It appears that Zemeckis has fallen in love with motion capture animation and is never coming back. He has shored up Jim Carey and Gary Oldman to star in his upcoming animated A Christmas Carol. We get the news from themoviehole:
Was informed today by someone working on the film that the always-dependable Gary Oldman has joined the cast of Bob Zemeckis’s “A Christmas Carol”. Like Jim Carrey, who plays several roles in the film, Oldman (“JFK”, “Batman Begins) will be seen as a couple of different characters in the movie too.
Carrey will play Ebenezer Scrooge plus the three ghosts that haunt him in “A Christmas Carol,” an adaptation of the Charles Dickens tale that Robert Zemeckis wrote and will direct for Walt Disney Pictures. Zemeckis is shooting the film using “performance capture/Disney digital 3-D” animation, a continuing evolution of techniques he introduced in “Polar Express” and continues with “Beowulf”.
Zemeckis is only a stone’s throw away from never using real humans ever again. He will be in the first in line to crack open the crate of robot actors and put them to work. His casting couch will be covered in rust and oil. When this man loves something, he loves it big time; so it is no surprise to hear that he will be doing another film with 3-D motion capture animation.
One of the benefits of this medium is that you can easily have one actor do multiple characters. Zemeckis understands this, and has casted appropriately. Between Jim Carey and Gary Oldman almost any character conceived could be portrayed in an outstanding fashion. I have respect for both of these men and their abilities and look forward to seeing them work in Zemeckis’ 3-D kingdom.
I am loving all of the 3-D movies coming down the pipe. I want to get a Robocop mask where the visor is actually a 3-D viewing lens. That would make me complete.
