The third straight Pixar feature film will go straight to Disney+, the Walt Disney Co. announced Friday.
"Turning Red" will premiere exclusively on Disney+ on March 11, the studio said. Kareem Daniel, chairman of distribution for Disney, cited the pandemic and the slower recovery for family films at the box office.
"Given the delayed box office recovery, particularly for family films, flexibility remains at the core of our distribution decisions," said Daniel in a statement.
The last two Pixar releases, "Soul" and "Luca," also went straight to streaming during the pandemic. Before that, "Onward" launched in theaters in early March 2020, just as the pandemic forced theaters closed. It soon after began streaming to Disney+.
Disney describes "Turning Red" as the story of "a confident, dorky 13-year-old torn between staying her mother's dutiful daughter and the chaos of adolescence." Directed by Domee Shi (who made the Pixar short "Bao"), it's the first Pixar film helmed solely by a woman. Rosalie Chiang and Sandra Oh lead the voice cast.
Local school staple “Lost on a Mountain in Maine” from 1939 hits the big screen nationwide
Most Maine schoolchildren know about the boy lost for more than a week in 1939 after climbing the state's tallest mountain. Now the rest of the U.S. is getting in on the story.
Opening in 650 movie theaters on Friday, "Lost on a Mountain in Maine" tells the harrowing tale of 12-year-old Donn Fendler, who spent nine days on Mount Katahdin and the surrounding wilderness before being rescued. The gripping story of survival commanded the nation's attention in the days before World War II and the boy's grit earned an award from the president.
For decades, Fendler and Joseph B. Egan's book, published the same year as the rescue, has been required reading in many Maine classrooms, like third-grade teacher Kimberly Nielsen's.
"I love that the overarching theme is that Donn never gave up. He just never quits. He goes and goes," said Nielsen, a teacher at Crooked River Elementary School in Casco, who also read the book multiple times with her own kids.
Separated from his hiking group in bad weather atop Mount Katahdin, Fendler used techniques learned as a Boy Scout to survive. He made his way through the woods to the east branch of the Penobscot River, where he was found more than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from where he started. Bruised and cut, starved and without pants or shoes, he survived nine days by eating berries and lost 15 pounds (7 kilograms).
The boy's peril sparked a massive search and was the focus of newspaper headlines and nightly radio broadcasts. Hundreds of volunteers streamed into the region to help.
The movie builds on the children's book, as told by Fendler to Egan, by drawing upon additional interviews and archival footage to reinforce the importance of family, faith and community during difficult times,... Read More