News

Disney has released two international posters for Cars 3, which show Lightning McQueen squaring off against two young racers Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo) and Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer). While Jackson Storm becomes his most contested rival on the Piston Cup circuit, Cruz Ramirez is actually on Lightning's side, serving as his new trainer to help him beat the young upstart. The first poster teases a scene we've previously seen in early concept art, which may be an homage to an iconic movie.

BadTaste.it debuted these posters, the first of which shows Lightning McQueen on the beach. You may recall that, back in May, Disney revealed concept art that showed Lightning McQueen and Cruz Ramirez racing on the sand, which may or may not be an homage to the iconic oceanside race between Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) and Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) in Rocky 3. The second poster, however, is set at a packed racing arena,...

Ever wonder what the Disney princesses would look like, about 20, 30, even 70 years after their movies came out? Artist Isaque Areas has reimagined The Little Mermaid's Ariel (pictured above), Beauty and the Beast's Belle, Aladdin's Princess Jasmine, depicting them the way he believes they would look today. All of the Disney princesses in the animated movies are teenagers and the films date back to 1937 (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves), so several of the women could snag an Aarp card today, no problem. Granted, we did get to see an adult Ariel in the 2000 straight-to-video sequel The Little Mermaid II: Return to the Sea, which focuses on her own teenage...

Sequels and spinoffs are all the rage on the big screen these days, but the news that Disney is moving forward with a Frozen 2 still comes as something of a surprise considering the studio has been reticent to pump out theatrically-released follow-ups to its biggest hits - only The Three Caballeros, The Rescuers Down Under, Fantasia 2000 and Winnie the Pooh are part of the Disney Animated Canon.

However, throughout the '90s and '00s Disney had a lucrative side-business in direct-to-video sequels that were turned around quickly and cheaply and made the studio a fast buck. Many execs felt that these cheapened the originals and John Lasseter put the brakes on them, although the recent Tinker Bell films (branching out from Peter Pan) have their roots in this release model.

Digital Spy revisits 13 of Disney's most unnecessary straight-to-video sequels below:

Aladdin: The Return of Jafar (1994)

The very first...

On Tuesday news surfaced that the upcoming sequel to Pixar's 2001 effort Monsters, Inc. was in fact a prequel and would be titled Monsters University. Based on previous reports, the film will follow Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) and James P. "Sully" Sullivan (John Goodman) during their time at the University of Fear, where they first met and despite their differences became good friends.

Today another piece of the puzzle was revealed as ComingSoon reports Dan Scanlon will direct the feature currently set to be released in both 3D and 2D on November 2, 2012.

Scanlon previously co-wrote and directed the Cars-related short, "Mater and the Ghostlight" which you can watch directly below. He also worked as a storyboard artist on Cars, 101 Dalmatians II: Patch's London Adventure and The Little Mermaid 2: Return to the Sea.

Technically, Ondine -- the title character of Neil Jordan's new film -- isn't a mermaid. When she winds up in fisherman Colin Farrell's net in the middle of the ocean, his daughter (Alison Barry) becomes convinced that she might be a selkie, a mythological seal-human hybrid of European folklore that the father and daughter take in as one of their own.

But, after all, a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, and a mermaid by any other name would smell just as briny. Whatever you want to call its subject, "Ondine" certainly follows many of the rules of mermaid movies established by its cinematic predecessors. To wit, here are some rules to live by when your average Joe pulls out a mermaid from the sea (oh, and beware landlubbers, some Spoilers be near):

1) They're about testing the possibility of impossible love.

Most mermaid movies,...

Disney Toon Studios, behind such straight-to-DVD hits as The Lion King 1 1/2, Bambi II and Lady and the Tramp II: Scamp's Adventure, will cease making sequels in order to focus on original stories.

Friday's decision coincided with the announcement that DisneyToon now will operate as a separate unit of Walt Disney Animation Studios under the supervision of Pixar impresarios Ed Catmull and John Lasseter.

Sharon Morrill, who helped found DisneyToon 13 years ago and has been its president since 2004, now will be charged with "special projects" at Walt Disney Studios, including animation and live-action, a spokeswoman said.

Pixar executives have made no secret of their disdain for most Disney-animated sequels; four years ago -- long before Disney's purchase of Pixar -- Steve Jobs called them "pretty embarrassing."

Pixar and Disney, though, will continue to work on Toy Story 3 for theatrical release in 2009. And DisneyToon will finish The Little Mermaid III for a straight-to-DVD release, making that the final sequel planned from DisneyToon, a spokeswoman said.

The first "original" nonsequel movie to come from the restructured DisneyToon is Tinker Bell. Although the character appeared in the 1953 Disney film Peter Pan, executives don't consider it a sequel or prequel to that film because it's about Tinker Bell in the fairy world independent of Peter Pan.