City of Light!
Apparently back in the 80’s, Disney held the rights to make a Where the Wild Things Are film. This is a screen test directed by a little fella called John Lasseter, who eventually went on to be a founding member of Pixar, and thus be involved with pretty much every cool movie Disney has made in the past 15 years.
Disney never developed this any further, and eventually lost the rights to the film. It’s currently in production as a life action/cg film directed by Spike Jonze and distrubuted by Warner Bros, to be released in October of 2008.
What I found interesting is something I read on wikipedia about John Lasseter. After finishing this work on Where the Wild Things Are, he and several other artists decided they wanted to make a whole film this way. The film they chose was The Brave Little Toaster. They were so excited to do this that they inadvertently ended up angering some of their superiors’ by going around them to get the film in motion, and so when the film was presented to said superiors they were less than thrilled. A few minutes after this meeting Mr. Lasseter recieved a call informing him that he had been terminated, and that he had bad teeth! Haha!
He went on to be involved with Lucasfilm and eventually, as I said, Pixar. And then when Disney bought out Pixar last year, he was named chief creative officer of both Disney and Pixar. He was also named principal creative advisor for Disney Imagineering (responsible for designing Disney theme park attractions), where he reports directly to Disney Chief Bob Igor, bypassing the Disney studio and theme park executives. He was also given green-light power on films.
For some reason I find that all really fascinating, and a good lesson on karma!
Another interesting tidbit, given all that information is that Lampy, from the Brave Little Toaster is the predecessor to the Pixar lamps- even though the first short featuring the lamps, Luxo Jr., appeared in 1986 and The Brave Little Toaster not until 1987. Also interestingly, Lasseter isn’t credited for The Brave Little Toaster, though his influence, such as the lamp and the number A113 on Master’s door, are visible throughout the film. This number was his college room number and can also be seen in Toy Story. Hm. :)
City of Light- The Brave Little Toaster
Luxo Jr.
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