Gigantic

[Dacey]

Hearing from various websites that Disney has just officially announced Gigantic at D23, an animated feature loosely inspired by Jack & the Beanstalk.

More to come when available.

[ShyViolet]

Very cool! I remember reading about this on TAG a long time ago.

I adore Mickey and the Beanstalk, but hopefully this will have a new spin to it.

[LotsoA113]

Here's some official concept art of it;

[Bill1978]

Glad this project has officially been confirmed by Disney. Been looking forwaard to it since it was unofficially mentioned a while back. Extra excited it's a musical. Just slightly disappointed that it is using the song writing team from Frozen. Don't get me wrong I love the songs from Frozen but all the follow up songs (The Making of..., A Day Like Today) have been very lacklustre to me (and perhaps a little too cocky in their cleverness), which makes me concerned big time about Frozen 2 as well. I understand why Disney would use this team, but I still think Menken is the best composer Disney has had in the recent past that expertly combined the songs into the narrative of the story and had effective transitions into and out of the songs.

[EricJ]

Aha, so THAT'S what happened to that rumored version of "The Giants and the Joneses" we heard someone was making about seven years ago, and disappeared way back when!
Of course, the story didn't stay that way, so even though a book might be credited, we get the press release that it's "Our unique/loosely-inspired twist on a classic tale", just like Princess & the Frog wasn't "really" based on E.D. Baker's book.

(Although, yes, this looks like it needed songs, let alone Wickie/Frozen songs, about as much as Wreck-It Ralph did.)

[ShyViolet]

Really sad this movie has been pushed back. It sounds (and looks) quite impressive, and original.

[Dacey]

Presumably this was so Ralph 2 could have the holiday season release date. And with Frozen 2 having the 2019 slot (something it's probably had for a while), it makes sense to give Gigantic the tried and true Thanksgiving date for 2020.

What surprises me is that Disney didn't wait to announce some of this until D23 this summer. They will almost certainly have nothing to show from Frozen 2 (even the earliest of concept art), so this would've given the fans something in that regard.

[Dacey]

Well, this is a shocker:

http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/heat-v ... ic-1047482

[Dan]

I was about to note my being taken aback by this, but I suddenly came to a realization. It's lack of presence at this year's D23 should have been a telling sign that things were not progressing along after its announcement at the 2015 D23.

Still, a bummer that it's being shelved. I rather liked the idea.

[EricJ]

I thought the heroine was kind of cute, too, and was looking forward to it as much as Ralph 2.
The faux-Flynn hero, and the implicit relationship undertones, not so much.

Looking back at the first-announcement posts from '15, I'd thought it was a mutation of whatever happened to that announced project of Julia Donaldson's book, which had two kids kidnapped by a cute beanstalk tot--And while the book wouldn't be as great a movie straight up, I can see that having a lot more story potential for sympathetic characters than Panicked Conquistador Guy.
As it was, they leaped into the movie a few months after Frozen determined to make "the next Broadway-fangirl Frozen!" with the same big-name showtune writers, and I could already see this movie spiraling into something it was not.

Still, they've canceled other projects before (Snow Queen, American Dog) for better do-overs that knew what they were doing.
Darn, now I have to get that bootleg copy of "Giraffic" that some fox is selling on Ebay.

[Daniel]

A piece of concept art:



Lovely. Had so much potential...