Disney is presenting panels for three of their biggest upcoming movies in Hall H this morning, and first up is Frankenweenie, the animated, feature-length adaptation of the animated short film Tim Burton made way back in 1984. The black and white movie with the macabre story of a boy who raises his dog from the dead seems to be returning Burton to his spookier roots, and he'll be on hand for today's panel, along with executive producer Don Hahn, producer Allison Abbate and voice actor Atticus Shaffer, to give us a look at what to expect, and hopefully some new footage from the film, which is set for release October 5.
Read below for a blow-by-blow liveblog of all the action, and keep refreshing for the latest updates. And once this one ends, don't forget to look for the next liveblog for the other films Disney has brought to Comic Con this year.
2:30 The panel kicks off with a fantastic trailer for the movie done in the style of an old-school horror movie, complete with scare quotes around the title and a voice that promises it will be in "the third dimension!" It's like something Ed Wood would love, and is probably the best bit of marketing I've seen for a Tim Burton movie in years.
2:35 And speaking of Tim Burton, the man himself is onstage, in conversation with moderator Chris Hardwicke. He talks about making the original Frankenweenie short back in 1984, when he was working in Disney. He made it in live-action because "I was terrible at animation." Now he's made the feature film in stop-motion, which of course he already dabbled in as the producer of A NIghtmare Before Christmas.
2:37 Time for clips! 2:40 The first clip is a classroom scene, in which the kids are introduced to their new science teacher, who has an unpronounceable Polish name with way, way too many consonants in it. He explains how lightning works as if a lightning bolt was an immigrant trying to make a life for himself and knocking out anyone who gets in his way. It's way, way funnier than I'm making it sound, I promise, and the exact right level of Tim Burton weird.
2:42 Burton says he based the kids in the classroom on all the weird kids he remembers growing up with.
2:44 Second clip has our hero kid, an amateur scientist, accidentally creating an invisible goldfish in his lab. The best part of the scene is the kid he's in the lab with, who has some kind of oddball accent that I can't quite place. It's very subtle, but totally hilarious in its own way.
2:46 Q&A time! A bunch of kids step up the mic cosplayed as various Tim Burton characters, from his Mad Hatter to one of the Nightmare Before Christmas people. Burton is very impressed! "It's like my family came to see me."
2:47 The kid dressed as a perfect Mad Hatter asks him what it's like to work with Colleen Atwood, because "she is my idol." Now THAT'S true nerdery!
2:50 Guy wants to know how they got away with using the F-bomb in Beetlejuice and got it a PG. I enjoy that very specific, geeky question.
2:51 Guy at the mic says he's trying not to geek out right now. Burton says "That's OK, it's what we're here for."
2:52 Girl at the mic bursts into tears trying to ask a question.
