatively “Disney Bahrain”. While the report does give no indications wether The Walt Disney Company is directly involved in the talks it names Kuwait Finance House, the Gulf’s second-largest Islamic bank by market value, and Bahraini institutions as being among the potential investors targeted in the talks. According to CNN Money Kuwait Finance House in Bahrain declined to either confirm or deny the report, while the spokeswoman for the prince could not be reached for comment. A spokeswoman for Bahrain’s Economic Development Board and a spokesman for the state-owned Mumtalakat Holding Company said they had not heard of the deal.

According to a report of Reuters on the other hand The Walt Disney Company denied any involvment in such talks. A spokesperson is cited as explicitely stating the company “is not in talks to build a theme park in Bahrain.”

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The Polar Express was a fun movie I still enjoy today (except for the hot chocolate drink song). The movie used a new technique of digitally recording actors’ movements that are afterwards put into a computer and used to develop the 3-D motion pictures. Robert Zemeckis was the first to use this technique in the above mentioned movie.

After Robert Zemeckis, Jack Rapke and Steve Starkey left Dreamworks they became free agents. Disney saw its chance and talked to Robert and a possible joint future, a future that has now become reality as the joint venture has been announced.

The announcement had been expected since the trio moved to Disney’s Burbank lot in the fall. (The Hollywood Reporter)

After the Pixar deal, Disney has now another big name added to their team.

As part of the deal, all of Zemeckis’ future performance-capture movies will be made exclusively for the new company. Disney will distribute and market its films worldwide. While the pact doesn’t cover live-action movies, Zemeckis is expected to focus his energy on performance capture in the near future. (The Hollywood Reporter)

There are few things more annyoing than mobile phones ringing during a movie in the theater (or a live performance for that). But it seems to be human to forget to turn these cute little phones off before entering, movie theaters nowadays need to remind their patrons kindly before the actual movie starts with an on-screen anouncement. Several years ago some clever marketing specialist got the idea to provide the theaters with an attention grabbing announcement featuring the stars of an upcoming movie and such promoting the movie. In the meantime especially animated features make use of this concept - just off the head I remember such trailers featuring the stars of “Robots”, “Open Season” as well as Disney’s “Brother Bear”, the latter with the moose talking on the phone. In fact my local movie theater even continues to use some of these older trailers / announcements after the movie has long gone and seen a DVD release. When I went to see “Eragon” a few days ago a new trailer / announcement was used …

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Bob Iger announced in an exclusive online interview with the Financial Times that in just three months Disney was able to sell 1.3 million downloads of movies on iTunes with the online-release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest and Disney Pixar’s CARS pushing the number of downloads past the 1 million treshold and effectively dubbling the download numbers over the Christmas season. While the download of full length movies is a new offer of iTunes, shorter tv programming is already available for one year - a period during which Disney was able to count more than 20 million according downloads.

Still other big studios are reluctant to offer their movies on iTunes. Which is frequently blamed on fears (or even threats?) of large motar-and-brick retailers such as Wal*Mart and Target fearing that downloads might have a negative impact on DVD sales. And in fact the movie industry is trying to prepare for a slowing DVD market after years of exploding sales. The Financial Times adds that the research firm Pali Capital “expects 2007 to be the first year that spending on DVDs in the US declines”.

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You do remember Richard Sherman, don’t you? He is one half of the brothers Sherman & Sherman who are responsible for some of the most memorable and successful Disney songs ever written for popular Disney recording artists such as Annette, Disney features and certainly the Disney theme parks. To name just a few there are: it’s a small world, The Parent Trap, Tall Paul, Merlin Jones, A Spoonful of Sugar, Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious, Step in Time, Let’s Go Fly a Kite, I Love To Laugh, Chim Chim Cher-Ee, I Wanna Be Like You, The Tiki Tiki Tiki Room, There’s A Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow, Winnie the Pooh, The Age of Not Believing, Higitus Figitus, Let’s Get Together, Fortuosity, Makin’ Memories, One Little Spark and certainly Walt’s personal favorite Feed The Birds. But back to the original topic of this post…Richard Sherman has just finished another song for Disney - this time for the DVD re-release of the animated classic Peter Pan!…

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Tonight another exciting season of american football in the NFL will come to an end, as the world champion is determined by way of the SUPERBOWL XLI in Miami, Florida. Ok - is this blog now sponsored by the NFL? No, in fact the Superbowl attraction millions around the globe on tv and regularly raking up the highest viewer numbers of any shows on tv really wouldn’t need any promotion from this blog. So, why are we suddenly posting about an american football game? Well, I could just say that I am looking forward to seeing the game - which would be true but is not really enough reason to post here. No, the real reason is … there is a connection between the Superbowl and Disney that is often forgotten and which I therefore would like to point out again. And no, I am not talking about ESPN or ABC here. We are talking show here!

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The next guild of movie professional has handed out its awards last night. After the Screen Actors Guild now it was the time for the Directors Guild of America (DGA). And once again Disney was able to score three of the trophies at the 59th Annual DGA Awards. So here we go…

For the worldwide record breaking Disney Channel movie “The Highschool Musical” director Kenny Ortega was presented with his first ever DGA award for Oustanding Directorial Achievement in Children’s Programs, while Richard Shepard received his first ever DGA award for his work as director of the pilot episode of ABC’s “Ugly Betty” in the category Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Comedy Series. For Outstanding Directorial Achievement in Daytime Serials for episode #9779 of ABC’s “One Life To Live” Jill Mitwell received her third DGA award in this category (her other three awards in this category in 1993 and 2000 were for work on the same show by the way).

For a complete list of all recipients visit the official website of the DGA.

That’s right! Happy New Year! Or at least if you’re at Hong Kong Disneyland you will have a happy New Year as they have started their Lunar New Year Celebration.

The Celebration starts today and will continue all the way up to 4th March. Mickey has brought some friends to celebrate with him; The Three Little Pigs! They are a key element in the celebration. But that is not all. Follow the link for more Piggy pictures and read the official Press release here on what there is to do during the festivities (including some great pictures of Disney collectables and Special foods).