Jonas Rivera, producer of Disney/Pixar’s upcoming animated film Up, revealed to SCI FI Wire that the film—like previous Pixar movies—will be accompanied by a short film in its theatrical release, called “Partly Cloudy,” and that a second short, focusing on the talking-dog character of Dug (voiced by writer Bob Peterson) and called “Dug’s Special Mission,” will be featured on the film’s eventual DVD and Blu-ray release.
The first film will be unrelated to Up, but the second will be in the tradition of such previous Pixar short films as “Jack-Jack Attack,” which accompanied the DVD release of The Incredibles, or "BURNE" for WALLE: a short movie featuring one of the supporting characters from the main feature film.
“You can imagine we collect so much stuff along the way that doesn’t make it in,” Rivera said in an exclusive telephone interview Thursday. “There’s, like, volumes and volumes, and we could fill books with all of the different ideas and the artwork. We are going to do another short film, and I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about that. There will be. There’s a short film on the front of the movie that’s called ‘Partly Cloudy,’ and it’s directed by Pete Sohn, and Pete Sohn is one of the great story and animation artists at the studio. He was the voice of Emile in Ratatouille, and he was also the inspiration of the character of Russell in Up; if you found an adult version of Russell, Pete’s him.”
Rivera also said that the forthcoming home video releases will include behind-the-scenes footage of the making of the film and documentaries about the locations that provided the animators with visual inspiration for Up’s picturesque vistas. “There’s tons of documentaries and stuff like that we did, making-of stuff, a pretty cool documentary on the tepui [flat-topped South American mountains] and stuff. It’s really cool. I can’t wait to get it out.”
Rivera added: “We’re also going to do a short film on the DVD that’s exclusive for the DVD and Blu-ray, sort of like ‘Jack-Jack Attack.’ Did you ever see that, on The Incredibles? We’re doing one called ‘Dug’s Special Mission,’ [spoil]and it’s a little bit of the backstory of what Dug was actually doing out there on this mysterious mission when we meet him[/spoil]. It’s really cool, and it’s directed by Ron Del Carmen, who is our head of story on the film.”
Now that book makes sense!
