Steven Spielberg's "War Horse" - First Look

"War Horse" tells the story of a young man named Albert and his horse, Joey, and how their bond is broken when Joey is sold to the cavalry and sent to the trenches of World War One. Despite being too young to enlist, Albert heads to France to save his friend.

Filmed entirely in England the film stars Benedict Cumberbatch (Sherlock), Eddie Marsan (Dissapearance of Alice Creed, Little Dorrit) and David Thewlis (Black Beauty, Dragonheart) and is based on the children's book of the same name by Michael Morpurgo and the stage adaptation by Nick Stafford.

The screen adaptation is written by Richard Curtis (Love Actually, Blackadder, Nottinghill) and Lee Hall (Billy Elliot) and is produced by Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall and Kathleen Kennedy, directed by Steven Spielberg with music by John Williams.

The trailer looks beautiful and from what I have heard about the book and stage show, you may need to bring some tissues to the theatre for this one !

Brad Lewis leaves Pixar.......Joins Digital Domain

In June I reported that Digital Domain were building a huge studio complex in Florida and branching out into film production. They were putting most of their money by employing two ex-Disney staff to make them stand out in the feature animation world and now they have taken that one step further by employing Brad Lewis from Pixar for their new 'Tradition Studios' company in Florida

Brad joined in Pixar in 2001 and became the Producer of "Ratatouille" and also wrote and Co-Directed "Cars 2". He had previously been at PDI Dreamworks for 11 years where he was producer for "Antz"

So why leave Pixar just as your Directorial debut hits theatres ? Well it's no secret that "Cars 2" has not been as well received as previous Pixar outings. For a start it was meant to be solely directed by Lewis but John Lasseter was brought on to help with 'developmental problems'. Although "Cars 2" is performing well at the box office and merchandise sales alone will be excellent it has at the time of writing a 34% rate @ Rotten Tomatoes which is the lowest score any Pixar film has ever had. I am guessing that it was an amicable decision for all parties given that Brad's relationship with John Lasseter was reported to be very strong.

I wish Brad all the best at 'Tradition' and I look forward to seeing what he can produce.