Director Robert Zemeckis sure ain’t giving up on his love of motion capture CG movies anytime soon. While there’s still the prospect of a live-action/animation Roger Rabbit sequel, he’s even talked about using motion capture to capture the cartoon parts of that (although they would still look like hand-drawn toons).
Now, following The Polar Express and A Christmas Carol, it looks like he wants to take on another festive tale, with Pajiba reporting that he’s planning to take on The Nutcracker, and use motion capture to tell the tale of a battle between dolls and mice. This won’t be an adaptation of the Tchaikovsky ballet, but will instead be based on the original E.T.A. Hoffmann story, The Nutcracker And The Mouse King, which is very dark and surreal, with seven-headed mice, bizarre curses and a lot of death.
To be honest, bringing toys to life seems a better use of the motion capture technology than what Zemeckis has tried so far, as he hasn’t been able to get past the fact that it would probably have cost the same to make a live-action version of Polar Express, Beowulf or A Christmas Carol, and the result would have been less creepy. At the moment the Nutcracker film hasn’t been officially announced, and we don’t know where it would fit with Zemeckis’ plans to make a motion capture Yellow Submarine movie in time for the 2012 Olympics, but expect more news soon.