The Walt Disney studio has been unable to make a really popular 3-D animated movie, despite trying with Chicken Little and Meet the Robinsons. Not to be deterred, Mickey’s bosses are doing the next best thing; re-releasing a blockbuster animated movie in a new 3-D form. Disney has announced it will release Pixar’s Toy Story in 3-D in October 2009. Toy Story 2 in 3-D will follow in February 2010.

The first thing I thought of was how scary it is that 2010 is not really that far off. We were all supposed to live in floating cities with killer robots or something. Instead, we are getting movies released more than 10 years ago redone so they pop right off the screen. I’d rather have the murderous machines. The whole point of this is to get people used to seeing Buzz and Woody in glorious 3-D prior to the release of Toy Story 3 in June 2010. The third Toy Story, directed by Lee Unkrich, will be in a state-of-the-art 3-D that will make all other 3-D look like old maggots (I’m paraphrasing the press release here.)

John Lasseter, who directed the first two Toy Story movies and is now the chief creative officer of Disney and Pixar, will oversee the conversion of the two movies to 3-D. He’s pretty damn excited about the whole project, surprisingly. “I am sure that this is going to be nothing short of fantastic and people are going to be blown away by the experience,” Lasseter said. “With Toy Story 3’shaping up to be another great adventure for Buzz, Woody and the gang from Andy’s room, we thought it would be great to let audiences experience the first two films all over again and in a brand new way.” The millions of dollars to be squeezed out of movies everyone has seen and owns on DVD had nothing to do with this decision, I’m sure. I’ll be line for this though, sucker that I am.

http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Toy-Story-And-Toy-Story-2-To-Add-Dimension-7587.html