PJ Banned, Makeup Oscar Race & Battle Angel Is Dead

Lord Of The Rings Studio Blacklists Peter Jackson

(scifi.com)                         In the latest comment in the controversy surrounding a proposed movie based on J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, New Line head Robert Shaye told SCI FI Wire in no uncertain terms that the studio won't work with Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson on that film or any other film. Ever. At least not as long as Shaye is in charge.

Shaye's comments marked the first time a New Line executive has commented publicly on the fracas since Jackson announced that he has pulled out of the project and also appears to harden New Line's position against Jackson.

"I do not want to make a movie with somebody who is suing me," Shaye—New Line's chief executive officer—said in an interview on Jan. 5 while promoting The Last Mimzy, a New Line family fantasy that marks his first time in a director's chair since 1990's Book of Love. "It will never happen during my watch."

Jackson had told TheOneRing.net in November that he and partner Fran Walsh were bowing out after New Line, which produced the Rings films and has production rights to The Hobbit, told them the studio was moving ahead with The Hobbit without them. Jackson has said he won't discuss The Hobbit until a lawsuit against New Line over Rings accounting practices is settled.

As far as Shaye is concerned, Jackson is no longer welcome. "There's a kind of arrogance," Shaye said. "Not that I don't think Peter is a good filmmaker and that he hasn't contributed significantly to filmography and made three very good movies. And I don't even expect him to say 'thank you' for having me make it happen and having New Line make it happen. But to think that I, as a functionary in [a] company that has been around for a long time, but is now owned by a very big conglomerate, would care one bit about trying to cheat the guy, ... he's either had very poor counsel or is completely misinformed and myopic to think that I care whether I give him [anything]."

Shaye, who was also an executive producer on the Rings films, added: "He got a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right, and this guy, who already has received a quarter of a billion dollars, turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refuses to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan. I don't want to work with that guy anymore. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I'm still working for the company."

Shaye said that many of the Rings trilogy actors "suddenly, because, I'm guessing, of Peter's complaint," have declined to participate in celebrating New Line's 40th anniversary. "I'm incredibly offended," he said. "I don't care about Peter Jackson anymore. He wants to have another $100 million or $50 million, whatever he's suing us for. He doesn't want to sit down and talk about it. He thinks that we owe him something after we've paid him over a quarter of a billion dollars. ... Cheers, Peter."

New Line's hardened position against Jackson isn't the end of the story, of course. MGM, which owns the distribution rights to The Hobbit, on Nov. 20 told Variety through a spokesman that "the matter of Peter Jackson directing the Hobbit films is far from closed."

In his own online statement, Jackson said that New Line executive Mark Ordesky, who shepherded the Rings trilogy, argued that New Line is dumping Jackson because the studio has a "limited time option" on the film rights, obtained from Saul Zaentz.

Mummy 3 Eyes Cohen To Helm

Rob Cohen (Stealth) is in talks with Universal Pictures to take the reins on a third edition of its Mummy franchise, and franchise stars Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz have had discussions about returning, Variety reported.

Not much has been disclosed about the story of The Mummy 3 by writers Alfred Gough and Miles Millar (TV's Smallville), but the movie has been in active development for about a year. No deals are in place for Fraser and Weisz to return. Mummy 3 is envisioned as a summer 2008 release.

Stephen Sommers helmed the first two Mummy installments, released in 1999 and 2001; they took in a combined worldwide gross of $849 million.

Sean Daniel, Jim Jacks, Sommers and his Sommers Co. partner Bob Ducsay will produce Mummy 3.

Universal is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns SCIFI.COM.

Harrison Ford Turns Down Star Wars Spin-Off

(postchronicle.com)              Harrison Ford turned down a $20 million pay day to make a new spin-off 'Star Wars' movie.

Hollywood legend Ford, 64, snubbed director George Lucas' big bucks offer in favour of playing heroic archaeologist Indiana Jones again.

However, Lucas wasn't too disappointed with Ford's decision as he was already developing an idea for a fourth Indiana Jones movie with Steven Spielberg.

A source told Britain's Daily Star newspaper: "George wanted Harrison to play Indy but cleverly sounded him out about playing Hans Solo instead.

"Harrison was horrified. After that he was delighted to be playing Indy again. He told George he just couldn't face being stuck in a spaceship with Chewbacca again."

Ford will still receive $20 million for donning his famous fedora hat once again and embarking on a final adventure as the whip-cracking character.

Ford and Lucas announced that they were making a fourth 'Indiana Jones' film earlier this month.

The movie, which Lucas will produce and Spielberg will direct, is due to be released in 2008, 19 years after Ford last appeared as thrill-seeking Indy in 'Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade'.

CG Animated Cat Tale Is Dead

(scifi.com)              Cat Tale, a proposed animated family film that was to feature the voices of Angelina Jolie and Billy Idol, has been scrapped, the producer and director told SCI FI Wire. "Cat Tale is on the shelf," director Kevin Munroe said in an interview. "It's not a slight on what's been done. It worked really well for what it was. It's the timing. It was the decision that tonally it's not what the company wants to do."

Instead, Munroe said, Imagi Animation Studios is choosing to focus on more science fiction and edgy animation, such as Gatchaman and Astro Boy. (Munroe also directed Imagi's upcoming animated TMNT, which updates the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise.)

Munroe and producer Thomas K. Gray work for Imagi, which is based in Hong Kong and Los Angeles. The suspension of Cat Tale owes something to the recent failure of animation films with talking animals. "We're several million [dollars] into it, but it was animals with happy talk, and we thought if we put it out there, it will not do anything, so we just said, 'Next!'" Gray said. "We do not want to do happy talking animals anymore. There is just too much out there. Enough already!"

Besides Jolie and Idol, Cat Tale was also going to feature the voices of Sean Astin, R. Lee Ermey, Alan Cumming, Chazz Palminteri, Wayne Knight and Michael Richards in a story about a cat who grows up in Dogtown and seeks out his roots in Catopolis.

While finishing up TMNT for a March 23 release, Munroe is finalizing the script to Gatchaman, about a superhero team. The company is also working on Astro Boy for a 2009 release. "We're in the middle of the script," Munroe said about Gatchaman, which is based on a popular Japanese anime also known as G Force. "It will have a different look and be very top of the bar, storytelling-wise."

CG Heavyweights Lead Box Office Failures In 2006

(Variety)               Weighing a film's success is easy. Just add up the box office grosses and DVD sales.

Failure, however, is more complicated to assess. Financial loss is divided between various studios and other equity resources. And international box office receipts can pull a presumed dud out of the water. Finally, as this past year demonstrated, "underperforming" can mean making $133 million domestically -- think "Mission: Impossible III."

Nonetheless, using an admittedly inexact science, herewith are the biggest losers of '06 as determined by an inhouse Variety poll, as well as theories of what went wrong. There were many more winners over the last 12 months, but how can we close out the year without one last bah humbug?

First and foremost in determining the list was the ratio between a film's cost and its revenues. Thus smaller-scale pics that stumbled were not considered. (Note: Several of these movies were co-financed, thus the "loss" is not always fully on the back of one studio.)

As for trends, it's notable that none of the flops were comedy or horror pics, and that very few were mega-budget films. For the most part the films were midrange adult dramas and/or period dramas, as well as a smattering of remakes.

Flushed Away:   Domestic gross: $61 million

An unfortunately apt title for a pic that could cost DreamWorks Animation $90 million. The DreamWorks-Aardman alliance has historically yielded better reviews than grosses, but that reality was stark with a film with a budget of about $150 million (made more cheaply, pic likely wouldn't have made this list). The release date also was less than ideal, considering the glut of family films in the market and the unforeseen blitz of "Borat." And pic was up against an unusually competitive year for animated films, with nearly every major studio unspooling a feature toon.

Flyboys:   Domestic gross: $13 million

Despite producer Dean Devlin's best efforts (he shopped the film to every studio, finally locking distribution with MGM), "Flyboys" failed to take off, confirming Hollywood's prejudice against WWI films. Today's auds -- particularly teens, who generally swarm out on opening weekend -- aren't wowed by antique, wooden planes, and without a star cast the film dive-bombed. Lucky for Devlin, almost half the cost of the $60 million film was covered by Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison whose son David, one of the top acrobatic pilots in the nation, stars in the film.

The Fountain:   Domestic gross: $9 million

Originally intended as a $70 million project with Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett, pic shut down when Pitt left to film "Troy," tossing away $18 million in pre-production costs. Resurrected on a smaller budget of $35 million, pic lost some of its star wattage with a new cast of Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz. A transcendental love story that spans 100 years, pic proved too complex for auds and crix alike -- and was up against crushing competition when it opened Thanksgiving weekend: "Deja Vu" and the still strong-holding "Happy Feet" and "Casino Royale."

Lady in the Water:   Domestic gross: $42 million

Knives were out for the movie, and director M. Night Shyamalan, before it was released, thanks to a book about the making of the movie in which Shyamalan comes across as whiny and self-important. After Disney passed, Shyamalan took the project to Warner Bros., which put muscle behind the marketing of the $75 million pic but was unable to sell it strongly to auds who may be tiring -- or at least too knowing -- of Shyamalan's artistic formula. And though Paul Giamatti has a following, it is more arthouse than big studio. Foreign coin provided a $30 million boost.

Poseidon:   Domestic gross: $60 million

Movie posters of an overturned ship presciently forecast the fate of this $160 million remake of a campy 1972 disaster pic. Rather than re-enact the kitsch, director Wolfgang Petersen opted for a serious thriller that was perhaps too reminiscent of another big movie about a sinking ship. As Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn said earlier this year: "I heard a 15-year-old girl say, 'I've seen a luxury liner go down. I saw 'Titanic.' " On a smaller budget the pic would have suffered less disastrously, though overseas grosses came somewhat to the rescue, bringing in $121 million.

Murphy Attached To Dark Fantasy The Other Side

(scifi.com)                 Brittany Murphy confirmed to SCI FI Wire that she's attached to The Other Side, a long-gestating adventure-fantasy-comedy that would mark the big-screen writing and directing debut of veteran producer and story editor David Michaels. The story centers on a strange and remote island where nothing is as it seems.

"It's very intriguing," Murphy said in an interview while promoting her current project, the upcoming drama The Dead Girl. "It has an awesome cast. Giovanni Ribisi is signed on, and there's Ryan Gosling and Anjelica Huston and all sorts of really neat people."

Murphy, who can be heard singing in the current animated hit Happy Feet, described Michaels as one of the "most exciting, innovative new directors" she's ever met. Michaels was a story editor on such television shows as Knots Landing, Alf and Max Headroom before becoming a television and film producer. According to reports, The Other Side has also attracted the attention of Eddie Izzard, Jim Broadbent, Dave Matthews, Lili Taylor and Jason Lee, among others.

"I love his vision," Murphy said of Michaels. "I really hope that it all comes together. There's something really different about The Other Side. I haven't read anything like it before. It's very otherworldly. You can draw comparisons to things such as Alice in Wonderland and Tim Burton. It's a lot of very unique things combined, but it's definitely its own creature. It's hilarity and it's a great message. I hope it gets made. I really hope it does."

Native American Indians Go CG

(nativetimes.com)                The Legend of Secret Pass, an internationally produced CG animated movie inspired by American Indian mythology, is scheduled to be released in theaters in 2008.

The Legend of Secret Pass is about a Native American boy who must come to terms with his destiny, and with the help of magical Native American folklore, overcomes a wicked spirit and ancient evil and prevents a cataclysmic event. In the film, animals that Stoops and Boone encountered on their journey through Secret Pass all play a role in this "clash of ageless magic."

Stoops and Boone are making the movie to fulfill a dream of creating a wildlife preserve and assisting with cancer research by teaming up with Virginia G. Piper Cancer Center in Scottsdale, AZ.

The Legend of Secret Pass is an international production produced as a "virtual studio" involving close interaction between the CGI Studio, Digital Dimension of Montreal, Canada; the director and design/storyboarding team at Mad Cow Pictures in Sydney Australia and production management, technical direction and post-production operations at 310 Studios in Los Angeles, California headed by the producing team of James Costello and J. Christopher Henderson of JC2 Animated Entertainment.

What John Lasseter Does With His Oscars

(LAtimes.com)             JOHN LASSETER'S business card got a lot more crowded with the acquisition of Pixar Animation Studios by Walt Disney Co.

The computer animation pioneer is now chief creative director for both Pixar and Disney's animation group, as well as director of the acclaimed "Cars," nominated for a Golden Globe for best animated feature.

What do you actually do with your Oscars?

I love the Oscars. I dress them up — I'm dead serious. I have a friend at Mattel who designed a handmade gown and tuxedo for my two Oscars. Every Christmas the Oscars get dressed up on the mantle — a beautiful velvet gown with red satin, off the shoulder. The guy wears a tuxedo with green lapels — a Christmas look. And, of course, they get dressed up for the Academy Awards.

How important to Pixar are the awards and accolades for "Cars"?

Everybody has such pride. It's a large group of people who worked for four years on this project, so it was a big part of everybody's life. To have it be a success and have audiences love it is the most important thing. It makes you want to work harder on the next one.

More:  http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/la-en-corner10jan10,1,5465128.story?coll=la-headlines-business-enter

Top 10 F/X Scenes in Movie History

(popularmechanics.com)                     Today, many digital effects are so subtle that movie audiences often don't notice them \u2014 but it wasn't always so. We asked industry insiders to pinpoint the biggest breakthroughs in digital F/X history.

1. STAR WARS (1977)
Motion-control photography, in which a computer is used to control a long, complex series of camera movements, made possible the spaceship battles in Star Wars. It would have taken too long to film the scenes manually, says Anne Thompson, deputy film editor at The Hollywood Reporter.    
 
2. TRON (1982)
It wasn't the first film to use computer-generated (CG) graphics (and many effects were hand-drawn) but the sci-fi video-game fantasy flick Tron was the first to use computer imagery to create a 3D world, making it one of the pioneering CGI films. "Effects people said, 'Let's see what the computer can do,'" says Harry Knowles, movie critic at Ain't It Cool News.    
 
3. TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (1991)
"Morphing" was first used in Willow (1988), but in T2 the effect was "jaw-dropping," Knowles says. The liquid-metal robot's humanoid texture, which was layered onto a CG model, looked frighteningly real.    
 
4. CLIFFHANGER (1993)
Faux alpinist Sly Stallone was held up by wires that were later digitally removed. The ability to erase wires changed how stunts are done: Now stars and stuntmen can be put in real-world environments as well as in front of green screens.    
 
5. JURASSIC PARK (1993)
Although they enjoyed only about 6 minutes of screen time, Jurassic Park's digital dinos were a revelation: They introduced CGI live animals with realistic movements, and believably textured muscles and skin. The photorealisitic digital elements were intercut with animatronic dinosaurs.    
 
6. FORREST GUMP (1994)
While most filmmakers in the early '90s used digital effects to create fantasy, the creators of Forrest Gump altered history. Using Kodak's Cineon system, they digitized archival footage, and composited Tom Hanks's character into historical clips.    
 
7. THE PERFECT STORM (2000)
Although much previous work had been done to make CGI water look real, The Perfect Storm's monster wave scene set a new benchmark. "Water is an organic thing that's hard to create in software," says Andy Maltz of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts and Sciences. "To make it look believable was a big thing."    
 
8. LORD OF THE RINGS (2001)
For the huge battle scenes in the Lord of the Rings trilogy, the filmmakers created Massive, a computer program that generates crowds of artificially intelligent individuals "who make their own decisions based on behavior patterns," Knowles says. This makes for more realistic battles.    
 
9. THE POLAR EXPRESS (2004)
Director Robert Zemeckis used a large motion-capture stage and up to 200 cameras to gather data from the performance of Tom Hanks and other actors. This data was used to help animators create digital versions of the actors while maintaining their performances.    
 
10. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW (2004)
The creators of the film about worldwide climatic disaster took more than 50,000 photos of New York City and scanned them into a computer, providing "a 3D, photorealistic model of the city," Thompson says. After that, destroying the metropolis with a giant digital wave was a piece of cake.

Batman Goes To Baltimore

(ArmyArcherd.com)                Veteran entertainment journalist Army Archerd recently talked to actor Michael Caine, who revealed that the upcoming Batman Begins sequel The Dark Knight will be shooting in Hong Kong, London, L.A. and of all places, Baltimore.

Computers Join Actors in Hybrids On Screen

(NYtimes)                    James Cameron, the director whose “Titanic” set a record for ticket sales around the world, will join 20th Century Fox in tackling a similarly ambitious and costly film, “Avatar,” which will test new technologies on a scale unseen before in Hollywood, the studio and the filmmaker said on Monday.

The film, with a budget of about $200 million, is an original science fiction story that will be shown in 3D even in conventional theaters. The plot pits a human army against an alien army on a distant planet, bringing live actors and digital technology together to make a large cast of virtual creatures who convey emotion as authentically as humans.

Earlier movies like “The Lord of the Rings” series did this on a limited scale, as in the digitally designed character Gollum, whose performance came from the actor Andy Serkis, while others like “The Polar Express” have used live actors to drive animated images — so-called motion capture technology.

But none has gone as far as “Avatar” to create an entirely photorealistic world, complete with virtual characters, on the expected scale of the new film, Mr. Cameron said in a telephone interview.

“This film is a true hybrid — a full live-action shoot, with CG characters in CG and live environments,” said Mr. Cameron, referring to computer-generated imagery. “Ideally, at the end of the of day, the audience has no idea which they’re looking at.”

Jim Gianopulos, a co-chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment, said that he expected theaters to update their facilities to accommodate the 3D demands of the film. “This will launch an entire new way of seeing and exhibiting movies,” he said.

“Jim’s not just a filmmaker,” Mr. Gianopulos added, referring to Mr. Cameron. “Every one of his films have pushed the envelope in its aesthetic and in its technology.”

The making of “Titanic,” Mr. Cameron’s last full-blown Hollywood feature, was the stuff of movie legend. Released in 1997, the film went far over its planned cost to become the most expensive production that had then been made, creating stunning visual effects with a combination of live action and computer graphics. But it also went on to become a historic success, taking in a record- breaking $1.8 billion at the worldwide box office and winning 11 Oscars, including the award for best picture.

Mr. Cameron said he had taken care to avoid the problems he encountered on that, his last gargantuan production, and was already four months into shooting some scenes by the time Fox gave final approval to the project on Monday. The shoot has been largely secret, in a building in the Playa Vista section of Los Angeles.

“I’ve looked long and hard at ‘Titanic,’ and other effects-related things I’ve done, where they’ve drifted budgetwise,” he said. “This has been designed from the ground up to avoid those pitfalls. Will we have other pitfalls? Yes, probably.”

Mr. Cameron has already devised revolutionary methods to shoot the film, and expects to create still more methods to bring to life the vision of a completely photo-realistic alien world.

For its aliens, “Avatar” will present characters designed on the computer, but played by human actors. Their bodies will be filmed using the latest evolution of motion-capture technology — markers placed on the actor and tracked by a camera — while the facial expressions will be tracked by tiny cameras on headsets that will record their performances to insert them into a virtual world.

The most important innovation thus far has been a camera, designed by Mr. Cameron and his computer experts, that allows the director to observe the performances of the actors-as-aliens, in the film’s virtual environment, as it happens.

“It’s like a big, powerful game engine,” he explained. “If I want to fly through space, or change my perspective, I can. I can turn the whole scene into a living miniature and go through it on a 50 to 1 scale. It’s pretty exciting.”

Sam Worthington, a young Australian actor, has been named to play the lead, a paralyzed former marine 150 years in the future, who undergoes an experiment to exist as an avatar, another version of himself. The avatar is not paralyzed, but is an alien: 10 feet tall, and blue. Zoe Saldana, another relative unknown, has been chosen as the love interest.

“We could do it with make-up, in a ‘Star Trek’ manner — we could put rubber on his face — but I wasn’t interested in doing it that way,” Mr. Cameron said. “With the new tools, we can create a humanoid character that is anything we imagine it to be — beautiful, elegant, graceful, powerful , evocative of us, but still with an emotional connection.”

Mr. Cameron is widely regarded as one of Hollywood’s foremost innovators, and he has been waiting to make the film, which he wrote more than a decade ago, while technology catches up to his vision. He began experimenting with these new filming techniques about 18 months ago, he said.

But he disputed the notion that the galloping pace of filmmaking technology has threatened the traditional role of actors or the emotional grip of a good story.

“There’s this sense of bifurcation, that really true artistic, cutting-edge filmmakers make these indie pictures, and that CG films are these clanking machines,” he observed. “I’ve tried to fight to inhabit both spaces. There’s a way to take all these technical tools and have them come from a place where the artist is still running the film. It’s not easy.”

While recognizing that it is was an expensive project, Mr. Gianopulos said that something like “Avatar” was precisely what the theatrical movie business needed in a time of stiff competition from video games and lavish home entertainment systems.

“What audiences are looking for, especially in the theater, is a unique experience,” said Mr. Gianopulos, whose studio also distributed the “Star Wars” series by George Lucas, though it does not own those films. It will fully own “Avatar.”

He added: “There is nothing as unique as what this film will be, as spectacle, as a presentation of a completely original world, in its presentation and its technology.” He said he expected the movie to become a series, and the actors were signed up to accommodate sequels.

7 Films Advance in Makeup Oscar Race

(comingsoon.net)             The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences today announced that seven films remain in competition for achievement in makeup for the 79th Academy Awards®.

Buying The Last Unicorn, The Right Way

(conlanpress.com)            Since 2004, London-based Granada Media (a multibillion-dollar entertainment and news conglomerate) has...

JULY 2006 NEWS FLASH! YOUR VOICE IS MAKING A DIFFERENCE. Talks are now under way to resolve Peter's conflict with Granada Media over nonpayment on the animated version of THE LAST UNICORN (a problem stretching back more than 20 years, and adding up to hundreds of thousands of dollars). As a courtesy we have have temporarily removed the details of this conflict from these pages, but if negotiations fail, we will post them again and ask you to join us in pressing even harder for a just solution. Please return here to check for updates.

DECEMBER 2006 UPDATE: Talks continue, and are going in what appears to be a good direction. We hope to report something concrete soon. In the meantime, something VERY IMPORTANT is happening.

On February 6, 2007, Lionsgate Entertainment is releasing a special 25th Anniversary DVD of THE LAST UNICORN. This new edition is a huge improvement over the old one. It is digitally remastered so it looks great and has 5.1 audio, it is widescreen instead of fullscreen, it has much better packaging, and it comes with special features, including a video interview with Peter. Best of all, Lionsgate has agreed to let us sell copies of the DVD through Conlan Press, and more than half of each sale will go straight to Peter and his projects. If you plan on buying this DVD, please buy it here (http://www.conlanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc)  because Peter will get nothing from copies sold through any other outlet.

Source:   http://www.conlanpress.com/youcanhelp/

New Star Trek For Non-Fans

(darkhorizons.com)                    After his panel at the New York Times' 6th Annual Arts & Leisure Weekend, Entertainment Weekly sat down with Mission: Impossible III helmer and Lost creator J.J. Abrams to get an inside look at his new Star Trek movie.

Abrams confirmed a draft of the script is done and will be trimmed sometime soon. As for the target audience - "On the one hand, for people who love Star Trek, the fix that they will get will be really satisfying. For people who've never seen it or know it vaguely, I think they will enjoy it equally, because the movie does not require you to know anything about Star Trek. I would actually prefer [that] people don't know the series, because I feel like they will come to it with an open mind."

There's no word on a director or casting yet, but Abrams is anxious to move forward. "I can't wait to do this. It is an absolute thrill to work on this project. We really are still like, 'How the hell are we able to do this?'" says Abrams.

Cameron's Epic Sci-fi Battle Angel In Limbo

(cinemastrikesback.com)              Sure, it's great that James Cameron has officially announced that his next project will be Avatar.  Unfortunately, this leaves the fate of his proposed adaptation of epic manga Battle Angel Alita unclear. According to Cameron, the script for Alita was not coming together, and he sees a potential franchise in Avatar if it is successful. It appears that Alita fans (like myself) wil be in limbo, but it is nevertheless good to see Cameron moving away from Di Caprio and back towards his strengths.

Original Disneyland Imagineer Dies

(pe.com)                What better way to earn a paycheck, the Murrieta resident said when discussing his career last year, than to rub elbows with the man who practically invented animation and his legions of off-the-wall-thinking cartoonists, engineers and other artistic wizards charged with making people laugh?

Mr. Don Edgren traveled the world bringing Disney magic to California, New York, Florida and Japan. Along the way, he racked up a substantial list of credits, working as a structural engineer on the Matterhorn ride and original Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland in Anaheim, among others. He often spoke to community groups about life at Disney and last year was honored with a Disney Legends award for his work with the company.

Mr. Edgren died suddenly Dec. 28 while visiting relatives in Eugene, Ore. He was 83.

"He was a jokester, and he insisted that we have humor in our lives," said Evie Edgren, Mr. Edgren's wife of 61 years.

Mr. Edgren was born in Los Angeles and graduated from J.C. Fremont High School in 1942.

He flew 45 combat missions as the pilot of a B-24 Liberator bomber stationed in the Pacific theater of operations, helping U.S. forces liberate the Philippines.

Mr. Edgren returned to California in September 1945. On Sept. 21, 1945, he married his high-school sweetheart, a union that produced two daughters. He and Evie Edgren moved to Murrieta in 1990.

In recalling his 30-year association with the Disney company, Mr. Edgren said the work was daunting at times but never boring.

"Walt Disney was a great man," Mr. Edgren said in October. "To think I worked for Disney studios; my God, it was great. It wasn't just a plain old job. People treated each other like family. I'm proud to have that association."

Henson Company Preps Performance Studio For Skrumps