Disney is planning to adapt its film classic Mary Poppins for the stage.

Disney has its stage hands full with Poppins, school shows

By Elysa Gardner, USA TODAY

Disney's theater division has a variety of new projects on tap for 2004, from professional shows to programs that will enable schoolchildren and other amateurs to create their own spectacles. (Related item: Disney's live theater projects take center stage)

Disney is planning to adapt its film classic Mary Poppins for the stage.

As head of that division, Thomas Schumacher realizes that such progress eventually will require closing certain long-running productions. "You have to ask how you can tour these shows, license them, roll them out in other ways — and bring new titles in."

New titles for the coming year include a stage adaptation of Mary Poppins and On the Record, a touring show designed to evoke a recording session for "the ultimate Disney album," Schumacher says, with dance numbers.

Beyond that, Disney will for the first time make Beauty and the Beast and Aida available for stock and amateur projects, including high school productions, through an agreement with the licensing agency Music Theatre International.

Disney and MTI also are developing musicals for students to perform, among them an adaptation of the 1992 film Newsies, an Aladdin for middle schools, and Cinderella and The Jungle Book for elementary schoolers. For the latter three, teachers will have access to 40-minute scripts with directors' notes.

CD tracks also will be offered, Schumacher says, allowing children to sing along karaoke-style. "(School music) programs are being cut back, so if you don't have an orchestra, you can use this. Or if you do have an orchestra, you can rent the parts from us."

Disney also will continue to cultivate audiences through its association with Feld Entertainment, the company that runs Disney on Ice. Chairman and CEO Kenneth Feld works with a team from Schumacher's department on seven ice shows, which last year attracted more than 10 million fans.

Feld also is readying Disney Live, a series of non-ice stage shows featuring characters from popular stories and films. The first, focusing on Winnie the Pooh, is set to open in New Zealand in June, then move to Australia and likely end up in North America toward the end of 2005.

Feld says that the Disney Live shows will incorporate humor, audience participation and music, from Disney classics to covers of contemporary pop songs.

"It won't be a passive experience," he says. "The show is geared for all levels, every age group."

Disney Channel properties Kim Possible and Jo-Jo's Circus have been mentioned as possible future Disney Live outings, but not yet confirmed. Similarly, Schumacher says that Disney stage versions of Pinocchio and Hoopz have been put on the back burner for now, but not abandoned.

"And then there's another idea, something totally original, based on a 20th-century phenomenon," Schumacher adds, mysteriously. "I can't tell you about it now, but it's fantastic."

Tarzan New Line King

NEW YORK (NY Post) – As Clear Channel Communications retreats from Broadway, another corporate giant – Walt Disney - continues to expand its empire in Times Square. Last week, in front of hundreds of group-sales executives, Disney unveiled plans for a $10 million (at least) stage version of its animated movie "Tarzan" that will open at the Richard Rodgers Theatre in May. Usually at these events, the sales people are treated to a few musical numbers, and, if you sneak into the theater, you can get a pretty good idea of whether the show's going to be a stinker or a hit. But "Tarzan" isn't even in rehearsal yet, so Tom Schumacher, the popular head of Disney's theater division, hosted what amounted to an informal chat show that might have been called "Tom and Friends." Perched on a footstool, Schumacher, a charming ham, interviewed Bob Crowley, the director and designer of "Tarzan," while set models and costume sketches were projected on a giant video screen. The prevailing image of the show is a giant green box representing the jungle. The sexy gorilla costumes look like something Cher would wear in concert. Phil Collins, who wrote the songs for the "Tarzan" movie, is doing the score for the musical. He put in a "surprise" appearance, chatting with Schumacher and performing a medley of songs from the show, including his chart topper "You'll Be in My Heart." Pichon Baldinu, the creator of "De Le Guarda," is designing aerial movement for "Tarzan." Earlier this year, Baldinu staged an aerial workshop of "Tarzan" at an abandoned theater in Buenos Aires, and Schumacher played a video of that workshop for the group sales agents. In the video, performers in crash helmets and body pads soared across the stage and bungee-jumped from the wings. It was hard to know what to make of the aerial workshop. It looked more like an extreme sports event than a Broadway musical, but it was done without sets, costumes or lighting.

After the presentation, Disney hosted a private party at Chez Josephine, where the top group-sales executives got to mingle with creators of the show. Within a few days of Schumacher's presentation, "Tarzan" had sold around $8 million worth of group-sales tickets, production sources said. One group-sales agent predicts the overall advance for the show could reach $20 million or more by the time previews begin in the spring. "The Disney marketing machine is the best there is," this agent says. "Who else could produce Phil Collins for a group-sales presentation? They've got us eating out of their hands." Footnote: By this time next year, Disney should have four of Broadway's top musical houses all locked up: "Tarzan" at the Richard Rodgers; "Beauty and the Beast" at the Lunt-Fontanne; "The Lion King" at the Minskoff (where it transfers from the New Amsterdam in the spring); and, moving into the New Amsterdam, "Mary Poppins." Not since Cameron Mackintosh had "Cats," "Les Miserables," "The Phantom of the Opera" and "Miss Saigon" all running at the same time in the 1990s has one producer controlled so much Broadway real estate.

WiMax Wireless May Directly Usher Disney Into The Living Room

(Investor’s Business Daily) – Walt Disney Co. has cast its eyes on WiMax, an emerging wireless broadband technology, as a way to deliver movies, interactive gaming and other services to homes. The Magic Kingdom's interest in WiMax comes on the heels of Disney pulling the plug on another wireless project, called MovieBeam. That project would have beamed movies on demand to homes via unused TV broadcast spectrum, but consumers would've had to buy an extra set-top box. WiMax is a long-range version of Wi-Fi, a wireless technology that lets laptop computer users connect to the Internet. Wi-Fi's available at some public locations, including many airports and Starbucks stores. WiMax, meanwhile, is being tested inside and outside the US, though there have been no commercial rollouts. Disney has been testing a WiMax network near its Burbank, Calif., headquarters. Disney has also been active in setting WiMax standards. Those standards are needed so different equipment makers can build WiMax gear that works together. It's also possible that Disney will try a MovieBeam-like trial involving WiMax technology. If Disney gets serious about WiMax, some observers speculate that it wouldn't build a WiMax network of its own, but instead would rent Sprint's WiMax network.

Disney Alters Itinerary for Magic’s Voyage

(Florida Today) – Disney Cruise Line has altered the itinerary of its current Disney Magic voyage, changing it to a Western Caribbean itinerary from an Eastern Caribbean itinerary to avoid the potential impact of Hurricane Philippe. "We're always prepared to change the itinerary to avoid severe weather, and we know our guests will enjoy the modified itinerary," said Rena Langley, a Disney Cruise Line spokeswoman. "Because of the projected path of Hurricane Philippe, we changed the itinerary." Disney officials also said they are very closely monitoring Tropical Storm Rita, which was expected to become a hurricane, but do not anticipate any changes in upcoming voyages of the Port Canaveral-based Disney Magic or the Disney Wonder because of that storm. The Disney Magic departed Saturday from Port Canaveral and is scheduled to return this Saturday.

'Rules' Star Sagal Gets 'Lost'

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) – Katey Sagal will guest-star on an episode of "Lost" early this season, but her role for the moment is as cryptic as the meaning of Hurley's numbers. The former "8 Simple Rules" star will be playing a character named Helen in the third episode this season, scheduled for Wednesday, Oct. 5. It seems more likely that she would appear in the show's flashback scenes; higher-profile guest stars were primarily used that way in "Lost's" first season. It also appears that the flashback for the episode, titled "Orientation," will concern Locke (Terry O'Quinn). Kevin Tighe ("Murder One"), who appeared last season as Locke's father, Cooper, will reprise his role. Beyond that, ABC is offering only the broadest of hints about the episode, saying Jack (Matthew Fox), Kate (Evangeline Lilly) and Locke "learn more secrets about the hatch." The show's producers have said episode three contains a fairly major revelation about what's inside the hatch. Elsewhere, Michael (Harold Perrineau), Sawyer (Josh Holloway) and Jin (Daniel Dae Kim) face a new challenge after escaping the raft. Sagal, who played Cate Hennessy on "8 Simple Rules", most recently appeared in the ABC Family movie "Campus Confidential."

Disney on Parade - New York Times

Op-Ed Columnist
Disney on Parade
By MAUREEN DOWD
Published: September 17, 2005
WASHINGTON

The president, as he fondly recalled the other day, used to get well lit in New Orleans. Not any more.

On Thursday night, Mr. Bush wanted to appear casually in charge as he waged his own Battle of New Orleans in Jackson Square. Instead, he looked as if he'd been dropped off by his folks in front of a eerie, blue-hued castle at Disney World. (Must be Sleeping Beauty's Castle, given the somnambulant pace of W.'s response to Katrina.)

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Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

More Columns by Maureen Dowd All Andrew Jackson's horses and all the Boy King's men could not put Humpty Dumpty together again. His gladiatorial walk across the darkened greensward, past a St. Louis Cathedral bathed in moon glow from White House klieg lights, just seemed to intensify the sense of an isolated, out-of-touch president clinging to hollow symbols as his disastrous disaster agency continues to flail.

In a ruined city - still largely without power, stinking with piles of garbage and still 40 percent submerged; where people are foraging in the miasma and muck for food, corpses and the sentimental detritus of their lives; and where unbearably sad stories continue to spill out about hordes of evacuees who lost their homes and patients who died in hospitals without either electricity or rescuers - isn't it rather tasteless, not to mention a waste of energy, to haul in White House generators just to give the president a burnished skin tone and a prettified background?

The slick White House TV production team was trying to salvage W.'s "High Noon" snap with some snazzy Hollywood-style lighting - the same Reaganesque stagecraft they had provided when W. made a prime-time television address from Ellis Island on the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. On that occasion, Scott Sforza, a former ABC producer, and Bob DeServi, a former NBC cameraman and a lighting expert, rented three barges of giant Musco lights, the kind used for "Monday Night Football" and Rolling Stones concerts, floated them across New York Harbor and illuminated the Statue of Liberty as a backdrop for Mr. Bush.

Before the presidential address, Mr. DeServi was surveying his handiwork in Jackson Square, crowing to reporters about his cathedral: "Oh, it's heated up. It's going to print loud."

As Elisabeth Bumiller, the White House reporter for The Times, noted in a pool report, the image wizards had put up a large swath of military camouflage netting, held in place by bags of rocks and strung on poles, to hide the president from the deserted and desolate streets of the French Quarter ghost town.

The president is still looking for a gauzy beam of unreality in New Orleans - and in Iraq, where a violent rampage has spiked the three-day death tally to over 200.

The Oedipal loop-de-loop of W. and Poppy grows ever loopier.

With Karl Rove's help, Junior designed his presidency as a reverse of his father's. W. would succeed by studying Dad's failures and doing the opposite. But in a bizarre twist of filial fate, the son has stumbled so badly in areas where he tried to one-up Dad that he has ended up giving Dad a leg up in the history books.

As Mark Twain said: "When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years."

Of course, it's taken Junior only five years to learn how smart his old man was.

His father made the "mistake" of not conquering and occupying Iraq because he had the silly idea that Iraqis would resent it. His father made the "mistake" of raising taxes, not cutting them, and overly obsessing about the federal deficit. And his father made the "mistake" of hewing to the center, making his base mad and losing his bid for re-election.

Bush père did make a real mistake in responding slowly to Hurricane Andrew in 1992, but that blunder has been dwarfed by what the slothful son hath wrought. Because of his fatal tardiness, W. now has to literally promise the moon to fix New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast, driving up the federal deficit and embarking on the biggest spending bonanza and government public works program since F.D.R.

In his address from the French Quarter, the president sounded like such a spendthrift bleeding heart that he is terrifying the right more than his father ever did.

Read my lips: By the time all this is over, people will be saying that Poppy was the true conservative in the family.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Why Disney Gave up Pencils for Computers

Why Disney Gave up Pencils for Computers

BURBANK, Calif. (NY Times) – On April 4, 2003, Glen Keane, one of Walt Disney's most respected animators, summoned about 50 of his colleagues to a conference room on the lot here to discuss the war brewing at the studio. Disney's animators had settled into two opposing camps: those who were skilled in computer animation and those who refused to give up their pencils. Keane, a 31-year veteran who created the beast from "Beauty and the Beast" and Ariel from "The Little Mermaid," was a Disney traditionalist. But after a series of experiments to see whether he could create a computer-animated ballerina, his opposition softened. So he invited the 50 animators to discuss the pros and cons of both art forms, calling his seminar "The Best of Both Worlds." For an hour, Keane listed the pluses and minuses of each technique while the other animators listened quietly. After a few tentative questions, the crowd burst into chatter as animators shouted over one another, some arguing that computers should not replace people and others expressing fears that they would be forced to draw by hand. In a recent interview, Keane recalled that Kevin Geiger, a computer animation supervisor, then stood up and demanded of him, "If you can do all this cool stuff that you're talking about – that you want to see in animation – but you have to give up the pencil to do it, are you in?" Keane hesitated before answering, "I'm in."

Three weeks later, the company's animators were told that Disney would concentrate on making computer-animated movies, abandoning a 70-year-old hand-drawn tradition in favor of a style popularized by newer and more successful rivals like Pixar Animation Studios and DreamWorks Animation. The results were nothing short of a cultural revolution at the studio, which is famous for the hand-drawn classics championed by its founder, Walt Disney. On Nov. 4, a little more than two and a half years after that decision, Disney will release "Chicken Little," the first of four computer-animated films being developed at the newly reorganized studio. The company is hoping that this movie, along with others like "Meet the Robinsons," "American Dog" and Keane's "Rapunzel Unbraided," will return a reinvigorated Disney to its past glory. There is a lot more than pride, however, riding on their success. Animation was once Disney's heart, a profitable lifeline that fed the company's theme park, book and home video divisions. And reviving profit is as essential to Disney these days as regaining its storied reputation. "From a psychological standpoint, 'Chicken Little' is very important for Disney," said Hal Vogel, an analyst who covers Disney. "Everything is touched by animation, and if they don't refresh it, it becomes frayed at the edges." The box office numbers show how far the sky has fallen. The studio reached the height of its most recent popularity with the 1994 release of "The Lion King," which brought in $764.8 million at the worldwide box office. By contrast, the last nine animated movies Disney either made or acquired took in only $758.3 million combined. "The Incredibles," the 2004 film created by Pixar, brought in $630 million, nearly as much as Disney's last eight animated movies. So it should come as no surprise that when Keane stood up and made his passionate plea in 2003, Disney was in the midst of an identity crisis. It had to reinvent itself – or wither. The competition in animated films is now tougher than ever. It is also fraught with enough sibling rivalry to make the wicked stepsisters in "Cinderella" blush. Against such a backdrop, "Chicken Little" is almost certain to be one of the most scrutinized movies of its kind.

Soon after becoming president of Walt Disney Feature Animation in 2003, David Stainton was contemplating what to do about the standoff between Disney's two camps of animators, the techies and the traditionalists. When he was hired, Stainton said, Eisner and Richard Cook, chairman of Walt Disney Studios, said they wanted Disney movies to be wittier, contemporary computer-animated comedies with a dramatic twist – in other words, as one Disney executive said, more like "Shrek." Stainton said he knew he would need an influential animator on his side to succeed. So in February 2003, a month after he was hired, he responded enthusiastically when Keane met with him and Eisner and presented six hand-sketched scenes for "Rapunzel Unbraided," a heartwarming romance based on the fairy tale. Stainton and Eisner told Keane that they would approve the film but that there was one caveat: it had to be computer-animated. Keane balked. Stainton said he replied, "Glen, I'm not asking you to go make a movie with humans that look like 'Final Fantasy,"' referring to the stiff figures in the 2001 computer-animated dud. "I'm asking that you – and I know it doesn't exist out there – I'm asking you to go create it. You have to create something new." Whether "Rapunzel Unbraided" was made or not, it offered a politically expedient way for Mr. Stainton to force a dialogue. So, on April 4, Mr. Keane held his "Best of Both Worlds" seminar. And at the end of that month Mr. Stainton lobbed another grenade. He told more than 525 employees gathered at a town hall meeting that the studio would stop making hand-drawn movies for the foreseeable future. Those interested in computer-generated animation could sign up for a six-month "C.G. boot camp." "What I was saying to them was, 'You've got to embrace it or there isn't going to be a place for you,' " Mr. Stainton said. The announcement did little to soothe the warring camps. Some traditionalists refused to sit with the computer set at lunch, Disney executives said. They voiced their complaints to Roy E. Disney, then the studio's animation chairman and Disney board member, who was locked in his own battle with Mr. Eisner, having vowed to oust him as chief executive.

Disney animation suffered another blow on Jan. 29, 2004, when Steve Jobs announced that Pixar would end talks with Disney to continue its 14-year partnership and would seek a competitor to distribute its films after the release of Pixar's next movie, "Cars." Six days later, Mr. Jobs criticized Disney's animators, telling Wall Street analysts that Disney's "Treasure Planet" and "Brother Bear" were bombs and calling the studio's sequels "embarrassing." "It was the best thing that could have happened to us," said Mr. Cook, the chairman of Walt Disney Studios. Weeks later, Cook met with the animators and told them that it was time to get on with making great movies. "We needed to get ourselves back on track," he said. "They knew it. Enough of the Disney bashing; enough already. The way to stop all that is to win. And that's what we set our sights on." If there is any question about whether there is life for Disney after Pixar, consider the following: Last June, Disney caused a ruckus at the industry's largest computer-animation conference in Los Angeles when it set up a large poster in front of its booth – and facing Pixar's – to advertise the pre-production of "Toy Story 3." For many of those in attendance, it was an in-your-face gesture that showed Disney was prepared to go it alone. But it was also part of a larger public relations campaign to show that Disney was viable again. Disney was interviewing new recruits and showing off new technology. But Disney's biggest challenge may be to overcome the notion that, when it comes to animation, many moviegoers may no longer have much confidence in Disney. Indeed, the company's animators today have more in common with their predecessors than their competitors at Pixar and DreamWorks. When animators created "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," the studio's first theatrical offering in 1937, it was referred to as "Disney's Folly" before its release. "How hungry were they?" Mr. Dindal said, referring to "Snow White's" animators. "It's fun to be at a place where everybody's hungry for something, as opposed to being well fed."

Wikipedia validates our existence

I have to admit, this is kind of cool.

Future Disney Cabinet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

For First Day Covers of stamps, see First day of issue.

The FDC, short for "Future Disney Cabinet", is a Disney fan group which began in Spring 1992 as part of the Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.disney. It started as something of an inside joke, based on the signature block of community member Sean Squier stating that he was the Future CEO of The Walt Disney Company. Others picked up on the idea and took on imaginary titles for the roles they would someday have when Squier takes over Disney. Some of these made-up titles were "Theme-park Walkaround Belle" or "Walt Disney Imagineering Director of Special Projects". [1] FDC members would post to the community from the point-of-view of the characters they were playing; on some days there were more than a hundred FDC-related posts, drawing some complaints from people who wanted to separate the FDC into its own newsgroup. Eventually the FDC claimed more than 300 members.

In November 1994, a TinyMUCK named "FDCMuck" opened as a place for FDC members to chat and roleplay interactively. It started with about a hundred players, most of whom were active members of rec.arts.disney; it served as something of a refuge from the newsgroup. Eventually it became a tight-knit community of its own, and at its peak the muck had grown to more than six hundred players, most of whom had no prior affiliation with the newsgroup or the FDC.
The muck has been in decline for the past few years, as many players were lost due to unannounced moves of the server to new addresses.
[edit]

External link
FDCMuck web site
Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Disney_Cabinet"