It may sound too good to be true, and there’s a good chance that it is, but there’s a rumor circulating around the web that Tim Burton is developing a stop-motion animated feature based on his 1984 short film Frankenweenie for Disney. We picked up the story from Aint It Cool News, which received the tip from an anonymous source, so take it for what it is.
Burton’s live-action follow-up to the beloved stop-mo short Vincent, Frankenweenie is the story of a boy named Victor Frankenstein, who brings his dog back to life after a tragic accident. When the stitched-together creature gets out of the house, the once quiet suburban neighborhood is thrown into panic and the fearful residents form an angry mob bent on destroying the re-animated pooch. The black-and-white homage to the Universal classic Frankenstein features Shelley Duvall, Daniel Stern and a very young Sophia Coppola.
After teaming with animator Stephen Chiodo to cut his animation teeth on Vincent, Burton returned to stop-motion in the early ’90s, hiring Henry Selick to direct his holiday favorite The Nightmare Before Christmas. After a string of live-action hits including Batman, Sleepy Hollow and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, he was lured back to animation with the 2005 Oscar-nominated feature Corpse Bride, which he co-directed with Mark Johnson. He’s currently working on a screen adaptation of the stage musical Sweeny Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, starring Johnny Depp (which will hit theaters in December), and is developing a CG feature based on Shane Acker’s award-winning animated short, 9.
If there is any truth to the rumor, Disney isn’t ready to talk about it just yet. Dick Cook, chairman of Walt Disney pictures only let slip that there is a stop-mo project in the works while attending an advance screening of Enchanted at the North Carolina School of the Arts. He reportedly said that the project would be helmed by the creative mastermind behind the majority of stop-motion pictures in the last decade.
