D23 Interview with Tim Burton

Disney's D23 website has a very indepth interview with Tim Burton, talking about Alice in Wonderland. The director discusses working on the technology-heavy film, working with various actors, the appeal of the strange characters and world created by Lewis Carroll, and much more. Here's the entire interview:

What appeals to you about this story?
In any fairy tale land there is good and bad. What I liked about Underland is that everything is slightly off, even the good people. That, to me, is something different. It's so much a part of the culture. So whether you've read the story or not, you'll know certain images or have certain ideas about it. It's such a popular story. The reason we did something with it is that it's captured the imagination of people for a very long time.

Why do you think Alice in Wonderland is still popular, more than 140 years after its publication?
It somehow taps a subconscious thing. That's why all those great stories stay around because they tap into the things that people probably aren't even aware of on a conscious level. There's definitely something about those images. That's why there have been so many versions of it. As a movie, it's always been about a passive little girl wandering around a series of adventures with weird characters. There's never any kind of gravity to it. The attempt with this was to take the idea of those stories and shape them into something that's not literal from the book but keeps the spirit of it.

How old were you when you first read the books?
I was in school, maybe like 8 or 10 years old. I have a weird connection with the books. The house where I live in London was owned by Arthur Rackham [famous English book illustrator who created the iconic color plates for the 1907 edition of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland]. I live and work out of the studio where he did some amazing versions of Alice in Wonderland. So I felt there was a connection to the material and me. And that always helps, somehow.

When you were first approached to direct, what was your reaction?
They gave me a script and they said 3D. And even before I read it, I thought, that's intriguing, and what I liked about Linda's script was she made it a story, gave it a shape for a movie that's not necessarily the book. So all those elements seemed exciting to me. What I liked about this take on the story is Alice is at an age where you're between a kid and an adult, when you're crossing over as a person. A lot of young people with old souls aren't so popular in their own culture and their own time. Alice is somebody who doesn't quite fit into that Victorian structure and society. She's more internal.

Why did you decide to make this particular version of the story?
Well, there are so many stories. It's not like it's a new story. If you read the books, there are all of these weird little adventures. So I think the goal of Linda Woolverton, the writer, was just to have the story and use the characters. Look, there are so many things — there is always going to be a character that is somebody's favorite. Someone will miss the Lobster, or whatever. You have the Red Queen and the White Queen, the March Hare and the White Rabbit — there were iconic ones that we knew we had to have in there. But then, we thought, let's just let the story play and see.

Which characters in Alice appealed to you more?
I like them all. And that's the thing with these. I think this material suffered in the past because all of the characters are just weird. Okay, Hatter's weird. Cat's weird. Rabbit's weird. We tried to give each one their own particular quirks, so that they each have their own character.

Growing up, did you have a favorite children's book?
I was a Dr. Seuss fan. It was easy to read. I liked his drawings. But, the reason I wanted to do Alice is that it was a really interesting challenge. I didn't feel personally, like I might on another project, like, oh, there is one great version out there, so to try and do another one, might be a problem. But with Alice, there are some interesting ones, but I don't know if any are completely successful.

What was your approach to the film?
I was much more fascinated by the iconic images — I think people are always surprised when they go back and read the stories, because they don't have that Lord of the Rings sweeping narrative. They're absurdist, surreal. But those characters are in our dreams, our tales. Those things that stay in your brain. Why do all these musicians write songs about it? Illustrators are recalling it all the time. You see it in other imagery. It was key to try to make that world. The things that I felt were unique to Alice, they're unique because they're so different. Like the bizarre size changes? And where you have some animals that talk, some don't. It seems quite random in what Carroll did. But, at the same time, it's not. There's something very deep. Things that seem random maybe aren't? The goal is just to try and capture that.

What do you like about this version of the story?
What I like about this is that it's more of a personal journey. These are the things that are actually the most important in life. That moment where you make that important choice. Maybe it happens to everybody. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe it does a couple of different times in your life, where you learn something, you grow. You know, it's like you've got two sides of yourself in conflict. Emotionally conflicted. And then, when you make that personal growth, it's quite an amazing thing. Quite a strong thing. It's reconciling within yourself who you are, becoming the person you're going to be, a human being. It sounds light, but it's important.

Why couldn't you do a re-telling of the books?
The thing that fascinated me about Alice is that its iconic images have been absorbed by our culture. I probably knew more about Alice from listening to bands and songs — so much of the story's imagery comes into play. So, that's the thing that was always strong about Alice. It was never the plot points of the story, because they were absurdist tales — they didn't really have a certain narrative dynamic. I think that's why those other versions, to me, were always lacking, because there was this little girl observing things and saying, oh, that's weird. There was one weird character after another, without much of a context to it. So, we tried to ground each of the Alice in Wonderland characters. We tried to give them it a bit more depth, and to give her a story. There's such a mystique about Alice in Wonderland. I just felt that it would be more appropriate if we tried to be true to the spirit of what those characters were, and then, just give it all a bit more of a foundation.

Why did you make Alice 19?
That age just seems to me to be a crossroads. There, I think you're entering a culture where you're pressured into society, or getting married, or some other thing. And she just seems to me to be at that point where you're at an emotional crossroads. I just felt like Alice is an interesting character, because she's at that age, and she's got both a young person's and an old person's soul. There's a dynamic — at odds feeling both the young and the old, and then reconciling those two things. It just seemed like the classic structure of fantasy — go back to The Wizard of Oz. Or any of a number of fairy or folk tales — these adventures are always to work out the character's emotional problems. That's why I've always been intrigued by the poetry and the purpose of such stories — myths and things. They mean something. And, so, her adventures are her coming to terms with who she is and gaining her personal strength. Those are the journeys that are made in these stories, but they're quite private, too. It seemed like the right age to explore that dynamic of somebody, at a moment of change.

What is Johnny Depp's approach to playing such a vivid character as The Mad Hatter?
It is an iconic character and it's been portrayed in animation, in live-action. I think Johnny tried to find grounding with the character, something you can feel, as opposed to him just being 'mad.' With a lot of versions, it's just a one-note character, and his goal was to bring out a human side to the strangeness of the character. I've worked with him for many years, and he always tries to do something like that, and this time was no exception.

Do you consider Johnny Depp as a muse?
Nah, he's just a piece of meat [LAUGHS]. All these actors were great, because they weren't dealing with a lot of stuff — sets, props, other actors. So, a lot of it had to be inside of each person's mind. You can't really work with method actors too much on a movie like this. You need people to go out on a limb and just go for it, without a lot of material. So, yeah, Johnny's good at that. And I was lucky with these other actors, that they kind of went for it, too. And, you know, for me, too, I think it was really hard, because I'd never really done a movie like this. And it's quite eye-opening. It's a whole different process. I would think for an actor, it's really challenging.

How close do you work with Johnny in creating his characters?
Well, I'll do a little sketch, he'll do a little sketch. We'll talk. It always is different. With him, we use references, but they're never specific references. Because he never wants to feel like he's doing just one thing. So, we use a lot of abstract references. But I'm always excited to see what's gonna come out it.

Do you let him go as far as he can and then reel him back in?
Yeah, but he's pretty good. You never wanna go so far that you're missing some emotional beats. So, we've tried to make the Hatter mad, of course, but also give him a certain emotional quality under the surface. Johnny's pretty good about trying to find the reality of something unreal.

Can you talk about why you chose Mia Wasikowska for Alice?
She has both a young quality and an old quality. Very grounded — some people are just all over the place. But some people, they have that old soul quality. And that's what we felt was important for this Alice. But, at the same time, to be young — there are people with old souls who are also naïve at the same time. There's a certain slight passiveness to Alice that's always in the material. So we wanted to give her more of a quiet strength, which Mia has herself — just as a person. I just liked her quality. I always like it when I sense people have that old-soul quality to them. Because you're witnessing this whole thing through her eyes, it needed somebody who can subtly portray that.

How did Mia, as a relatively new actress, handle the role?
Well, she's great. This'll probably be the most abstract movie that she will ever do, let's hope. Like I said, it was new for me. In dealing with all the green screen and obstacles she had to deal with, she took it all in stride. She always was trying to remember the character and just go back to that place within herself. That was helpful, because it could be a nightmarish process. It goes against all of your instincts, I would imagine, as an actor — you have nothing to work with. The guy standing there with a green stick is not really that inspiring, you know.

You go way back with Crispin Glover [who plays the Knave of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland], right?
I first met him in the early '80s. He's a very unique individual. He's a real Renaissance man. There are not many people who do movies and then do their own films and do their own art and live their own lives in the way that he does. But he's great. He's got such a pleasant visual presence.

Your cast is full of British character actors, performers who can disappear into the character.
I love working with people like Matt Lucas, who do characters, because I think they're great actors. They're fun to watch. Matt did one character then slipped into another; that to me is the sign of a good actor, and it was really great to work with him. Also, it was important to me to have a real, heavy British flavor. There are lots of people I've always admired. I wanted to try and make the animated voices not overly animated, so they all felt like they were in the same world. I didn't want them to feel like live-action characters in a completely animated world, so I tried to make the live-action a bit more extreme, and then with the animation, I tried to bring it back. I was lucky enough to get really great actors who — if they had done it as humans would have been great — brought the animated characters up to the level of the live-action.

How did you get your actors into character?
Well, it's difficult when you don't have a lot of sets and you are dealing with a lot of technology. I tried to keep it as lively as possible and as fast as possible, so that they could interact with each other as much as possible. So speed and energy were important. You just try to keep moving and grooving.

How did the actors in Alice in Wonderland approach the dialogue?
The kind of actors I like to work with bring something to it — like if there was a line or something from the book that they want to be in the script. If an actor connects to something or feels passionate about something, that's always nice, and you might get something better from them — it's something meaningful that they can grasp.

Is it Underland or Wonderland? What does it look like in this film?
It is Underland and has always been Underland, but according to the film version, when Alice visited as a child, she misheard the name and called it Wonderland. Everybody's got an image of Underland. I think in people's minds, it's always a very bright, cartoony place. We thought if Alice had had this adventure as a little girl and now she's going back, perhaps it's been a little bit depressed since she's left. It's got a slightly haunted quality to it.

Are you taking a unique approach to technology with this film?
Well, [senior visual effects supervisor] Ken Ralston's done this. I haven't done this before. It's a puzzle, and the movie doesn't materialize until the end. What's been the most difficult thing is, after production ends, you usually have a movie — you see the shots and then you spend six months to a year cutting it. This doesn't work that way. It's a very Alice in Wonderland-like process. It's a little backwards.

How did you incorporate available technology into this film?
Our approach to this was a bit more organic, in the sense that Ken Ralston and I discussed what we liked and didn't like about animation, live-action and other technologies. We had that conversation. We decided on a mix — we'll have real people, but also animate characters, and then manipulate them. So, we just tried to pick and choose what we used with each situation. That's the thing about technology. There are so many ways to use it.

How did you come up with the concept for the design of this world?
We looked at a lot of great artists on this one. In some ways, it ended up being more like an animated movie, in terms of the structure and how it got done. We had lots of designers. Everybody chipped in. It's been a really organic building process.

What inspired you most in terms of the visuals?
We didn't choose just one thing — there are so many different things. We looked at pictures of trees. We'd get some good concept work that we liked and then latch onto that. The goal at the end of it all was to be true to the essence of the story and make it feel new. Make it feel like it's a different thing. But yet, there's a reason why I like the Cheshire Cat or the Caterpillar or the Mad Hatter — those characters are in people's consciousness because they're strong images. It was key to do that justice.

Why did you choose to make the film in 3D?
Well, 3D is not a fad. It's here to stay. It doesn't mean that every movie's going to be made in 3D. But at the same time, Alice in 3D, just because of the material, it seemed to fit. So, instead of it just being a given, we tried to treat it as though it was a part of Wonderland. Matching the medium with the material.

Did you shoot in 3D or was it part of the process after filming had finished?
We didn't do it with the 3D cable. With the techniques we were using — the pure animation, live-action and manipulating that — shooting it traditionally gave us more freedom to get into the depth, the layers, that we wanted in the time that we were dealing with. And also, I can't really see the difference. I'm sure that there are people who say 'it's more pure this way or that way…' But this seemed like the right approach. After seeing the conversion job that was done on The Nightmare Before Christmas, I found no reason to do it any other way. We were trying to do it faster and at the end of the day, I didn't see any difference in quality.

Does using 3D affect the story?
In the old days you'd put the glasses on and walk out of the theatre with a splitting headache. And that's no longer the case, it's a much more pleasant experience. And I'm personally not out to make a gimmick, so I believe that it enhances the film. It puts you into that world. And with the Alice material — the growing and shrinking of characters for instance — and the special spaces and places that you're in, it just helps with the experience. Obviously, these films not only have to work in 3D, but they have to look good as a movie that you'd want to see. I think the gimmick element of 3D is falling by the wayside, and it's more about an experience that puts you into the film. When Nightmare was converted to 3D, I felt it was the way it should have been. You felt the texture of the puppets more, you actually felt like you were on the set. And I think that enhances the experience. This seemed like the right kind of story to do in 3D. I always try to say, 'Is it the right medium for this?' and not just do it because it's a gimmick or it's fashionable now, and it did feel like it was the right kind of material. So seeing it come to life in 3D supports the material. It gives you that kind of 'out-there' feeling that was a very crucial element to the film.

Where do you see the future of movies going, now that you have this mixture of 3D and live-action?
I was in animation several years ago. It was pronounced dead, and then they stopped doing hand drawn. So, the good news is that there are more forms for everything, which is great. There should be 3D, drawn animation, computer animation, stop-motion. It's all valid. It's all great. And it's better now than it's ever been. I was struggling for 10 years to get a stop-motion movie made. Now, you can do it — no problem.

Are you fascinated with special effects?
I'm not a special-effects-just-for-special-effects kind of filmmaker. I try not to treat it like that. Even with all the stuff in this movie, we always tried to go back to the simplicity of it being one person's journey. It's Alice's journey. And that's it. It's a very simple thing — and that's what we always tried to keep it.

Being the Red Queen

Helena Bonham Carter recalled how her partner Tim Burton proposed the role of the Red Queen to her.

"He was so polite about it, and there were so many hesitations," Bonham Carter said. "He said, 'Would you consider, um, possibly, perhaps -- but only if you want to -- um, anyway, would you play the Red Queen?'"

"It was like a proposal of marriage," said the 43-year-old actress. Bonham is routinely misidentified as Burton's wife. They have two children and have had a nine-year romance together.

"I was doing 'Terminator Salvation' at the time, and when he asked me, I was really flattered. It was a complete surprise! I know people think it's disingenuous when I say that, but it's true. They won't understand this, but each time [he has a film], I truly don't expect Tim to ever want to work with me again."

"I personally find it especially flattering that he tends to deform me in every movie," Bonham Carter said. "But my mother and everyone asks me, 'What is it with you and him?' But that's the point of acting isn't it? It's all dress-up."

For the record, though, Burton didn't tell Bonham Carter what her deformity would be in Alice in Wonderland. "I learned that when I read it in the script," Bonham Carter said with mock distress. "Oh, a huge head? I see, lovely."

The Red Queen's gigantic head was not a small detail while making the film. "The queen's head was something we had to be careful to account for all the time," visual-effects supervisor Ken Ralston said. "We had to remind people to back away from Helena in their scenes to give her head enough room."

Linda Woolverton, the screenwriter for "Alice," says the Red Queen grew up with a tumor in her head, which, in Wonderland's version of physiology, made her head vast. "Linda told me it also made the queen emotionally volatile and arrested in her development," Bonham Carter said with something close to sympathy. "We have a 2-year-old daughter, Nell. There are some similarities."

There have been numerous incarnations of Lewis Carroll's stories to film, and Bonham Carter suggested to viewers that they shouldn't expect a strict adaptation. "Tim has changed things, and some purists will just slit their wrists when they see it," she said, chuckling at her own gruesome imagery. "It's all very invented, very new with this film and with good reason. The original Carroll stories are in fact very episodic -- there isn't a lot of huge narrative or dramatic drive. The story that Linda Woolverton invented is a mixture, it's stolen from both [books by Carroll] but given a real context and a story and a purpose for the whole dream to occur."

Bonham Carter didn't remember exactly when she was introduced to Alice and her world. "She's so been around," Bonham Carter said. "She's definitely mythic. I can't really remember how I first came to the story. I've always just had random impressions of it, the symbols and imagery, they're just stuck with me. They've always entranced me -- like the door and the keyhole and the 'drink me' potion and the 'eat me' cake.
"What is it about Alice? Why do we respond to it, and why does it still captivate us?"

The actress explained gave her opinions. "She knows she's in a dream, and we all know that feeling," the actress said. "And the changing of size, there's something in that too, the way children feel in an adult world or the way they fantasize about growing large and visible or to shrink away and be away from it."

Helena Bonham Carter has worked in myriad of different kinds of films, but this is her first venture into 3D. The actress stated how she hopes that the new stereoscopic technology stays as an enhancement for story-telling, and not a flashy, superficial alternative to it.

"I haven't seen too many 3D movies, for instance, and I don't think they all work that well, but I think with this one, with 'Alice,' it's a perfect marriage of 3D and subject matter. I think with a lot of the 3D films, it's a bit gratuitous. But with this story, you have all the shrinking and changing of size so there's an opportunity to use the technology in an interesting way."

The White Queen = Cooking Star Nigella Lawson?

Tim Burton explained some of his real-world inspiration for the White Queen character in Alice in Wonderland:

There's this very beautiful cooking show host in England named Nigella Lawson and I quietly had her as my image for this character," Burton said, referring to the comely author and television personality sometimes referred to as the "queen of food porn."

Burton said that as lovely as Lawson is, her cooking routine has an eerie edge to it at times. "She's really beautiful and she does all this cooking, but then there's this glint in her eye and when you see it you go, 'Oh, whoa, she's like really ... nuts.' I mean in a good way. Well, maybe. I don't know."


British cuisine star Nigella Lawson.

The White Queen is played by Anne Hathaway in Burton's film.

Burton also discussed the tense relationship between the Red Queen and the White Queen.

"With a lot of people I've known, when it comes to sisters, there's this perception that there's the nice one and the bad one," Burton said. "But then, that nice one, there's also undercurrents there and things going back and forth between the two. She can stay up sharpening knives all night, but she's still the nice one."

The director said that Linda Woolverton's adaptation of Lewis Carroll's original stories bent the perception of good and evil beyond cliched archetypes.

"The interesting thing I think was to have them connected, and neither is quite what you expect," Burton said. "What Linda did with that was great. It helps with the thing that really sets Alice apart from so many other types of kids literature, which is the fact that everybody is a little bit off. Even if somebody is good, there's something wrong with them. Everyone is a bit twisted somehow. The White Queen is no exception."

Burton on Spall, the Bloodhound

While the title is familiar, Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is aiming to be quite different from previous cinematic adaptations. One example of this is the presence of a character that never appeared in the two "Alice" books by Lewis Carroll: the Bloodhound.

The canine character is voiced by Timothy Spall, who previously worked with Burton on his last feature, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, playing the Beadle Bamford. Spall is no stranger to fantastical films, having acted in Harry Potter, Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Enchanted.

"Timothy Spall is amazing," Burton said. "I love him. He's exciting because he's always doing something different, he's always working and doing some interesting project. He does all sorts of cool things."

The bloodhound's presence may be "a reaction against the Cheshire Cat" in the film, says Burton, who is no fan of felines. "The film felt a bit feline- and rodent-heavy, perhaps, and I think the Bloodhound adds a certain little gravity to it. When you see all of the characters, the animal ones, together, he added a little balance to it."

Screenwriter Linda Woolverton explains her creation of the bloodhound character in this Los Angeles Times article, which does include a few SPOILERS.

Although much of the film is animated, Burton, a notorious dog-lover, really wanted to go for realism for the bloodhound character -- aside from the obvious talking bit.

"We were trying to find with this character and the other talking-animal characters the right kind of animation and the goal was to keep it naturalistic and to fit into that world in the background," Burton said. "The movement of the animals is really what I'm referring to, in some animation the characters don't move the way animals do and we wanted to go the direction of being naturalistic."

Mark Salisbury on the making of "Wonderland"

Mark Salisbury, who has written extensively about the art and films of Tim Burton, has a detailed article written for the Telegraph on the making of Alice in Wonderland. Here is the entire article.

BEWARE OF SPOILERS!!:


In a cavernous soundstage at Culver City Studios in Los Angeles in November 2008, Johnny Depp stands before a massive green backdrop wearing a frizzy orange wig, turquoise frock-coat over a red waistcoat, and a chequered kilt complete with sporran. On his legs he has striped socks, one blue and turquoise, the other red and cream. On his head is a top hat, with hatpins and price tag tucked into a silk ribbon. In his hands he wields a huge broadsword that is almost as tall as he is. With his white-painted face, rouged cheeks and fluorescent green contact lenses, Depp is almost unrecognisable. But as Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter, he is suitably freaky. No surprise really, given that the man behind the camera is Tim Burton and together he and Depp have, over the past two decades, created a memorable series of onscreen oddballs, including Edward Scissorhands and Willy Wonka.

Next to Depp is Alice herself, played by the Australian newcomer Mia Wasikowska, but looking quite unlike any Alice you have ever seen. In a Joan of Arc suit of armour, tight blond curls cascading past her shoulders, a steely-eyed Wasikowska sits atop a green animal-shaped box on poles, being carried by men dressed entirely in green, brandishing her own sword to the imaginary hordes of the Red Queen’s army; playing-cards loyal to Helena Bonham Carter’s monstrous-headed monarch that will be added to the scene via computer-generated imagery (CGI) in the coming months. 'There’s definitely not a whole lot to draw from in terms of your environment,’ Wasikowska admits during a break in filming. 'It’s good that it leaves a lot of room for your own imagination, but it is kind of hard to jump into a moment. You have to imagine you’re sitting on a beast, it’s all dark and gloomy and there’s one army here, the Red Army, and another army here, the White Army.’

To create his 3D version of Lewis Carroll’s hallucinatory classic Burton is shooting his actors in front of green screens rather than on real sets, then using the latest digital technology to insert sets, props, backgrounds and even some characters into the frame in post-production – the colour green chosen as it is so far removed from skin tone. He dabbled with this technique for several sequences on his previous film – a very bloody adaptation of Stephen Sondheim’s horror musical, Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, which also starred Depp – and was intrigued enough to commit fully to the process for this. And so, apart from those scenes featuring Alice in the real world – which he filmed in Cornwall for two weeks before the production relocated to Los Angeles – Burton has spent the past few weeks in this sterile, all-green environment and has several more to go.

Outside, the Californian air is heavy with ash, raining down from several wildfires raging around Los Angeles. Inside, conditions are not much better. The green itself is a bilious shade, bordering on the fluorescent. The film’s Oscar-winning producer, Richard Zanuck, says that sickness and lethargy have been a constant problem among cast and crew. Burton has even had special lavender lenses fitted into his glasses to combat the effect.

'The novelty of the green wears off very quickly,’ Depp says in his trailer later, the Hatter’s make-up now gone. 'It’s exhausting, actually. I mean, I like an obstacle – I don’t mind having to spew dialogue while having to step over dolly track while some guy is holding a card and I’m talking to a piece of tape. But the green beats you up. You’re kind of befuddled at the end of the day.’

Many of Carroll’s creations will be fully animated characters, including the Dormouse, the White Rabbit, the March Hare and the Cheshire Cat, and Burton has amassed an eclectic group of British actors to voice them, among them Michael Sheen, Stephen Fry, Christopher Lee, Paul Whitehouse and Barbara Windsor. On set, these characters are represented either by green cardboard cutouts, full-size models or actors dressed in green. The tubby twins Tweedledum and Tweedledee are being played by Little Britain star Matt Lucas, but only his rubbery features will make the finished film, although all his movements are being recorded to provide the basis for the digital Tweedles.

As Burton readies a close-up of Depp and Wasikowska, he has a 4ft-long model of the finished set brought out for his actors to look at. One of his monitors has an image of the set with a temporary digital background. 'It’s really helpful to go and see the screen, the composite one, and think, “OK, that’s where we are”,’ Bonham Carter says. 'You’ve always got a hell of a lot of imagining anyway. You just do a bit more.’

Tall and rangy, his mass of unruly black hair peppered grey, and wearing black shirt, black jeans and scuffed black boots, Burton wastes little time between set-ups. With his actors in place, he heads back to his monitors, settles in his chair, and picks up a microphone. 'Come on, kids,’ he shouts, his cheerful voice booming around the soundstage, 'let’s put on a show.’

Written by the Rev Charles Dodgson, a mathematics lecturer at Christ Church, Oxford, under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland first appeared in 1865, and was followed six years later by Through the Looking-Glass And What Alice Found There. The books, now published together under the more familiar title of Alice in Wonderland, told of a little girl’s journey into an alternate land populated by bizarre characters, and changed the landscape of children’s literature. A century and a half later, they continue to delight. 'It’s still new. It’s still fresh,’ Depp says. 'If it were written yesterday and released on shelves today, people would still be as amazed by it as they were then.

It’s a monumental achievement.’ Cinema was quick to latch on to Alice’s appeal, the first film appearing in 1903. And while there have been frequent attempts to adapt the story since, notably Walt Disney’s 1951 cartoon, none has truly managed to capture the anarchic spirit and surreal, nonsensical, fever-dream logic of Carroll’s writing. But if anyone can, Burton can.

The American screenwriter Linda Woolverton, whose credits include Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, had been considering doing something with Carroll’s world for some time, but couldn’t find a way into the story. 'I wrote this at a very dark time in my life,’ she says. 'A lot of bad things had happened –death, divorce, moving across the country – so I was kind of down the rabbit hole myself at the time.’ It was only when she thought of making Alice older and bringing her back to Wonderland that it all came into focus. 'I got an image of her standing at a very crucial moment in her life, looking over and seeing this rabbit leaning against the tree, looking at her, knowing she had to put a pin in this crucial decision and follow this rabbit, because that was her destiny.’

Burton’s film takes place a decade after the events of Carroll’s book and incorporates a lot of the themes and characters from the original. 'But it’s an entirely different story, a different Alice,’ Wasikowska says. 'She’s grieving from the loss of her father and feels very isolated and alone and awkward in her skin. She doesn’t fit into the society she’s a part of, and she doesn’t like what’s expected of her, which is to get married and be a good wife.’ Finding herself being proposed to at garden party, Alice spots a familiar-looking white rabbit, and consequently follows him down a hole and into Wonderland. What she finds is, according to Burton, 'a place in decline, overgrown, a little bit depressed, with a slightly haunted quality to it.’ His vision of Wonderland – devoid of colour and life under the oppressive rule of the Red Queen – was inspired by the work of Arthur Rackham, who illustrated the 1907 edition of Alice in Wonderland, as well as a black-and-white photograph of a family having tea during the Second World War with London, dishevelled, in the background.

After being reacquainted with the Mad Hatter, Alice is taken to see the wise, old, hookah-smoking Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), who informs her that her presence in Wonderland is no accident. Rather, according to ancient prophecy, she has returned to slay the Red Queen’s dreaded Jabberwocky and bring about the end of her reign. Wasikowska found her character easy to relate to. 'Returning to Wonderland is Alice rediscovering who she is and having the strength to be more self-assured when she comes back,’ she says. 'Alice is such an iconic character. I wasn’t sure at first how much they wanted to play with that, or how different they wanted to make her. Tim decided it was important to keep some of the iconic nature. So, for me, the challenge was finding Alice the teenage girl, and bringing that to the story. I wanted to make her real to teenagers and young adults.’

Burton had been determined to cast an unknown as Alice. 'She had that emotional toughness; standing her ground in a way which makes her kind of an older person but with a younger person’s mentality,’ he says. Anne Hathaway, who plays the White Queen, says, 'I love watching her work because it’s very quiet what she’s doing but it goes so deep, and every time she says a line it’s as though she’s saying it for the first time.’

Despite having only 40 days to complete the green screen section – roughly 90 per cent of the film – the atmosphere on set is fun and familial. Burton favours working with many of the same key creative personnel time and time again. Between takes, he and Depp laugh and joke constantly, their current obsession orange-haired characters in cinema and television. On a shelf beneath his monitors Burton has a collection of toy dart guns of varying calibre; he selects one as he waits for another shot to be readied, firing it into the ceiling.

Alice marks the seventh time Burton and Depp have worked together since Edward Scissorhands in 1989, and for Depp it is always a joy. 'He leaves you such room to play, to mess around. That’s the opportunity you dream of as an actor, to say, “Look I’d like to try something. It might be absolute crap, but I’d like to see if it works.” If you don’t try to push a little harder or go a little bit outside, what’s the point? And if it doesn’t work, he’ll just say, “All right, you tried it, now try this.” But when it pays off, and I hear that cackle off screen, that’s when I know I’ve hit something on the nose, for Tim.’

Depp was in Chicago filming Public Enemies when Burton called to discuss the Mad Hatter. 'The funny thing is, I had just re-read the book, so it was still pretty fresh in my mind,’ Depp says. He was keen to incorporate into the film a number of lines from the book that he thought were key to the character. 'He says, “I’m investigating things that begin with the letter M.” When you dig a little deeper you find out why. It’s because of the mercury.’ Depp’s research revealed the term 'mad as a hatter’ had an unfortunate basis in fact. Hatters suffered from mercury poisoning, a side effect of the millinery process, which would affect the mind.

In creating the Hatter’s look, Depp felt his entire body would have been affected by the mercury and he worked closely with Patty Duke, who has been his make-up artist for 18 years, and the costume designer Colleen Atwood, whom he also met on Edward Scissorhands, to bring him to life. 'He’s a little bit punked out, but he has a lot of accoutrements on his costume that are the tools of a hatmaker’s trade,’ Atwood says. 'He has a bandolier of thread, he has ribbons tied on – all things he can make a hat with at any moment. At the first fitting I found all these crazy thimbles and showed them to Johnny. He stuck them on his fingers and started playing music on them. We had a lot of fun with all those bits that add to the character and he can use when he’s doing the part.’

The following day Burton is directing a scene in which Hathaway’s White Queen banishes her older sister, Bonham Carter’s Red Queen, from Wonderland. Hathaway wears a small green box on her head that, in post-production, will be digitally transformed into a crown, and she seems to glide across the stage floor, her hands raised like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard. 'It’s like she’s on wheels, and her hands begin talking before she does,’ says Depp, who admits to being a little envious of Hathaway’s performance. 'In a way, her hands have their own personality. There is a part of it that’s really subtle and a part of it that’s really out there. It’s like Glinda the Good Witch on some sort of hallucinogen.’

Although on the film for only nine days, Hathaway has immersed herself in her role. 'I wanted the White Queen to have the punk spirit of Debbie Harry, the etherealness of [the American artist] Dan Flavin, and the glamour and grace and emotion of Greta Garbo,’ she says, pointing to a postcard on her trailer’s fridge door featuring one of Flavin’s signature fluorescent tube light sculptures. 'That kind of reminded me of their relationship, the way the red’s pushing down on the white. It’s actually three red tubes for every white one, and the white one is still the more dominant.’

Bonham Carter met Burton in 2000 when he cast her as a chimpanzee in his remake of Planet of the Apes. The pair became romantically involved when Burton moved to London the following year after his break-up with the model and actress Lisa Marie. Since then they have worked together on six films and have two children, Billy, six, and Nell, two. 'I didn’t know, as ever, if I was going to be in it,’ Bonham Carter says. 'I assumed not. Then everybody else seemed to know before me, and Tim said, “Obviously it’s you,” and showed me the first drawing he’d done of the Red Queen, and there’s this doodle of a really angry woman with a big head.’ Her transformation into the Red Queen requires three hours in make-up each day. The result, physically inspired by Bette Davis’s Elizabeth I, is startling, especially for her son who, along with his younger sister, is visiting mum and dad at work today. 'Billy doesn’t want to look at me,’ she shrugs. 'I don’t know if he’s scared or embarrassed. Nell – not a problem. Nothing fazes that girl.’

Alice in Wonderland requires somewhere in the region of 2,000 visual effect shots, a considerable number, particularly given the film’s relatively tight production schedule. When I meet Burton in November 2009, a year later, the pressure to complete the effects in time for the film’s March release date is clear. For an artist used to controlling every detail, micro-managing each CGI shot has been arduous and time-consuming. 'There’s never a shot where I just go, “Great!” ’ he sighs. 'There are comments on everything. There may be 20 comments per shot. Maybe more. And you’re talking 2,000 shots, so there’s lots of dealing with stuff. You make a comment and you may not see the results of that for a month or two.’

Despite the frustrations, Depp believes Burton’s vision will, ultimately, prove worth it. 'Alice in Wonderland – if you’re not walking on a tightrope, juggling super-sharp knives, there’s really no reason to do it,’ he says. 'Because if you’re not willing to get into the same arena or take the same chances as Charles Dodgson did, what’s the point? Tim is that guy who will get up on that high wire and juggle double-edged daggers to amaze and astound us all. He couldn’t have bitten off anything bigger to chew. This is almost lunatic time. To choose to grab Alice in Wonderland, that in itself is one thing, and then to do it to the Tim Burton level is madness. It’s so huge because, whether it’s the CGI or the green screen or the 3D or the live action, he’s done it all here. It’s the greatest undertaking I’ve heard of.’

Rickman's Caterpillar Revealed!

All of the principal characters from Alice in Wonderland -- including the Caterpillar voiced by Alan Rickman -- are displayed in this lovely new article. Johnny Depp and Linda Woolverton (who wrote the screenplay) also provide a few enthusiastic words at the bottom of the pages:



EDIT: /Film has some details on the origin of this scan.

LA Times Interviews Tim Burton

Photo: Tim Burton at "9" panel. Credit: Getty Images

Gina McIntyre of the Los Angeles Times gives us a thorough interview with filmmaker Tim Burton from Comic-Con, part of their "Hero Complex" series. (This interview was originally split in parts one and two.) Burton discusses 9 and producing the unique animated feature with fellow visionary director Timur Bekmembetov, how challenging and different Alice in Wonderland is from his previous works, Dark Shadows, his next project, in relation to the recent vampire craze, and much, much more:


G.M.: What's your Comic-Con experience been like so far?

T.B.: I haven't been here in many years. I came here as a student in the '70s and haven't been back since. It's quite amazing how big it's gotten. It's shocking really. It's such a positive energy, there's a lot of passionate people, so it's a bit daunting to show something but that's why you make movies. That's what's great about the environment here. People are very passionate about the environment here and that's again why you make movies so it's exciting to be around that energy. I love seeing people dressed up. It's surreal and amazing and beautiful. I just remember last time I was there, it was some booths and stuff, but the builds that they have, it's incredible.

G.M.: You mentioned during the Focus Features' panel on 9 that you felt you shared a certain sensibility with the film's director, Shane Acker. I can't imagine that's something you experience too often.

T.B.: I don't. Also, too it was different enough from mine, but I felt a connection to it. Having gone through this process myself trying to get films made and done and how much of a problem it is to have that happen, I thought I could help him with that, I thought I could help protect him from the forces of evil and let him focus on making his film.



G.M.: What specifically did you do to help him get the film made?

T.B.: I suggested the screenwriter [Pamela Pettler] who I'd worked with before. What I tried to do, I've been an animator, it's a very strange job. It requires a lot of focus and sometimes you can just get so focused on something, so I felt very lucky to not be in there every day and just be able to look at things and have a fresh perspective. Animation takes so long it's hard to have a fresh view of it especially when it's so in your head. It was luck for me and for [producer] Timur [Bekmembetov] that we could [provide] more of an overview, look at things from a fresh perspective and just kind of help that way. I didn't want to be one of those guys, I liked what he did, so there was no wanting to put my own stamp of approval on it. He could use us however he wanted, and he's very open, which is great. There was no weird ego kind of thing going on. I always felt that real artists don't have that kind of insecurity when it comes to taking suggestions or listening to somebody else's point of view. He was very open to it. That made it very easy to be involved. It was always for the benefit of the film. He took the notes he felt good with. But that's the way you want it. Otherwise, you shouldn't get involved with something if you're going to have to put your own stamp on to it.


Fellow 9 producer Timur Bekmambetov

G.M.: Did you know Timur before this?

T.B.: No. I'd seen his films. It's great to meet somebody like that. It just brought a whole other perspective too. It was a real international film in the sense. We were first looking to do it in Luxembourg and ended up in Toronto, Paris, London, all over the world.

G.M.: You've said that we're at an interesting creative point in animation right now. Does a project like this still need a name like yours behind it to help get it made?

T.B.: I don't think so. The technology has gotten to the point where people can actually do this, they don't need a studio to get involved. It also helps doing it for a budget where there's not that pressure that you get when you have a bigger budget film. The fact is the studio was fine on this. The kinds of fights I've had in the past on things didn't really manifest themselves on this. I think it helps that we did it and then went to a studio as well, so it was a different situation. I've been through it, Timur's made films, Jim Lemley, the other producer... I think it allowed Shane to just focus on the film, which I think is a benefit.

G.M.: Do you still have to have those kinds of arguments?

T.B.: Oh, yeah. Absolutely. At this point, I expected it to go away, but you'd be surprised. There's not a film that goes by where some major issue [doesn't arise]. I like to be a confrontational person. The movie industry it's a very negative aspect of it. They'll only listen if you go completely ballistic, and you just [want to say], 'Can't we not get to that place where you've got to go nuts?' Some are better than others, but you still have these issues because there's so much involved in making the film. It's not going to go easy. If there were no problems, just making the film is enough of a deal.

G.M.: How challenging has it been for you on 'Alice in Wonderland' since you're marrying several technologies to give the film its unique look? But also, how liberating has it been to utilize these new tools?

T.B.: I don't feel liberated yet, no, only because it's a very strange process and I like what I like. That's why I like stop-motion. On a live-action, you've got actors, you've got sets and that's what I like. This is almost the opposite of that. You've got a lot of pieces and not until very late in the game do you see a finished shot. I think I've yet to see a finished shot. It's quite a scary, daunting process. It's exciting but it's the opposite of what I'm used to. You see a piece of a shot and it's like a puzzle. You're trying to hope and make sure it gets to the right place but you're only seeing one piece at a time.



G.M.: Did the process change how you worked with the actors?

T.B.: No. Because it's such a long, big process, the key with that is to try to keep that as energetic as quick and moving as possible because otherwise you just get bogged down in technology. We just didn't worry about the technology to begin with and just started to shoot so the actors could keep their energy and their focus. With these kinds of things you're acting against an animated character or something that's not there, so there's a lot of that kind of stuff.

G.M.: The sets and the costumes that Disney has on display here are just beautiful.

T.B.: We had some reality to hang onto there a little bit. It helps, believe me. This is the first time I've dealt with a lot of green screen and it drives you nuts. After a while you start to get kind of jittery and crazy. It's a weird phenomenon. I'd never really experienced it to this degree. The thing is, you can't really deal with Method actors in that scenario. They're in trouble. That was part of the thing, you're going to be working in a void and you're going to be dealing with people who aren't there and you try to suss that out before you work with somebody. You can kind of tell when you meet somebody if they're going to go for it and I like those people anyway. I worked with some new people that I hadn't worked with and they were all great.

G.M.: There's so much 'Alice' material. How did you go through and select what to include in the film.

T.B.: Linda [Woolverton] the screenwriter, that was the thing I thought she did well and it was a hard thing to do. As books, [the story], it's very episodic, this story, that story. She ended up kind of using a lot of the vibe of the Jabberwocky poem, the weird language, that figures into it. You can't have every character but we tried to keep the few iconic ones, the Hatter, of course, and the Cheshire Cat and the White Rabbit and the March Hare and Red Queen, White Queen, that fit within the story that Linda wrote. Obviously there are a lot of characters that aren't in it. It was more important to take that material and try to make it a movie. Every other version I've ever seen I've never really connected to because it's always just a series of weird events. She's passively wandering through, [meeting] this weird character, that weird character. It's fine in the books, but the movies always felt like there wasn't anything underneath them. That's what we tried to do. Instead of the Hatter just being weird, is get some kind of underneath him, some kind of character underneath him. That's the goal is to give the Alice material a little more weight to it.


Tim Burton on the set of Alice in Wonderland with Mia Wasikowska

G.M.: That notion of making her less passive is very interesting. Was that something that you talked about with actress Mia Wasikowska?

T.B.: What I liked about her is she's not a big demonstrative actor. She's got that old soul quality, somebody you can see has an internal life and intelligence and a gravity to her and kind of a slightly disturbed quality, which fits into the material. You've got to believe that she's got an internal life. That's what a lot of these stories are, characters kind of working out their issues or problems. You like to find somebody and they don't have to say anything or do anything, but you look at them and you know there's something going on, they have some kind of gravity.

G.M.: Was that a difficult quality to find in a young actress?

T.B.: I met lots of good actresses but [Mia] just had something different about her that I liked. She's very quiet. It's not even something that you can put into words. I like those kinds of things were you can't necessarily identify it in a verbal or specific way. It's more of a feeling.

G.M.: How long is the post-production process, one year?

T.B.: Well, it comes out in March, so that's when it will end. It will go all the way up to that. It's the kind of project, most of these that use this kind of technology take probably a couple of years longer than we have. I don't mean that as an excuse. In some ways there's something kind of good about just having to do it, but in reality I wish there were more shots done than where we are at this moment. It's been daunting. If you saw how much was missing, you'd be nervous, too. [laughs]

G.M.: Would you do something this technically complex again?

T.B.: Right now it's hard for me to say. Usually you talk about a film, even at the end it's hard, I don't like it. But at this stage all I can think about is how much I've got to do. It's hard to say. I don't really know what the outcome's going to be. Any film you do, you just kind of finish and you wish you could spend a little bit more time on this or that. I don't yet know how much at the end of this I will have felt that I've compromised or not. It's a hard call to know. I don't even think I'm that much of a perfectionist, but it's hard to let go of anything. It's tricky. This one could be pretty rough way I don't know.


An image from the original "Dark Shadows" television series

G.M.: You've talked about doing "Dark Shadows" next. Is that still the plan?

T.B.: I think so, yes. That's the plan. There was something very weird about that, it had the weirdest vibe to it. I'm sort of intrigued about that vibe. It's early days on it, but I'm excited about it.

G.M.: We seem to be in the midst of vampire-mania, what with "Twilight" and "True Blood" and other projects. What do you make of that?

T.B.: It happens. You look at the history of film and whether it's vampires or witches or wizards or whatever, it's like any great fable or fairytale, it's got a power to it. I think that's why people keep going back to it. There's something symbolic about it that touches people in different ways. It's symbolic for something, I'm sure with everybody it's slightly different but it's still powerful. All great stories, there are about five different variations. I grew up on monster movies and it wasn't until later that I realized it's all the same story basically, but the monsters are great and they're all different and it makes it feel like it's all different. The monsters have more personality than the actors around them a lot of times.

Burton's "Wonderland" Revealed!

Before its release to theaters on March 5th, 2010, some teaser posters and banners will be coming to cinema lobbies offering the first official glimpses of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland.

Although the look of the film still retains some of the styles from the Lewis Carroll original book, Wonderland "has been Burtonized," producer Richard D. Zanuck confirms. Zanuck offered some more information. "We finished shooting in December after only 40 days," said the producer. Right now, the live-action is being merged with the CGI and other animated effects, which will eventually be transferred to 3D (the film was not shot in stereo). Alice will be released in regular theaters, as well as IMAX and Disney Digital 3D.



The old tale has been updated a bit as well by screenwriter Linda Woolverton. In Burton's film, Alice (played by Mia Waskiowska) is 17 years old. She attends a party at a Victorian estate. She is proposed to and surrounded by hoards of stuck-up aristocrats. In a desperate escape, Alice slips away, and, led by a white rabbit, but unexpectedly finds herself transported to a very curious world. Apparently, Alice had visited Wonderland 10 years before, but had forgotten. The residents of this strange new world have not been so forgetful, however...

Zanuck had some kind words for Wasikowska: "There is something real, honest and sincere about her," Zanuck says. "She's not a typical Hollywood starlet."



Zanuck gave more tidbits about the characters and the actors playing them. On Johnny Depp as the wild Mad Hatter: "This character is off his rocker."

"He is so much fun and so nutty, I can't imagine anyone else doing it," said the producer. Depp transforms into yet another bizarre character, adopting an accent that Zanuck said was indescribable.



Zanuck also provided some information about the social conflicts in Wonderland, and about its tyrant, the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter. "The creatures are ready to revolt and waiting for Alice to help them," said Zanuck.



The benevolent White Queen, played by Anne Hathaway, was overthrown by her malicious sister. Richard Zanuck said the White Queen."is beautiful but over the top. She doesn't walk. She floats. She's very eccentric."

Zanuck also revealed that film legend Christoper Lee will indeed play the role of the ferocious Jabberwock.



Matt Lucas will play Tweedledee and Tweedledum.

Click on the USA Today link to explore three detailed pieces of conceptual art and see more of the fantastical Wonderland concocted by Tim Burton and his crew, a world filled with gigantic fungi, mysterious topiary, and anthropomorphic flowers.

Photos courtesy of Disney Enterprises Inc.

"Alice in Wonderland" Story and Glossary

/film has provided some interesting information about Alice in Wonderland, based on the screenplay by Linda Woolverton:

"The big surprise for most people, I think, will be that this is at once an adaptation of and sequel to the Lewis Carroll books. This is thanks to a plot wrangle at least as clever as that in Abrams’ Star Trek. Essentially, Wonderland is both a real place and a recurring dream of Alice’s. In this film she’s dreaming of it at a somewhat later part of her life than in the books, so certain things are different. This is just one clever element of a truly charming and surprising screenplay that I’m now really very sure will become a true humdinger of a movie."

The article went on to say that to fully understand the script, you need to know a bit of Wonderland terminology. Thankfully, Woolverton provided a glossary. The glossary may contain some SPOILERS, so if you want to read it, click on this link.

Lee, Rickman Enter "Wonderland" Set

Christopher Lee has been officially signed on to be in Alice in Wonderland. However, we do not know which role he will play yet.

But we do know who will play the hookah-smoking Caterpillar: Alan Rickman. The British actor worked with Tim Burton in Sweeney Todd, and now seems to have joined the Burton corral of regulars.


Filming has also begun in Culver City, California. Zack Roth (son of Joe Roth, who is producing the film) spoke of the soundstage: "The set itself was insane - the whole soundstage was draped in green-screen material, and there were dozens of motion capture cameras hanging overhead - it seemed like half the crew was there just to figure out how to make all the technologies work together."

Roth also mentioned screenwriter Linda Woolverton's adaptation of the original book and Johnny Depp's appearance:

"Luckily Johnny Depp was working that day, and I got to see him in character. He looked startlingly crazy - Burton’s take on the Mad Hatter was pretty wild. Linda Woolverton adapted the screenplay and I am told added some socio-political context to the film’s narrative."

Roth also reported that Michael Sheen will be playing the grinning Chesire Cat.

Tim Burton's Alice Revealed

Rumors have been floating around for months regarding who would play the lead in Tim Burton's upcoming Alice in Wonderland.
But at long last, the Hollywood Reporter has announced that Burton and Disney have found their Alice: 18-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska. The young actress is reportedly in final negotiations for her part in the Lewis Carroll adaptation.

Mia Wasikowska (Getty Images photo)

Burton kept his word by casting a relative "unknown" actress in the business, but simultaneously one that has experience. Wasikowska, originally born in Canberra, began her career in the Australian TV series "All Saints" and is currently a regular on HBO's "In Treatment." Her other upcoming cinematic projects include "Defiance," a war drama which will also star Daniel Craig and be directed by Ed Zwick, and she plays a supporting role in a forthcoming biographical movie on Amelia Earhart, "Amelia," starring Hilary Swank and directed by Mira Nair.

While the rest of the cast of Alice hasn't been announced (or found?), we do already know of principle players in the making of the film. Long-time Disney scribe Linda Woolverton has written the screenplay; frequent Burton collaborator Richard D. Zanuck is producing the film, along with former Disney chairman Joe Roth and Jennifer and Suzanne Todd. Disney creative executive Jason Reed will oversee the project.

Alice in Wonderland will be a combination of live-action and performance-capture computer-generated animation. It will be released in theaters in Disney Digital 3-D in March 2010. Principal photography is said to commence this November, several months later than previously anticipated.

Hopefully, more news (and more accurate news) will come shortly!

John August: Hinting at Unknown Future Burton Films?

On his official website, screenwriter and Burton collaborator John August wrote in his blog that, contrary to claims made on such websites as IMDb.com (which have now been changed), he will not be writing the screenplay for Burton's upcoming stop-motion adaptation of the director's short film, Frankenweenie. August wrote the following on his blog:


"I had a meeting with Disney Animation about a year ago, in which they pitched the idea of doing a feature version of Tim’s Frankenweenie short film. They even had production art for it. Then, separately, I had a conversation with Tim about doing another stop-motion animation project like Corpse Bride.

"But they’re not the same thing. And as far as I know, I won’t be working on either one. (That said, I didn’t think I was working on Corpse Bride until I was halfway on a plane to London, so never say never.)"

John August first worked with Tim Burton when he wrote the screenplay for 2003's Big Fish. Directly after that fanciful odyssey, August wrote the screenplay for Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the final draft for Corpse Bride, both released in 2005. August also helped composer Danny Elfman adapt and write the whimsical lyrics for both Charlie and Corpse Bride.

August's blog entry is made even more interesting in the following excerpt:

"To further confuse matters, there’s a different and as-yet-unannounced Tim Burton project (live action) which I almost certainly will be writing post-strike. And yes, I’d love to tell you what it is. But I can’t."

This project can't be Burton's upcoming Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, which will also be made at Walt Disney Pictures. Linda Woolverton already has the credit of writing the screenplay for that future literary adaptation. So John August seems to be hinting at possibly two unknown future Tim Burton films, one live-action, the other in stop-motion animation. What could these films be? We'll have to wait for future articles to appear...

Updates on the New Films

A new article has stated that Linda Woolverton, who wrote the screenplays for the Disney animated features Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King, will be penning the script for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie. In addition, both Alice and the stop-motion, feature-length version of Frankenweenie will be shown in theaters in the Disney Digital 3D format. The 3D format has received a reborn interest among many film studios in Hollywood. Several new films and old classics will be released or re-released in the 3D format in the coming years. This year, Tim Burton's brain-child from 1993, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and his 1982 stop-motion short Vincent (in participating theaters), were shown in 3D.

Shooting for Alice will commence early in 2008 and is set to end production by the end of May that year. Burton will then go on to work on Frankenweenie, also with the Walt Disney Co.