Saturday 10 August 2013

PIXAR CASTING AND RE-WRITING NEWS


Lots of news from Pixar. We'll start with the news about the influence of Gabriela Cowperthwaite's documentary Blackfish on the story for Finding Dory: Pixar are notoriously taciturn when it comes to revealing plot points about their films ahead of release, but we now know that a major element of Finding Dory's plot has been altered in light of the recent eye-opening documentary on the treatment of whales at SeaWorld. The ending of the film was supposed to take place at a marine park, and it seems it still shall, but the story has been restructured so that the animals taken to the park have the option to leave. I'm not sure quite what that means. It sounds, to me, to actually contradict a lot of the good, revealing work done by Cowperthwaite and her team in Blackfish, but we'll have to wait to see exactly what impact it has had. The sequel to Finding Nemo is currently set for a US release in November 2015, over two years away.

To stick with Finding Dory, some casting news: Diane Keaton and Eugene Levy have been added to the cast, alongside Ty Burrell. Keaton and Levy will play Dory's long-lost parents, and Burrell will feature as a whale named Bailey. That's not all on the casting front, though. Pixar's next film, The Good Dinosaur (scheduled for a summer rollout next year) has revealed its leading actors: 27-year-old Lucas Neff, the star of TC's Raising Hope, will provide the voice of leading character Arlo in only his fourth big-screen job. Poppa and Momma will be voiced by John Lithgow and Frances McDormand, while Arlo's siblings will have their voices provided by Judy Greer, Bill Hader and Neil Patrick Harris. Finally, Inside Out, which is on the calendar for a June 2015 release  in the US (that would make 2015 the first year in which two Pixar films opened) has added a good comedic cast: the film will be about Riley, and what happens inside her mind, with her emotions being voiced by Amy Poehler (Joy), Mindy Kaling (Disgust), Phyllis Smith (Sadness), Fear (Bill Hader) and Anger (Lewis Black). It sounds like one of Pixar's most interesting projects in some time.

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