According to internet rumor king Jim Hill, unless Prince Caspian, the next installment of Disney's Chronicles of Narnia adaptations, rakes in Lord of the Rings sized returns, The Mouse is pulling the plug after film three. Disney had originally said that they would be making film versions of all eleven books, but now seems more interested in starting up a franchise based on Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter of Mars.Didier Ghez has posted a looong list of the Disney related books being released in the coming year. Everything from Disney's Dogs and Tinker Bell - An Evolution to Walt Disney's Legends of Imagineering and the Genesis of the Disney Theme Parks and Illustrating Disney: Imagineering and the Fine Art of Disney Illustration. For the full list, along with links to each title, click here.
Disney's publishing arm, Hyperion, did well at this year's NAACP Image Awards. Robin Givens' Grace Will Lead Me Home, James Sturm and Rich Tommaso's Center for Cartoon Studies Presents: Satchel Paige: Striking Out Jim Crow, Nnedi Okorafor-Mbachu's Shadow Speaker, and Not on Our Watch: The Mission to End Genocide in Darfur and Beyond by Don Cheadle, John Prendergast all took home awards. (Note to all: Please-oh-please-oh-please don't use this good news as an excuse to start yet another 'Release Song of the South on dvd now!' thread. Please.)Via Entertainment Times Online: 66 years after Enid Blyton created The Famous Five, Blyton’s characters are being revived in a series of books, accompanied by an animated television series, screened on the Disney Channel. Like The Dangerous Book for Boys, the new Famous Five is intended as a riposte to a society where children are told it is too dangerous to play outdoors.
CityPaper.com has a nice write up about the Carl Barks art exhibit currently taking place in Baltimore, MD. Barks is widely regarded as one of the best comic book writer/artists of all time, particularly for his work on the early Donald Duck and Uncle Scrooge titles. Many of Barks' best duck tales were eventually adapted for television's Duck Tales animated series.