After initial reports that it had once again topped the box office charts, updated reports now indicated that Up finished in second place, less than a million dollars behind The Hangover. (Land of the Lost was a major failure finishing in distant third, likely because it forgot to be funny.) More importantly, Up’s 35% drop off from its opening week earnings were very optimistic compared to the rest of this year’s summer movie crop, which all had huge drop-offs indicating very little word of mouth buzz. Pixar’s Folly: "They will never bring families in to see a movie about an old man flying his house with balloons!"
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Depending on the level of misquoting that you read, a sequel to Monsters, Inc. is either being considered or is definitely happening. With Randall-like cloaking, the mystery emerged from the Licensing International Expo, which is not a thinly veiled bacronym. Director Pete Docter has always said they’d revisit that world should the right story emerge and he is currently sans project at Pixar, which has films lined up through 2012. While Pixar has sequels (Toy Story 3 and Cars 2) lined up for the next two years, original stories are lined up for 2011 and 2012, so it is not outside the realm of reason to envision a sequel happening in 2013 or 2014.
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Speaking of Pixar, the company's icon and star of its first short film, Luxo, Jr. will take up residence at Pixar Place in Disney's Hollywood Studios. The familiar icon (you see it hopping on top of the i in Pixar before all of their super-genius films) is part of Disney's Living Character Initiative which sends audio-animatronic characters outside of the rides and roaming the parks. The woefully underused initiative, which has also featured Lucky the Dinosaur and Dr. Bunsen and Beaker, has been a big hit amongst Disney fans. Now if they can get to work on Kevin and Dug from Up.
Disney unveiled special T-shirts for the NBA Finals depicting some familiar Disney characters in basketball gear. The shirts, to commemorate the NBA championship series between the Orlando Magic and the Los Angeles Lakers, are available online, at the teams’ home arenas, and in both theme parks. The company is celebrating the fact that the teams “share their hometowns with Disney’s two U.S. theme parks, Disneyland Resort and Walt Disney World Resort.” In other news, Anaheim has apparently shifted 30 miles Northwest, landing inside of Los Angeles.
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And finally, the final schedule for the Eat to the Beat concert series at the Epcot International Food and Wine Festival has been released and it's a veritable who's who of bands who would also feel at home at our sister site, Eightiesology.com. Among the highlights this year are Starship, Richard Marx, Billy Ocean, John Waite and Night Ranger. All are subject to change should these artists be asked to appear in a bad reality show. I say with all seriousness that if i could be with my wife in Epcot eating my way around the world with Night Ranger playing, I would have no need to live my life further as it would never match that happiness.
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