Zemeckis Talks ‘A Christmas Carol’

The new performance capture, CGI animated version of A Christmas Carol had its world premiere in London on Tuesday. The stars of the film, Jim Carrey, Colin Firth, and Bob Hoskins were in attendance and switched on the London Christmas lights beforehand.

Digital Spy spoke to director Robert Zemeckis about the new movie, yet another version of the Charles Dickens tale which has already been transferred to celluloid many times before. Is this one different enough to make it worthwhile? He said:

“The idea was to do it as a new approach. I never considered adapting it as a film, but when I realized the potential of the tools we have now in digital cinema, it started to look like a really exciting project, something that would really lend itself to these new tools. I thought we could do it in a way that had never been done before and really present the story in the really stylized way that Dickens wrote it. I haven’t seen every other version of this story; I’ve seen the Alastair Sim version [Scrooge, 1951] and I’ve seen pieces of the other ones, but I’m really a fan of the original book. I’ve read it many times and that’s where my heart was with this.”

Zemeckis has already bought us Beowulf and The Polar Express, both of which used the amazing performance capture technology which quite literally turns real actors into animated characters. And now we have A Christmas Carol following the same methodology.

The full interview is definitely worth a read as Zemeckis also discusses the technology involved, Jim Carrey taking on multiple roles, and the future of film-making.

A Christmas Carol goes on general release on Nov. 6 and looks like being a must-see for both adults and kids alike.