Disney Lies

There was a report that Walt Disney Pictures and Stan Lee (famous mustachioed comic-book writer and excelsior salesman) have signed a three-picture deal, and we are inclined to believe it, even though the news only appeared in some little tabloid rag called Variety.

According to the article, the three films will have nothing to do with existing Disney characters or Lee’s classic creations. Instead, they will be about entirely new characters. This is quite a surprise for Disney fans, as Walt Disney Pictures has shown a reluctance to produce family fare that is not tied to an existing property.

In any case, the three films — Spider Mouse, Four Fantastic Caballeros, and The Incredible Hannah Montana — will be released in 2010, 2011, and 2012, respectively.

Although Cloverfield was released by some other movie studio, Disney’s special effects department was intimately involved in certain aspects of the film. In particular, the fact that Cloverfield was filmed entirely with a consumer video camera made it impossible to insert conventional computer animated special effects, so former Jim Henson Productions creature specialists were called into create a 900-foot-tall puppet that could be used in the movies more dramatic sequences.

“The movie’s conceit is that huge amounts of the secret ingredient for a popular soda are released into the ocean, causing this enormous baby monster to be over-stimulated by caffeine and just go nuts,” says Jimmy “J.J.” Jaybrams, supposed head of Disney’s Imagineering Creature Shop, Gigantor Division. “We went through a lot of concepts for this one. We eventually settled on a creature by thinking of what Lucky the Dinosaur would look like if he were horribly mutated, angry, carnivorous, gigantic, covered in parasites, and lived on the bottom of the ocean. The final puppet was a real masterpiece. It took more than seven hundred dedicated operators to control the thing for filming, and at one point one of the guys sneezed and accidentally knocked a couple of floors off an apartment building. You should have seen the company insurance guy’s face!”

Those who pay close attention to the film may notice the sly reference to a certain Disney mascot. Says Jaybrams, “If you look at the traditional Disney silhouette of Mickey Mouse, it looks kind of like a mutated three-leaf clover. So many Disney people worked on this film that at one point the director said it looked like a ‘field of Disney’ — which, because of the clover-look thing, became ‘field of clover’ or ‘clover-field.’ So there you go.”

Since we had him on the line, we asked Jabrams for the solution to a number of frequent questions about the film:

What happened to Marlena? “She exploded. On the set we joked that she’d eaten too many churros. It was really funny! Seriously! Okay, I guess you had to be there.”

What is the whispered phrase after the credits? “It’s dirty. We Disney folks always like to put hidden dirty messages into films. It’s jus t part of who we are.”

What falls out of the sky into the ocean at the end of the movie? “I’m surprised anyone even noticed that. It was a model of Michael Eisner’s private plane — a bit of in-joke wish fulfillment from the crew.”

Disney’s new stop-motion-animal direct-to-video holiday special, The Nightmare Before Kwanzaa, premiers today. If you’ve seen it, e-mail us your review!

Actor Kurt “Vogel” Russell will be 57 next March, and is already planning a very special celebration for his 60th birthday in 2011. In coordination with Disney, Russell will be remaking and updating two films from early in his career. The first film, The One and Only, Genuine, Original Rest Home Band will be released in 2010, followed soon after by The Computer Wore Orthopedic Shoes in 2011.

After his work with Disney is complete, Russell will continue his birthday celebration by playing the corpse of Elvis in an upcoming John Carpenter production.

It has been announced that the upcoming Jungle Cruise movie will officially be titled, Jungle Cruise: Heart of Darkness, making its title a combination of references to literature by two separate authors — Joseph Conrad and Upton Sinclair.

Conrad fans know that his work has long been a source of inspiration for Disney. For example:

• The Rescuers was inspired by Conrad’s The Rescue.
• Conrad’s Typhoon is the namesake for Walt Disney World’s Typhoon Lagoon.
• Treasure Planet’s Jim Hawkins was named for the title character in Lord Jim.

Non-Disney sources also often refer to Conrad — the space ship in Alien was named Nostromo after Conrad’s sci-fi novel of the same name, for example, and his The Secret Agent served as the template for James Bond.

But despite the fine pedigree of the Jungle Cruise film’s main inspiration, some Disney fans are apparently worried about another feature based on a Disneyland attraction when two of the company’s three previous efforts (Haunted Mansion: Northanger Abbey, and Tiki Room: A Room of One’s Own) were dismal failures, with only Pirates of the Caribbean: Treasure Island turning a serious profit. When asked his opinion of the Jungle Cruise: Heart of Darkness concept, long-time Disney commentator James Hillock pretended to die and said, “The horror! The horror!” Not a good sign.