We have all been hearing rumors about a ROGER RABBIT 2 since the second we walked out of the first one. It was, in a lot of ways, the bell tolling the rebirth of animation in the modern age. Why? Because it brought in a ton of money, and where there's money... there are a gajillion execs saying, "I want that!!!" I remember reading a scriptment quite a whiles back entitled Roger Rabbit 2: Toon Goto War or something like that. It had Rog and everyone fighting Hitler... Well that got dumped. Then about a year ago we heard they were thinking about doing a huge Busby Berkeley style musical film with Rog and his universe of characters. Well... let's hope. First off, that is still the plan according to my latest correspondences. For those of you that are unfamiliar with BUSBY BERKELEY's style... well, he made musicals that were Behind the Scenes of staged musical numbers (some of his films are 42ND STREET, FOOTLIGHT PARADE, GOLDDIGGERS OF 1933, DAMES, etc). They were set duing prohibition, before the Hays Code when films were a bit more risque. Usually the female characters wanted to get the rich guy, the show promoter or director, . Also the big musical show at the end to raise money always HAD TO BE A HIT!!! But the coolest thing about Berkeley's musicals were the musical numbers themselves.
Did you ever wonder what sort of drugs Dr Seuss took? He didn't, instead he watched Busby's kalidescopic displays of women in surreal settings. As soon as the big dances began, you entered a magical world that was wholly created by Busby Berkeley. The music was written by Harry Warren, with the lyrics usually coming from Al Dubin. Usually there were 3 'happy' song numbers, 1 instumental and 1 serious/pathos laden piece.
Well with Roger Rabbit 2, the plot is being guarded closer than Jessica Rabbit's knickers. It will be a prequel set during prohibition. Alan Menken has already scored the film and the word is it sounds utterly fantastic. The characters will be done three dimensionally. Not quite like in the first film, but as something new. It will be done (I've heard) in CG, but it's gonna have a look that we haven't seen before, making the cartoon characters look like they are a bit more of this world than of the toon world. The movie is planned to be released after all of our computers are dead, except you Mac users, so this is a story that we are gonna continue looking at for some time to come. I'm looking forward to see what them folks at Disney have in store. I hope Sir Etch A Sketch is on it.
