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Olivia Wilde and Garrett Hedlund in TRON: Legacy. They’re talking about how excellent Ratatouille was.

It’s been a while since we’ve mentioned anything having to do with Walt Disney Pictures, but there’s a tidbit that’s just emerged from Entertainment Weekly that’s too good to go without comment. According to them, Pixar filmmakers Brad Bird and Michael Arndt (screenwriter for Toy Story 3) signed on briefly last month to script re-shoots for the upcoming TRON: Legacy.

That’s right. Brad Bird. TRON. Together.

Now, typically re-shoots don’t necessarily spell good news for a production, although they’re fairly common. And sometimes it can mean that the filmmakers have really found something that works in the piece and want to develop it further with some re-writes. It’s also true that Bird and Arndt only wrote enough pages for about six days of shooting, so it’s unknown how much they will affect the final film, but the fact that they were hired to punch up scenes to deliver more emotion, character and theme can only be seen as a good thing.

We all know the original TRON wasn’t exactly a character piece, and even those of us who love it unconditionally admit that its script isn’t bulletproof. We proud nerds have been waiting almost thirty years for a sequel, and while there’s so much that makes TRON: Legacy an unknown quantity, mixing in the name Brad Bird brings an extra bit of excitement to the proceedings.

I think it’s pretty cool that TRON: Legacy director Joe Kosinski and the other filmmakers decided to show their work-in-progress to some respected vets at Pixar and in Hollywood for some feedback in advance of last June’s re-shoots. And anything, and I mean anything, involving Brad Bird – who I’ll remind you has directed The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, and freakin’ Ratatouille – demands my full and undivided attention.

Good news, everyone! The truly excellent new Pixar short Day & Night has just been released on iTunes. If you haven’t seen Toy Story 3 yet, or even if you have, it’s well worth checking out. In fact, at the moment I think it might be my favorite Pixar short ever – I enjoyed it far more than Toy Story 3 itself, as a matter of fact. It’s certainly different, and draws on some unique styles and techniques to do something refreshing and new. It also has some nice midcentury traditional animation influences, so that’s fun. Anyway, that’s my spiel – head over to iTunes to check it out yourself.

Well it hits today – I’m assuming no one here has been spending time in the stone age and is well aware of what I’m talking about. So here are some pretty pictures…

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First, Rapunzel became Tangled, when Disney’s marketing department panicked and imposed a title change on Disney Animation Studios. Then, more recently, The Bear and the Bow was re-announced as Brave because… well, who knows, actually. Now it looks like the still-officially-unannounced-once-canceled-but-now-alive-with-a-different-director-project-that-won’t-die Joe Jump is going to be called Reboot Ralph. Because, ya know, the kids love to reboot. According to Deadline Hollywood, the story of an 8-bit videogame character in a quad-core world will debut on March 22, 2013.

Meanwhile, while all these semantic shenanigans were afoot, we’ve lost King of the Elves and The Snow Queen. This week, the internet got all aflutter with the shocking news that Pixar had pulled the plug on Gary Rydstrom’s newt. To which I say, well, yeah.

So with all this bloodletting, what do we have? Lined up on the Disney side of the fence there’s Rapunzel, Winnie-the-Pooh in 2011, and Reboot Ralph in 2013. Pixar is now sequeltown (next door to Pigs With Pigs Junction) with Toy Story 3 (2010), Cars 2 (2011), Monsters Inc. 2 (2012) and Brave (2012). Brad Bird is AWOL and headed to Paramount to film Mission: Impossible IV (potential subtitle: “The First Good One”), Andrew Stanton’s John Carter of Mars isn’t out until 2012, and Pete Docter is doing… something. But he won’t say what.

Then there’s all the mid-level talent creeping out the doors; with only two releases per year, directorial power has remained in the hands of a select few and there’s nowhere for rising stars to go but to other studios. Will the sequels take over, or is there still room for new ideas?

So after the much-ballyhooed slate of a few years ago has been picked apart, and the much-ballyhooed return of traditional animation has been pretty much relegated to W.T. Pooh, and the much-ballyhooed shorts program is nowhere to be seen, one has to ask… what’s up?

One last thing – I don’t typically do this but I’m feeling particularly saucy tonight. From February:

Who wants to bet that newt’s summer 2012 release spot goes to another Pixar rehash, Monsters, Inc. 2?

OK, so I got the season wrong (Monsters 2 be a fall release, not a summer release), but next time, Disney, prove me really wrong.

UPDATE: It looks like the Reboot Ralph announcement was official. No word on if Rich Moore is still slated to direct.

Well, the bodies sure are stacking up.

First, King of the Elves gets whacked. The computer-animated fantasy based on a short story by Philip K. Dick would have been released in 2012.

Then, in all the marketing-driven panic following Princess and the Frog’s lukewarm box office, Disney shelves the long-anticipated and traditionally animated The Snow Queen. Who’s up next on the hit list?

It looks like it’s newt.

Actually, I’ve been worried about this one for a long time. I’d heard a few things hinting at this, but nothing definitive enough that I’d be comfortable writing about it. Then, today in a comment thread on the Animation Guild Blog, Disney vet Floyd Norman stated that the film is dead.

newt was first announced in April of 2008 as part of Disney and Pixar’s ambitious new animation slate. It was to be directed by long-time sound engineer and guru Gary Rydstrom, from a script by Rydstrom and Leslie Caveny. Michael Giacchino was slated to write the score.

According to the press at the time, the film would have followed Newt and Brooke, the last remaining male and female blue-footed newts on the planet. Forced together by science to save their species, the only problem was that they can’t stand each other. According to the press release, “Newt and Brooke embark on a perilous, unpredictable adventure and discover that finding a mate never goes as planned, even when you only have one choice. Love, it turns out, is not a science.”

So, that’s out. But hey, at least we get Winnie-the-Pooh and Cars 2. Who wants to bet that newt’s summer 2012 release spot goes to another Pixar rehash, Monsters, Inc. 2?

UPDATE: I’ve had a couple of people tell me that King of the Elves has not actually been completely abandoned, but that it’s still in turnaround for retooling. I know this had been the fact at one point, but other informed sources have said that it’s no longer actively being worked on. If anyone can clarify this, drop me a line. In stranger news, I’ve had two sources independently hint to me that Cars 2 is actually having production problems, and I’ve seen that rumor posted anonymously today on the Animation Guild’s blog. Whispering campaign or fact, I don’t know, but it’s something to keep an eye out for.