Month: August 2009 (Page 1 of 5)

Disney to acquire Marvel for $4 billion

The Walt Disney Company has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment in a stock and cash transaction, the companies announced today.

Based on the closing price of Disney stock on Friday, August 28, the transaction value is $50 per Marvel share or approximately $4 billion.

Under the deal, Disney will acquire ownership of Marvel including its more than 5,000 Marvel characters.

This new deal, however, does not affect the current movie deals that Marvel has set up with Sony and Paramount. Those deals are still in effect, but once they expire, Disney hopes to be the sole distributor of any future Marvel films.

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‘Futurama: The Complete Collection 1999-2009’ coming to DVD October 13

FOX today revealed details for the upcoming “Futurama: The Complete Collection 1999-2009” 19-disc set scheduled for release on October 13th from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. The set includes all 72 episodes, as well as the four feature length adventures – Bender’s Big Score, The Beast With A Billion Backs, Bender’s Game and Into The Wild Green Yonder.

Cancelled after five seasons, an outcry from the fans and the show’s success on DVD helped revive Futurama for four all-new adventures (mentioned above) that debuted on DVD in 2007-2009. Recently the series has been resurrected again for its sixth season set to air on Comedy Central in 2010.

This collection is highly collectible, with only 25,000 copies being produced one time ever. It’s packed with bonus materials including a letter from the Futurama creator Matt Groening and producer David X. Cohen, commentary from various cast members, numerous deleted scenes, an interactive still gallery, blooper reels and more.

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Full specs for all 19 discs, along with a photo of the packaging, after the break.

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Short Film Spotlight: Le Cinquieme Jour

The following short animated film was created by David Forest as his graduation project at the Cegep du Vieux Montreal. He did everything, from storyboards to compositing. Music was done by EntropiK. Pre-production lasted about 8 months, and prod and post-prod took 14 weeks. It won the “Best Short Film” award of his school.

Software used: Maya 2008, Adobe CS3 (After Effects, Photoshop, Premiere and Audition), ZBrush 3.1, CrazyBump.

‘Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death’ coming to DVD

The highly anticipated Wallace & Gromit: A Matter of Loaf and Death arrives on DVD Tuesday, September 22, 2009 from Lionsgate and HIT Entertainment.

In this new adventure, Wallace and Gromit have opened a new bakery business “Top Bun” but a deadly murderer is targeting all the bakers in town. Wallace couldn’t care as he’s found true love in the shape of Piella Bakewell, former star of the Bake-O-Lite bread commercials. Can Gromit discover the identity of the Cereal Killer before Wallace becomes the next victim?

DVD Special Features include:

– How They Donut: The Making of A Matter of Loaf and Death featurette
– Audio commentary with director Nick Park and editor David McCormick
– Wallace & Gromit Grand Adventure Video Game Demo
– Bonus episode of Shaun the Sheep, “Off the Baa!”

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Check out the trailer and DVD cover art after the break.

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‘Star Wars: The Clone Wars’ season two premiere date

Cartoon Network announced today it will premiere a full slate of 22 all-new episodes for season two of the critically acclaimed and top-rated CG-animated series STAR WARS: The Clone Wars. The special one-hour season two premiere airs Friday, October 2 at 8pm ET/PT.

Fierce battles and expanded storylines raise the stakes in STAR WARS: The Clone Wars – Rise of the Bounty Hunters. The lives of the Jedi become more complex as secret and forbidden relationships are revealed and a new breed of villain enters to take advantage of the wartime turmoil. Season two introduces these lawless rogues into the fray along with a host of new characters, locations and creatures.

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Roundtable discussion with Toy Story 3 director, Lee Unkrich

The folks over at HitFix recently participated in a roundtable discussion with Lee Unkrich, director of next year’s Toy Story 3. The interview touches upon a variety of subjects including whether or not the visual style of Toy Story will carry over to Toy Story 3.

Unkrich responds, “We couldn’t make a “3” that looked completely different than the first two; however, as a studio and both technologically and artistically, we’ve made great strides over the last fifteen years. I mean, you look at “Ratatouille,” it’s just a gorgeous, gorgeous film. And so you want to take advantage of that, but at the same time, you want the world to feel familiar, so that was one of our big challenges at the beginning, working… luckily I had Bob Pauley who was the original production designer for the first “Toy Story”. He designed Buzz Lightyear. He’s my production designer on this film. We all worked very hard to have the world… and it’s a constant challenge to have the world feel familiar, but to take advantage of what we can do now artistically. So if you look at “Toy Story” and then “Toy Story 2,” there was a big leap in the look of the film. You know, just to be geeky, we were able to use depth of fields, which is something we couldn’t do on the first film at all. Suddenly we could use focus and depth to augment our visuals. We’ve made even more exponential leaps doing “3”. We had to rebuild everything. It’s not like these characters were sitting on a disk somewhere waiting to be used again. We had to rebuild them completely from scratch, and along the way we were able to give them more sophistication in their look and in their controls.

Read the rest of the interview at HitFix.

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