Disney packed a great panel this year with two highly anticipated films!

Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
A panel of crew members, mostly visual effects and costumes, were on hand and director Andrew Adamson was live via satellite from Prague to show us some footage from the film. They showed some pre-viz animation and a trailer they'd put together with unfinished effects that looked amazing. There was no Aslan, but we did get a glimpse of Peter Dinklage as Trumpkin. I didn't see the first one in theaters, but I really enjoyed it. Now, after seeing this footage, I'm looking forward to catching this one in theaters. After the footage they brought out an animatronic head of a satyr named Tyrus and a live model came out wearing Telmarine armor (see pictures below). During the Q&A, Adamson stated that this is the last of the films that he will direct, though he can't imagine not being involved in some way, so he will stay on as a producer. He also said that the next book in the series, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader will begin production early next year. They intend to put one Narnia movie out every May, starting with Caspian in 2008, and continuing through all seven in the series.

National Treasure: Book of Secrets
They screened the trailer for us and it looks exactly as expected- like an action driven popcorn flick. In this one, Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) must get his hands on the president's "book of secrets" in order to clear his family's name of being involved in the assassination of JFK. In order to see the book, Gates plans to kidnap the president. He is joined by his father (Jon Voight) in his plight to uncover the truth. For those interested in some mindless action entertainment (and there's absolutely no shame in it, I've been known to partake often), you can catch this one in December.

Wall-E
I love nothing more than a good Pixar movie and I was excited to get the scoop on this new one. From the teaser we don't really get a lot of plot, but writer/director Andrew Stanton came out and gave us a detailed plot synopsis with various concept art. The question that the idea of Wall-E began with was, "What if mankind had to evacuate Earth and forgot to turn off the last robot?" From this they created a story in which Earth has become so overpopulated that the planet is consumed by waste. Everyone was evacuated into these new colonies that were built, described as a cruise liner in space, to hold everyone while robots (such as the Wall-E trash compacter line) remained to clean up our mess. However, something went wrong, we never came back, and the robots were called off. Save but one, who continued to do his job for 700 years. Throughout this time alone he developed an awareness and a personality. When he is returned to the new colonies in space, he finds that our population is in a sorry state. Service robots were created to attend to one's every need and make living in the temporary colonies more comfortable, however, the population is now a bunch of overweight, lazy, couch potato blobs. Throughout all of this, Wall-E discovers the purpose he has been searching for- love. He falls for a probot named Eve, who has no feelings and cannot reciprocate.

Stanton then showed a "commercial" for the Wall-E robot line from the Buy N Large company and brought out sound designer Ben Burtt (who created the "voice" of R2D2) to talk about the sounds the robots make to communicate (it doesn't appear that there will be a lot of dialogue in this film). In the Q&A, Stanton said that the look of Wall-E is influenced partly by the Pixar lamp Luxo, and partly by a pair of binoculars. Also, this will be the first Pixar film to incorporate a "live action element." Though he would not elaborate, he did say that it would be nothing like the live action element in last year's Happy Feet. Stanton also confirmed that composer Thomas Newman (Finding Nemo) will be scoring the film.

Stanton ended the panel with a lengthy clip (about 15 minutes) from the beginning of Wall-E in which Wall-E goes about his daily routine compacting trash at work, but laying aside special "treasures" for himself which include a ring box (he quickly discarded the diamond ring inside), a rubber duck, and a bra. Underneath a pile of trash, he discovers a small green sprout, which he carefully scoops up, pots, and adds to his collection. Having finished a day's work, Wall-E heads back to his garage with his spoils; a cricket as his only companion. He sees a red light on the ground and begins to chase it only to be terrified when a spaceship lands directly on top of him (he digs underground for a quick escape to safety). Wall-E watches curiously as the spaceship opens to reveal....for a split second it's Eve, and then the film cut to black and Stanton seemed quite pleased with himself for being an incredible tease. I didn't need any more convincing past the word "Pixar," but now I really can't wait to see this film.

Below are pictures from the Narnia portion of the panel:

Director Andrew Adamson live via satellite from Prague.

Creature designer Howard Berger with the satyr Tyrus.

A Telmarine in full armor: