Disney And Lucasfilm Announce Animated Musical Strange Magic

In what’s proving a busy year for Disney, the animator giants have now announced that they’ve been collaborating with Lucasfilm - a company they bought out only a year ago - to produce an animated musical by the name of ‘Strange Magic’.

The project, having revealed to have been in the works since 2010, is the idea of ‘Star Wars’ creator George Lucas and his prequel trilogy sound mixer George Rydstrom.

The pair laid rumours of a new film they were concocting to rest a long time ago, but suddenly, out of nowhere, ‘Strange Magic’ will be hitting cinemas in January of 2015.

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Inspired by William Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, Disney’s official press release describes the film as “a madcap fairy tale musical”. And it sounds kinda bonkers, too, with an array of pop tunes from “the last six decades” that’ll help to tell the story of “a colorful cast of goblins, elves, fairies and imps, and their hilarious misadventures sparked by the battle over a powerful potion.”

The cast isn’t too shabby, either, consisting of Alan Cumming, Evan Rachel Wood, Maya Rudolph and Alfred Molina, to name a few.

It was Lucas that came up with the premise for the movie, but it’s really odd how there’s barely been a whisper about this one. Usually studios are eager to publicise their films and gain as much public interest as possible, but with ‘Strange Magic’ only revealed a matter of weeks before its cinema release, it’s understandable why there are so many sceptics out there.

The film isn’t being released under the Disney name, either; instead, Touchstone Pictures will front it, only adding to further speculation that the Mouse House may not want direct affiliation with the picture.

23 January, 2015 sees ‘Strange Magic’ released theatrically, so it’ll be interesting to hear both critical and public opinion one it arrives.

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Picture credits: Lucasfilm/Touchstone Pictures, WENN