Theater owners suggest  the  “Bolt” spot intruded on their screen time and  made “Beverly Hills Chihuahua” run long costing time they   could fill — with other showings or their own commercials.

Some of the nation’s top theater chains complained to Disney that the extended trailer violated a long-standing agreement about where trailers can be placed and how long they can run. Disney maintains that the preview is in fact a “featurette,” a mini-film not unlike the award-winning animated shorts that Disney and Pixar put ahead of their animated features.

It is unclear how many theater owners showed or are showing the spot, one theater owner said he believed a majority of theaters refused to show it.

While there is no firm policy on the number of trailers that can run before a movie, there are voluntary and codified rules about how long those previews can last. “The length of a trailer must not exceed two minutes, thirty seconds,” says the MPAA 2006 Advertising Handbook.

Each studio is granted one exemption to run a longer preview once a year, which is usually reserved for an Oscar movie. But because Disney considered the “Bolt” promotion to be a short film, the studio did not consider it subject to the time limitation.

Clearly the run away success of  ‘Beverly Hills Chihuahua’ gives Disney leverage over the theaters, one does wonder why Disney is pouring so much into the Bolt release?

Miley Cyrus

Walt Disney Studios celebrates Thanksgiving in style this year by sending characters from “Bolt“  to New York City to participate in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.

Miley Cyrus is slated to sing “I Thought I Lost You” from the upcoming Walt Disney Animation Studios’ comedy “Bolt” aboard a float starring characters from the movie, which opens in Disney Digital 3-D in the US on Nov. 21, 2008

Miley Cyrus, provides the voice of Bolt’s beloved owner Penny in the movie, will be aboard the float performing “I Thought I Lost You,” an original song she recorded for the movie with co-star John Travolta. John is clearly not planning to sing in the parade.

This duet is sure to be an iTunes hit!

Bolt is a new 3D Disney animated movie do out in  November 21st .  In the movie, Bolt is a dog who is the star of an action television series  which is part Lassie, part Mission: Impossible. But Bolt doesn’t know he’s a television star, and instead thinks he is a dog infused with the same super powers as his TV show. This chase sequence shows you what Bolt’s television show is like.

Featuring the voice talents of John Travolta as the main character, Bolt, Susie Essman as Mittens, Mark Walton as Rhino and Miley Cyrus as Penny, the family movie is directed by Chris Williams and Byron Howard.

In total, Disney has sixteen 3-D films in the works including  Bolt, next year’s Pixar summer offering Up The Princess and the Frog (December 25, 2009), Toy Story 3, Cars 2 (announced for a summer 2011 release), Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (March 5, 2010), and Robert Zemeckis’ A Christmas Carol

Miley Cyrus assists in launching fundraiser.

As part of an ASPCA fundraiser that is doubling as a promotional  Disney’s  November animated release, “Bolt.”  Four athletes are in the process of rolling the 9-foot-tall ball coast to coast as part of Disney’s “Bolt Across America” fundrasing tour.

Bolt is a CG animated film produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Much of the original graphic style of the film was inspired by the work of Edward Hopper. New technology in non-photorealistic rendering is used to give a special visual appearance to the movie. Furthermore a new patented technology has been specifically designed for Bolt in order to give a hand-painted look to the the 3D backgrounds.

The movie can boast the voice talents of John Travolta, as Bolt the dog, and of Miley Cyrus, as Penny, the young girl who owns Bolt.

Here the plot:
“The story is about Bolt, a white German Shepherd who has lived all his life on the set of a TV show in which he portrays a superhero dog, and as a result thinks that his superpowers are real. Later, he gets accidentally separated from the studio. He then meets a female cat named Mittens and a hamster who never leaves his exercise ball, and eventually he discovers that all of his powers are fake. ” (Source: Wikipedia)

American Dog

Bolt is a reimaging  of an animated feature ‘ American Dog’ to have been directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch) .  The film was a bit gritter and less thematically consistent with a family holiday movie. American Dog also suffered from Disney direction change away form computor animation to more traditional animation.  The re-imaging of American Dog means that Bolt is white versus brown and the movie is less griity.