Want a "Frankenweenie" Drawing by Tim Burton?

Frankenweenie An IMAX 3D Experience
Release Date: October 5, 2012. Studio: Walt Disney Pictures.

Exclusively for IMAX fans as part of IMAX’s 12:01 program - those attending the Frankenweenie midnight shows in the first hours of October 5 will receive a limited edition Frankenweenie print using an original sketch by Tim Burton. While supplies last.

Click here for a list of participating theaters.

"Frankenweenie" to Open London Film Festival

Frankenweenie will be the opening film for the 56th annual BFI London Film Festival.

"The European premiere of the stop-motion animation film will take place October 10th at the Odeon Leicester Square and will unspool simultaneously at the BFI London Imax and 30 screens across the U.K. in a first for the fest," says the Chicago Tribune.

Tim Burton, producer Allison Abbate, executive producer Don Hahn, and voice cast Winona Ryder, Martin Short, Catherine O'Hara and Martin Landau are all expected to attend.

Clare Stewart, BFI Head of Exhibition comments on her first Opening Night choice as Festival Director:

“Funny, dark and whimsical, this gloriously crafted stop-motion 3D animation from Tim Burton – the reigning prince of outsiders – playfully turns the Frankenstein story on its bolted-on head. Frankenweenie is a perfect choice of opener – it’s a film that revels in the magic of movies from one of cinema’s great visionaries. Tim Burton has chosen London as his home city and hundreds of talented British craftspeople have contributed to this production. To host the European premiere, to present The Art of Frankenweenie Exhibition and to take our Opening Night out to 30 screens means we are making the festival even more accessible for film fans across the UK.”

Producer Allison Abbate adds:

“I am delighted that Frankenweenie, which was produced here in London at 3 Mills Studios, will be opening the 56th BFI London Film Festival. Living and working in the UK, I’ve been able to collaborate with some of the most talented artists in the industry including the puppet designers and fabricators from Manchester-based Mackinnon & Saunders. In the last nine years, I’ve attended the festival as both a filmmaker and guest, and I know how passionate and enthusiastic the audiences are, so I am thrilled to share the film’s European premiere with them.”

Colin Walsh, Managing Director, American Express UK adds:

“We’re thrilled to be further strengthening our partnership with the BFI and the Festival through our support for this year’s Opening Night Gala. In addition to Frankenweenie being a much anticipated film, what makes this year’s Opening Night so special is the opportunity for audiences across the country to experience the excitement of a West End premiere. That, coupled with the interactive exhibition giving people an insight behind the scenes of the film, is sure to make this a fantastic start to this year’s festival.”

IMAX to Release "Dark Shadows," "Frankenweenie"

The Hollywood Reporter states that IMAX is scheduling super-sized theatrical presentations of both Dark Shadows and Frankenweenie.

"IMAX has a long-standing relationship with Tim Burton, whose unique artistic vision and brilliant storytelling has captured the imagination of audiences around the world," Greg Foster, chairman and president of IMAX Filmed Entertainment, said Tuesday.

Frankenweenie will be released on normal-sized and IMAX screens on October 5th, in both 2D and 3D. Dark Shadows will hit theaters on both sized screens on May 11th, but only in a 2D presentation.

Burton on 2012 Films, and Beyond

MTV News recently caught up with a very busy Tim Burton. In this interview, the filmmaker discusses his various 2012 projects (Dark Shadows, Frankenweenie, and Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter), as well as what might happen in the next few years...

MTV: Hi, Tim, we wanted to check in with you because it looks like it's going to be a busy 2012.

Tim Burton: Don't remind me. [Laughs.]

MTV: I'm sorry.

Burton: That's OK. I have to face it sooner or later. I didn't really plan it. I probably should have. I wish you could control film schedules a bit better. But it's OK. It's all things that I love, so that's good.

MTV: How are you dividing your time between the various projects?

Burton: With "Frankenweenie," it's a little bit easier to do it, because you only have a couple shots coming through each day. It's like a slow-motion process. When you're dealing with something like "Dark Shadows," that's immediate and intense. And then with "Lincoln," [director] Timur [Bekmambetov] is great. I'm there just to support it. It's a project I really liked and just wanted to see.

MTV: I got a chance to visit the set, and I was impressed. If I didn't know any better, I'd say I was on the set of a historical biopic.

Burton: You were! It is! That's what's great about it. It just seemed like a natural thing for Timur. It being an American history story, it seemed right for it to be directed by a Russian. [Laughs.]

MTV: What stage are you in for "Dark Shadows" right now?

Burton: Panicking. That stage. We're editing and doing effects. It's not an effects-heavy picture, but it's still got stuff in there. There's a strange tone to the movie. That's always what's fun about movies. You never know exactly what they are. It makes it both exciting and scary and why you like doing it. I have to keep remembering that.

MTV : With over 1,200 episodes of the original series to draw upon, what was important to you to retain?

Burton: It's got such a strange vibe. And it's not something that a lot of people necessarily know. You're trying to do a weird soap opera. I felt really lucky, because the cast is really good. People like Michelle [Pfeiffer] grew up watching it. Some of the cast knew about it. Some didn't, but they were all game for it — getting into the weird spirit of what "Dark Shadows" was. It has a weird sense of heightened melodrama. There was a generation of us who would run home from school to watch it. That's probably why we were such bad students. We should have been doing homework; we were watching "Dark Shadows" instead. It was hard to put into words the tone it was. It had a weird seriousness, but it was funny in a way that wasn't really funny. We just had to feel our way through it to find the tone. We didn't do any real rehearsals, because the cast all came in at different times. But there was an old photo of the [original] cast which I always remembered, so a couple days before shooting, we got the whole cast together to take a similar shot so everyone could see each other and get that vibe from doing a group photo. That helped set the tone more than anything.

MTV: Some of it takes place in the 1700s, but most of it takes place in 1972, is that right?

Burton: Yeah it goes back, but it's mainly in 1972, which to the era of "Dark Shadows" is the modern era. To me, it was a scary time.

MTV: Does the film leave that house much?

Burton: A little bit, but the thing about "Dark Shadows" was it was a very hermetically sealed world. It's mainly the internal family melodrama. You get a little bit of the sense of the world, but it's like "Grey Gardens," where these people are in their own sort of world.

MTV: Do you utilize time travel in the movie?

Burton: Not too much. A tiny bit. For me, that's when the show kind of made me want to do homework. I was like, wait a minute! That came near the end of the trail of the series.

MTV: You decided not to do 3-D this time around?

Burton: No. It's the '70s, man. Only "Frankenstein's Bloody Terror" was in 3-D. That's the only one I remember from that time.

MTV: Is it true that you're considering doing another "Beetlejuice" film?

Burton: Yes. I love that character, and Michael [Keaton] is so great in it. I always think about how great and fun that character was, so I just said to ["Vampire Hunter" writer] Seth [Grahame-Smith], "If you have some idea about it, go for it, and then I'll look at it freshly." In the past, I tried some things, but that was way back when. He seemed really excited about it.

MTV: Has he run any of his ideas by you yet?

Burton: No. I told him to try some stuff, but he hasn't come back to me yet. Michael was so great in it. I'm sure he'd strangely tap right back into it.

MTV: It must be extremely exciting for you to return to "Frankenweenie," considering the original short led to your demise at Disney.

Burton: Maybe it'll cause my second or third demise. [Laughs.] I'm very excited about it. The opportunity to do it in black-and-white and 3-D really fits the story. For me, it's the heart of the story that we've gotten to go back to and expand. It's more of a "House of Frankenstein" kind of situation now, but also it stays with the same thing. It taps into the politics of other children that you remember from school. It's still intimate, though. It's still the basic story with a few more elements.

MTV: It actually shocks me there hasn't been a Broadway musical version of "Nightmare Before Christmas."

Burton: A couple of schools have done it. I think it could lend itself to something like [Broadway]. I'm just happy it's taken on a life of its own. We've resisted any kind of sequelization thing. Some things are just best left on their own.

MTV: Did anyone try to dissuade you from doing "Frankenweenie" in black-and-white?

Burton: I'm very grateful, because I think they understood that that was part of the emotion of it. I was very happy about that, because it's a big part of it. It's a big deal for a studio to go along with something like that. And the 3-D really suits it. With a lot of 3-D, you lose some of the detail, but with stop-motion, you actually feel more of the detail. So all the work that people put into the puppets and the spaces on the set — you actually feel it.

MTV: Is IMAX interesting to you?

Burton: Yeah, definitely! We're doing a test for "Frankenweenie." "Frankenweenie" is such a tactile funky project. It would be interesting to see it in that, so we're playing around with it.

MTV: Is "The Addams Family" the next thing on the stop-motion docket?

Burton: Oh, I don't know. I got so many things to keep up with now ...

MTV: You do seem to have a long list of things with your name attached.

Burton: That's why I don't go on the Internet, Josh. It freaks me out. I've got my immediate things to worry about. It's like when they thought the Earth was flat and you hit the horizon and fell into a black hole.

MTV: So this laundry list of things that are stressing you out ...

Burton: Just check them all off till later. Next year, we'll take a look at them like Santa's list. I'll tell you yes or cross them off the list.

"Alice" #1 at Box Office: $116 Mil. Opening Weekend

Brandon Gray of Box Office Mojo has all the details on the successful opening weekend of Alice in Wonderland:

Audiences clamored to see Alice in Wonderland (2010) as if they were late for an important date, delivering a $116.1 million opening weekend. That's more in just three days than the total gross of any other 2010 release. Alice's corpulent start drove the highest-grossing March weekend ever: overall business boomed 69 percent over the same timeframe last year, when Watchmen debuted.

Showing on approximately 7,400 screens at 3,728 sites, Alice in Wonderland's opening stands as not only the all time biggest for the month of March, but as the highest-grossing ever for a movie released outside of May, July or November and sixth overall. It's a career best for director Tim Burton, surpassing Planet of the Apes (2001)'s $68.5 million, and second best for top-billed actor Johnny Depp, behind the second Pirates of the Caribbean. Alice marks the seventh collaboration between Mr. Burton and Mr. Depp, and its debut handily eclipsed their previous high together, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory ($56.2 million).

Around 70 percent or over $80 million of Alice in Wonderland's opening was viewed through the 3D looking glass, topping Avatar's $55 million as the biggest 3D launch ever. Alice played at a record 2,251 3D sites, compared to Avatar's 2,038. Alice also set a new opening milestone for IMAX, grossing an estimated $11.9 million at 188 sites (included in the totals). The previous benchmark was Avatar's $9.5 million at 178 sites. Combined, the 3D and IMAX ticket premiums over normal prices appear to have added about $22 million to Alice's gross.

To hit $116.1 million out-of-the-gate, Alice in Wonderland benefitted from a combination of factors, including the involvement of Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, who are among Hollywood's few bankable name talents, batting in their quirky wheelhouse, and the good will built up by Avatar for 3D events. Distributor Walt Disney Pictures' marketing campaign was not only omnipresent but spot on in its presentation: it first grabbed people's attention with a flashy entre into Wonderland through Mad Hatter, Red Queen and other wacky characters, then it lured audiences further by grounding the fantasy with Alice and presenting her adventure story.

All told, Alice in Wonderland appealed well beyond the family crowd suggested by its Disney branding and Lewis Caroll's famous literary source. According to Disney's exit polling, 39 percent of the audience was parents and their children, while 36 percent was couples. The basic gender and age demographics came in at 55 percent female and 54 percent under 25 years old.

At the foreign box office, shiny and new Alice in Wonderland unseated reigning stalwart Avatar, debuting to an estimated $94 million from 40 territories or around 60 percent of the overseas market. Add in the domestic take, and Alice's worldwide weekend was an estimated $210.1 million, ranking as the 14th biggest worldwide launch ever. The United Kingdom was Alice's top foreign market with an estimated $16.8 million (the highest non-sequel start ever there), followed by Italy ($13.9 million, also a non-sequel record), Russia ($12.3 million) and Australia ($9.2 million). Meanwhile, Avatar was off 42 percent, generating $22.8 million and bringing its total to $1.88 billion.

"Alice in Wonderland" Now in Theaters!

So, apparently, that Tim Burton guy has this new movie out. I think it's Alice in the Looking Glass, or something. I haven't heard much about it, so I dunno. Anyway, I saw this one commercial, and it said you can see it in theaters in, like, 3D, and IMAX, and IMAX 3D, and normal 2D. Oh, and Johnny Depp's in it, too.

"Alice" Theatrical Run Shortened

Disney CEO Bob Iger has decided to cut the theatrical run of Alice in Wonderland by a few weeks, the Hollywood Reporter states.

Normally, movies remain in cinemas for a 16-week run. But the theatrical run for Alice will be truncated to just under 13 weeks.

This experiment might become a growing trend for movies in general. Shortening the theatrical run of films might make home entertainment methods of viewing movies (Video On Demand, DVD, Blu-ray) more successful.

Another benefit would be freeing up the 3D and IMAX movie screens. Alice will be bumping Avatar off the map widely, and the 3D release of Warner Bros' Clash of the Titans (release date April 2nd) will be following Alice.

The abbreviated theatrical run will likely take effect in both the UK and the United States.

"Alice" in IMAX

Alice in Wonderland will officially be released in standard theaters as well as on IMAX in 3D on March 5th, 2010, Disney confirms. This is the third film confirmed out of the five-film agreement between IMAX and Disney, which was announced on November 19, 2008.

Mark Zoradi, president, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures Group, said, "If ever there was a film that cried out to be presented in Disney Digital 3D and the premium IMAX 3D format, Tim Burton's fantastic interpretation of Alice in Wonderland is that film. This is going to be an eye-popping cinematic experience as Tim takes moviegoers down the rabbit hole and into the dimensional world filled with incredible characters, sly humor, and wild adventures. Disney's partnership with IMAX is taking shape with two amazing films already on the schedule. We look forward to working with them in bringing exciting new experiences and quality entertainment to IMAX screens around the world."

"We think that Disney's new Alice in Wonderland is exactly the type of 3D story telling that will resonate with IMAX audiences," said IMAX Co-Chairmen and Co-CEOs Richard L. Gelfond and Bradley J. Wechsler. "We believe our worldwide commercial theatre network will be approximately 50 percent larger by the time this film is released, giving more and more people a chance to experience the magic of Disney in IMAX."

"Alice in Wonderland is a fantastic addition to our 2010 film slate," added Greg Foster, Chairman and President of IMAX Filmed Entertainment. "Combining a beloved Disney classic re-designed through the imagination of Tim Burton's creative vision with these incredibly outrageous characters and world class actors certainly makes for an event-status film, and we're pleased to add another level of excitement to this highly-anticipated movie."