When Tim Burton first made the animated short film Frankenweenie in 1984, Disney fired him, arguing that it was "too scary" for the company's family audience. The studio eventually re-partnered with the director and, almost 30 years later — after Burton's macabre sensibility has earned Disney billions with films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Alice in Wonderland — Disney is calling a mulligan and releasing a full-length version of Frankenweenie this Oct. 5. In the black-and-white stop-motion flick, young Victor is devastated when his dog, Sparky, dies. Determined to play with the pooch again, he pulls a Dr. Frankenstein and reanimates him. Of course, Sparky 2.0 isn't quite the same, which stirs up a feature-length film's worth of trouble. Judging from the newly released trailer (watch below), is the film still too dark to succeed?
No. It looks like a hit: "Leave it to Tim Burton to make even the gruesomest scenarios utterly heart-wrenching," says Jen Yamato at Movieline. The trailer had me welling up with tears within the first 30 seconds. Sure, the dark themes and allusions to classic horror cinema aren't typical children's fare, but with hits like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Pee-wee's Big Adventure, Burton has "prepped audiences to accept [this] kind of dark children's storytelling...." Disney's decision to revisit the film that got Burton fired "feels like poetic justice."
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