Disney’s planning to do something different this November with the release of Enchanted. They are hoping that their fractured fairytale will reinvigorate their animation departments and start a whole new franchise.
In Enchanted Manhattan is the kingdom, a divorce lawyer is their prince and apparently pigeons and roaches will play the part of the forest creatures. The idea behind Enchanted is that it will poke fun at the Disney classics like Snow White and Cinderella.
The film is considered a huge risk for the Disney franchise (not so much when you consider Ratatouille and Shrek), but then people view Disney animations and films as soft and cuddly – fractured is not what you picture when you think Disney. Still, the idea of the film is that it will flaunt all the conventions of Disney’s 50+ years of filmmaking.
The idea was to take Mickey out of the equation.
The director of Enchanted is Kevin Lima and he comes from a very familiar place where Disney is concerned. He directed Tarzan and designed characters for Aladdin and The Little Mermaid. So he understood the material from both sides of it and he also had a difficult time divorcing himself from Mickey to make the film we will be seeing on November 21st.
One great thing about Enchanted is that it will bring back the loving, classically hand-drawn animation to be blended with live action. The tale will begin in the beautifully animated world of Andalasia. Princess Giselle is getting ready to marry her Prince (Edward in this case, not charming) when she is pushed down an enchanted well by the wicked queen and ends up in Times Square.
The premise sounds good, but it remains to be seen how successful the blending of live action and animation will do for Disney. I think it sounds like fun, but we’ll have to see. Are you interested in seeing Enchanted?
You can check out a trailer for Enchanted here.