Pixar sets 'Toy Story 3' for June 2010; Disney plans jazzy animated tale for Christmas

John Lassiter announces the slate of Disney and Pixar films at an NYU conference. He also says new films will all be in 3-D, starting with 'Up.'

By Paul Brownfield, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer

"Toy Story 3" will be released in June 2010 under the Pixar banner, while Disney Animation has an original, New Orleans jazz-flavored Christmas 2009 tale to tell in "The Princess and the Frog."

Announcement of the two features highlighted a three-hour presentation at the Jack H. Skirball Center for the Performing Arts at New York University, emceed by John Lassiter, chief creative officer for Pixar and Disney animation studios, who also said that all movies out of Disney animation will be in 3-D, beginning with "Up," an adventure-comedy about a 78-year-old with a walker (voiced by Ed Asner) who attaches balloons to his house and sails to South America. "Up" will be released next year.

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The coming slate of films was presented to an audience of press and worldwide Disney executives and staff. The slate is a combination of the more traditional Disney animation and the more contemporary approach of Pixar, which Disney acquired in 2006.

Pixar highlights include "WALL-E," coming June 27, from Andrew Stanton, the writer-director of "Finding Nemo." The story is about the only robot left on a scorched Earth, whose endless days of compacting the world's trash ends when he falls in love with a visiting robot from another galaxy. "Newt" is similarly themed, although the summer 2011 Pixar release is about two endangered blue-footed newts.

Disney Animation releases include "Bolt," due Thanksgiving, in which John Travolta will voice a dog with super-human powers, and Miley Cyrus will play his owner. Also coming under the Disney banner are "Rapunzel" (Christmas 2010) and "King of the Elves," set in the South and based on a Philip K. Dick short story about elves who make a man their king.