First Images From Tim Burton's FRANKENWEENIE

Celebrating Halloween, Walt Disney Pictures have decided to unleash a sneak peak of Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, introducing Sparky the dog and the hero Victor at work using the power of science to save his furry friend in a hair-raising experiment. Based on an early Burton short, Frankenweenie is a 'heartwarming' tale about a boy and his dog. After unexpectedly losing his beloved dog Sparky, young Victor harnesses the power of science to bring his best friend back to life€”with just a few minor adjustments. He tries to hide his home-sewn creation, but when Sparky gets out, Victor€™s fellow students, teachers and the entire town all turn on the monstrous mutt. The stop-motion animated film has been shot in black and white and rendered in 3D, which tonally brings it back to the short film, and hopefully the 3D/stop-motion combo will give it the same tactile feel as Coraline (from former Burton collaborator Henry Selick). Frankenweenie has a voice cast of Burton regulars including Winona Ryder (Edward Scissorhands), Martin Short (Mars Attacks!), Catherine O€™Hara (Beetlejuice) and Martin Landau (Ed Wood) and is released in cinemas across the UK on October 5th 2012. It definitely shares some visual similarities to Burton's early animated film Family Dog (a collaboration with Spielberg and Brad Bird) as well as recent co-directorial effort Corpse Bride. I found the latter to be visually delicious but with a wobbly plot and so-so songs. How Burton goes about expanding his short (starring Home Alone's Daniel Stern and The Shining's Shelley Duvall) will be interesting at least: Frankenweenie