As fans of Tim Burton know, Frankenweenie was the short film he made in 1984 that got him some attention as a filmmaker.
Now he’s returned with a feature length version of Frankenweenie, shot in black and white, which is way cool considering many of today’s generation don’t do black and white. It also brings back some flavor from my favorite Burton film, Ed Wood, which he took over to Disney when Sony said he couldn’t make it in black and white.
Like Edward Scissorhands, it was growing up in suburban Burbank that inspired Weenie, and there will be voice work from Burton regulars Catherine O’Hara, Winona Ryder, and Martin Landau.
Burton’s also doing it in stop motion animation, and as he told Collider, “It is a project that always meant something to me. But, the opportunity to do it in stop-motion, in black and white, and expand on it with other kids, monsters and characters, it just seemed like the right medium for the project. Even though it’s revisiting something that I did a long time ago, it feels new and special.”
As far as working in stop motion, Burton told Collider, “I do love [it]. It’s a slightly lost art form, although there’s more being done now than there was in the past. Just to be able to touch and feel the puppets and move them, you wish everybody could experience it because it’s hard to talk about it. If you felt them and saw the intricacy of the movement, you’d see that it’s quite a beautiful art form.”
Burton of course came to Comic Con to promote Frankenweenie, and he remarked to the LA Times, “It does get crazier every year. I remember coming in the late 70’s. You’d see a few Princess Leias and a couple of Vulcans down at the Holiday Inn. It’s definitely changed.”
And when asked what costume he’d wear to Comic Con, Burton said, “I would come disguised as a human being.”
