Don Hahn, producer of classics such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Beauty And The Beast has revealed to Empire that Disney favorite The Lion King will be returning to the big screen in 3D.

Hahn, who was also the producer for The Lion King, was recently in London to visit pre-production on Tim Burton’s next movie, Frankenweenie, set to shoot soon at Three Mill Studios. It was there that he spoke of the expected return of The Lion King:

“I’m actually trying to work out a 3D conversion of The Lion King. I’ll be doing that when I go back to the States in a couple of weeks,” he said, explaining that we shouldn’t expect to see it for a while yet, since the Disney boffins are taking their time in making Simba, Zazu et al pop out of the screen. “It’s going to be spectacular – we will do a good job for ya! The technology is tremendous. We did A Nightmare Before Christmas a few years ago and Tim thought it was better than the original because it allows you to walk onto the set.”

With Beauty and the Beast already being converted into 3D, along with every other movie that could possibly be squeezed of its last drops of monetary honey, it comes as no surprise that Disney would want to add The Lion King to the 3D bandwagon. Hopefully they can work some magic to create a more spectacular 3D out of this wonderful classic film, rather than just a weak holographic effect that adds nothing to the experience except an annoying pair of glasses on your face.

In related news, Hahn confirmed that the long-awaited sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit is still in the works: “Yeah, I couldn’t possibly comment. I deny completely, but yeah… if you’re a fan, pretty soon you’re going to be very, very, very happy.”

Sadly, Hahn also revealed that The Snow Queen, an adaptation of a classic Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale that was rumoured to be Disney’s next hand-drawn animation won’t be developed in the foreseeable future:

“It’s actually been tabled right now,” explains Hahn. “It’s on the low shelf – we can’t reach it! But seriously, we don’t have the story. It’s a bit like Beauty And The Beast, which sat there for years. We cracked Beauty finally by putting in the objects and creating more plot. The Snow Queen we’ve had a lot of trouble with and I’ve spent years on it. I love it and I think it’s one of the last great fairy tales. It’s kind of crappy that it’s just sitting there right now.”

For now, the next Disney film to come out will be Tangled, the updated version of Rapunzel, which will hit cinemas this year on November 24.

What do you think of The Lion King returning to the cinemas in 3D?

MTV has learned today that director Robert Zemeckis is currently developing a script for a sequel to his 1988 classic Who Framed Roger Rabbit? But it gets better, Zemeckis has tapped the original writers, Jeffrey Price and Peter Seaman to write it. No other news about the project has been released at this point or when Zemeckis plans to actually begin production. Read the full story

Recently in an interview with Ain’t It Cool News Robert Zemeckis revealed that him and Bob Hoskins still consider the idea of a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Zemeckis and Hoskins just worked together on the upcoming motion capture adaptation of A Christmas Charol. When asked about whether they ever talk about Eddie Valiant he stated, “Oh yes, he always has them with me. He loves Eddie Valiant and he would love to do it. We talk about it and it’s something we are thinking about.”  Zemeckis was also asked today at Comic Con whether a sequel could still happen and while he was coy at first, he revealed, “I will tell you this, if that ever does happen, the 2D characters from the original movie will remain 2D. They will not be dimensionalized. Not to say there wont be 3D.”

Read the full story

A few days ago I was lucky enough to be able to do an on-phone interview with Scott Farrar the special effects supervisor and second unit director on Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen. You may not recognized Scott by name, but you have surely seen his work. Scott’s masterful resumé includes Star Wars VI- Return of The Jedi, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Jurassic Park, Men in Black, Artificial Intelligence: AI, and many other classic films. His work on both the Transformer films are ground breaking achievements in special effects.

How’s it going Scott? Big fan by the way.

Scott Farrar: Very well, thank you.

Was it a challenge getting all the effects done in a two year span and how much time did you have to work on the first film?

Scott Farrar: Well on the first film, actually each film took about a year and a half. We start with the script and then we start breaking it down to figure out how many shots and how much work is going to be involved. So after reading the script we realize, “Oh my gosh there are forty to six new characters!”, and they have major speaking roles and they have to act a lot better then they did in the first one. So right away you see some pretty daunting challenges.

So how do you make sure all the robots are different and unique in their own way? So when they are battling the audience can tell the difference between an autobot and a decepticon.

Scott Farrar: Well we know that in the first movie some of the characters were a little bit confusing because some of their colors looked similar. So that was a big note from fans and audiences. So we tried very hard to make sure we had colors and shapes that were a little easier to tell apart. So we try to make sure the fallen standout and hopefully the voice actors help the audience recognize some of the characters. It’s pretty easy for us to keep track of the characters because each one has a name so right away we start calling them by their name when watching dailies. So we can recognize that buffoon Starscream kissing up to Megatron! (Laughs)

Check out the rest of the interview below >>