CANNES, France—A message to parents suffering “Frozen” fatigue: Disney has more talking animals and singing princesses on the way.
According to John Lasseter, the pictures scheduled to come out of Disney Animation Studios include sequels to “Finding Nemo” and “Toy Story,” as well as a friendly dinosaur odyssey and a tuneful South Pacific adventure:
‘The Good Dinosaur’
Pixar imagines an Earth where an asteroid didn’t impact the surface 65 million years ago, killing all the dinosaurs. Instead, the story follows a young dinosaur, Arlo, who gets swept away from the rest of his family. He ends up befriending a caveboy who acts more as a puppy dog than a sentient human.
‘Finding Dory’
Dory, the memory-deficient blue fish (voiced by Ellen DeGeneres) who helped find young Nemo back in 2003, is the star of the upcoming sequel to “Finding Nemo” due out next year.
Nemo and his father accompany Dory as she sets out to find her own family in a story set six months after the Pixar original.
‘Toy Story 4’
“Toy Story” was the movie that shot Pixar to fame, and its sequels have also been critical successes. No surprise then that the fourth in the series will be released in 2017, directed by Lasseter himself.
‘Zootopia’
This smart-alecky original feature is about a city populated by animals that interact, dress, drive and talk just like people do. They live in a species-diverse metropolis, Zootopia, where newsstands sell copies of the Wall Street Gerbil and Vanity Fur.
Judy Hopps, a bunny police officer, is forced to team up with a hustling fox, Nick Wilde, to track down a missing mammal within 48 hours, but their investigation uncovers a much bigger plot that challenges prejudices.
‘Moana’
Set in the South Pacific, it stars a young princess who belts out songs with tribal beats reminiscent of Disney’s 1994 “The Lion King,” while venturing across an ocean in the company of a despondently defeated god, Maui. AFP