Disney’s D23 convention in Anaheim kicked off Friday night with news from Disney Animation Studios, including a title for another feature from the studio.
The new production is titled Gigantic and is a new twist on Jack and the Beanstalk, set during the Spanish Age of Discovery. In the film, Jack will arrive in a strange land above the clouds where giants live. He befriends an 11-year-old giant named Inma and they have to stop storm giants from endangering life for other giants.
“When you read old Jack and the Beanstalk stories, you don’t think, ‘What a tearjerker.’ But we want that,” Tangled director Nathan Greno, who is directing Gigantic, said during the presentation. “Those are the ones that you’re going to play for your kids and they’re going to play for their kids. So we’re going for that too. We want that deep, deep emotion. And if we do our jobs right, we hope that this will be the definitive version of Jack and the Beanstalk.”
Disney has done the Jack and the Beanstalk story before, back in 1947's Fun and Fancy Free with Mickey, Goofy and Donald meeting the giant.
Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, who wrote the songs for Frozen and 2011’s Winnie the Pooh, will be writing Gigantic’s songs. They even performed one of the songs from the film for the D23 audience.
Disney also gave more details on Moana, which will hit theaters on Nov. 23, 2016. The film will feature the voice of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, who made a surprising visit to D23. It is being directed by The Princess and the Frog team ron Clements & John Musker.
Moana is about a young girl who meets a demigod named Maui (Johnson) and fights creatures along her journey to find her destiny in the open ocean. Opetaia Foa’i of the group Te Vaka, Tony winner Lin-Manuel Miranda and composer Mark Mancina performed a song from the movie.
Moana will actually be the second Disney Animation feature of 2016. Zootopia, a buddy comedy with the voices of Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin, hits theaters on March 4, 2016. Disney said at D23 that singer Shakira is voicing a character in Zootopia.
image courtesy of Jennifer Graylock/INFphoto.com