It’s hard to imagine a world without Walt Disney, and even more, a world without Mickey Mouse. The mouse with the red shorts has been a staple of Disney since 1928. However, Mickey didn’t just happen over night. It was a long struggle for Walt Disney to go from a young boy with a dream from Missouri to the world’s leading creator of animated films, and pixie dust. An all new film is set to showcase those years, and take a look at a very young Walt Disney.
According to Deadline (click here), an all new film “Walt Before Mickey” is set to show the start of Walt Disney and his struggles with starting his own animation studio, and even his struggles with Universal Studios.
Trailer-Walt Before Mickey
Deadline reports that Thomas Ian Nicholas stars in the film as Walt, and John Heder as Roy. Nicholas is more familiar to audiences as Kevin from the American Pie series, and Heder rose to fame in Napoleon Dynamite. The story will center on the Pre-Depression era life of Disney. The film is actually based on the book “Walt Before Mickey-Walt’s Early Years 1919-1928. Currently there’s not a distribution deal with a major studio, and no, it’s not an official Disney film.
Last year Disney brought Walt himself to the big screen in the form of Tom Hanks, in the making of Mary Poppins film, Saving Mr. Banks. The film had mixed reviews, and did around $112 million worldwide on a $35 million dollar budget. That version was approved by not only Disney studios, but the Disney family. It will be interesting to see what the reaction by not only Disney will be to the film, but also audiences and critics.
The film takes place during the creation of “Oswald the Lucky Rabbit”, which was the first Disney created cartoon. It will be very interesting to see how the film tackles the subject, especially since Disney now owns the rights to the character. Oswald was created by Disney and then later bought by Universal for their own cartoon line. Oswald has been making a comeback at Disney with video games, merchandise, and now theme park appearances. Earlier this year Oswald made his debut in Japan, and later this month he will be home in the states at Disney’s California Adventure, meeting guests.
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