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Prepare to be amazed by Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

Wednesday, February 3, 2010 11:57 PM
Photography: Walt Disney

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Prepare to be amazed by Tim Burton's <em>Alice in Wonderland</em>

The upcoming 3D animated film Alice in Wonderland will star Johnny Depp (left) as the Mad Hatter and Australian actress Mia Wasikowska (right) as 19-year-old Alice.

From Walt Disney Pictures and visionary director Tim Burton comes an epic 3D fantasy adventure Alice in Wonderland, a magical and imaginative twist on some of the most beloved stories of all time.

Johnny Depp stars as the Mad Hatter and Mia Wasikowska as 19-year-old Alice, who returns to the whimsical world she first encountered as a young girl, reuniting with her childhood friends: the White Rabbit, Tweedledee and Tweedledum, the Dormouse, the Caterpillar, the Cheshire Cat, and of course, the Mad Hatter. Alice embarks on a fantastical journey to find her true destiny and end the Red Queen's reign of terror.

The all-star cast also includes Anne Hathaway, Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover.

Capturing the wonder of Lewis Carroll's beloved Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) with stunning, avant-garde visuals and the most charismatic characters in literary history, Alice in Wonderland comes to the big screen in Disney Digital 3D^TM and IMAX 3D.

You might have gone down the rabbit hole before. But never with a guide quite as attuned to the fantastic as Tim Burton. Those who have grown curiouser and curiouser about what the offbeat re-inventor of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory might conjure up in his version of Alice in Wonderland can feast their eyes on these new images recently released by Disney .

"It has been Burton-ized" is how producer Richard Zanuck describes the director's vision of the Lewis Carroll classic. Many elements are familiar, from the enigmatic Caterpillar (Alan Rickman) to the fierce Jabberwock (Christopher Lee). But none has been presented in this sort of visually surreal fashion.

"We finished shooting in December after only 40 days," Zanuck says. Now the live action is being merged with CG animation and motion-capture creatures, and then transferred into 3-D.

The traditional tale has been freshened with a blast of girl power, courtesy of writer Linda Woolverton (Beauty and the Beast). Alice , 17, attends a party at a Victorian estate only to find she is about to be proposed to in front of hundreds of snooty society types. Off she runs, following a white rabbit into a hole and ending up in Wonderland, a place she visited 10 years before yet doesn't remember.

Among those who welcome her back is the Mad Hatter, a part tailor-made for Johnny Depp as he collaborates with Burton for the seventh time. "This character is off his rocker," Zanuck says.

Aussie actress Mia Wasikowska, 19, best known for HBO's In Treatment, has the coveted title role. "There is something real, honest and sincere about her," Zanuck says. "She's not a typical Hollywood starlet."

There is the usual Burton-esque ghoulishness (Helena Bonham Carter's Red Queen, whose favorite retort is "Off with their heads," has a moat filled with bobbing noggins), but Zanuck assures most kids can handle it. "The book itself is pretty dark," he notes. "This is for little people and people who read it when they were little 50 years ago."

Opening soon across the Philippines, Alice in Wonderland is distributed by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures International.