Robert Zemeckis is completely smitten with the motion capture process, it seems, as he is lining up to make his third movie in a row with mocap. This time it’s going to be a new take on A Christmas Carol, the immortal Charles Dickens story, with Jim Carrey in the role of Scrooge.
It’s also Zemeckis’ second Christmas-themed mocap film – that’s a lot of Christmas movies for a Jewish guy. His first Christmas mocap film was a fucking horror; the Tom Hanks-led The Polar Express boasted some impressive animation but the characters all possessed slack death masks for faces. Supposedly his next film, Beowulf, is a big leap forward. I should have an opinion on that by the end of the month.
The news comes from the mouth of Bob Hoskins, who says that Zemeckis has asked him to play Mr. Fezziwig in the movie. Hoskins tells Empire Online that he’ll jump at the chance to be in the movie, although he doesn’t say when Zemeckis would be making it; a Christmas 2008 release seems plausible.