[Hat tip to Will Sutton of I Love Shakespeare for this one!]
The thought of a mass market animated Shakespeare has compelled me for years. I followed every story I could find while waiting for Gnomeo and Juliet to see the light of day (seriously – here’s a 2006 post, and here’s 2011 post when it finally came out). I’ve also been saying for years, you’ll note, that I think they should do The Tempest.
But I’ll take Midsummer, too!
It appears that Strange Magic will hit theaters January 23! Created by Lucasfilm (which was started by George Lucas and now owned by Disney), produced by Touchstone (who I believe did Gnomeo?) and directed by a Pixar veteran, the story is “inspired by” A Midsummer Night’s Dream so we’ll have to see what that might mean. The clip below has more, although I’m worried about the “battle over a powerful potion.”
IMDB gives us no clue about characters, listing all the celebrity credits as just “(Voice)”.
We’ll be watching this one closely! I’m quite sure I’m just getting my hopes up about the amount of Shakespeare content that might make it into the final product, but I don’t care.