Monday, June 22, 2009

First Glimpse Down the Rabbit Hole into Burton's Wonderland

As slew of first-look images from Tim Burton's fantastical version of Alice in Wonderland have hit the web today . . . and wow! Take a look:



Johnny Depp once again teams up with Burton and Helena Bonham Carter, this time playing the Mad Hatter. Film producer Richard Zanuck says that Depp adopted an accent for the character that is "indescribable," summing it up by saying "This character is off his rocker."

Helena Bonham Carter (below) plays the tyrannical Red Queen, complete with her well-remembered phrase "Off with their heads!" and "a moat filled with bobbing noggins."

[bxA]Anne Hathaway (below) plays the deposed, good White Queen, who, according to Zanuck, "doesn't walk. She floats. She's very eccentric."

In Burton's film, Alice will be played by 19-year-old Australian actress Mia Wasikowska. Screenwriter Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast) has tweaked Lewis Carroll's original story by aging up his leading lady. In the movie, a 17-year-old Alice "attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types." Alice flees the crowd and follows a white rabbit (Michael Sheen) down a hole and back into Wonderland, which Alice had visited as a 7-year-old girl but doesn't remember. The residents of Wonderland however, do remember her.


In additon to the Mad Hatter and the Red and White Queens, Alice will encounter the Caterpillar (Alan Rickman), the Jabberwock (the newly knighted Christopher Lee), the Cheshire Cat (Stephen Fry), the Knave of Hearts (Crispin Glover), the Bloodhound (Timothy Spall), the March Hare (Noah Taylor) and Tweedledee and Tweedledum (Matt Lucas), among others.

Filming on the project is complete and post-work is in process since the film will combine live-action, CGI animation and motion-capture creatures that will be transferred into 3D. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland has a US release date of March 5, 2010. [USA Today][Tim Burton Collective News]

Images courtesy of Disney Enterprises

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