Consider the following: rumor has it that a trailer for the as third Tron movie is hidden on the DVD of Tron: Legacy.  A third Tron movie remains un-greenlit.  The DVD doesn’t come out until April 11th, in the UK.  The American release date is unknown.

But Ain’t It Cool says it has confirmed, with pictures, that there is a teaser for Tron 3 that will be included in the DVD release of Tron: Legacy.  They’ve even seen the footage, so don’t click if you’d like to remain spoiler free.  (The rest of our post has no spoilers.)

Back in 1988, an amazing movie featuring human interaction with animated characters was released. It was called “Who Framed Roger Rabbit?” and it signaled a shift in my childhood perspective on animated characters. As a child who had gone through a phase of adamant refusal to watch anything that wasn’t animated, “Roger Rabbit” was my first real exposure to an acknowledgement of animated characters in a live-action world. And it was fascinating. The ‘Toons were like another race of linguistically developed, perhaps further evolved humanoid creatures that these people lived alongside with little consequence. (Unless a ‘Toon killed your brother.) But they were still cartoons. They weren’t flesh and blood people, they were Ink ‘n’ Paint.

So, my beef with the influx of 3D animation/live action movies is this: Are we supposed to think these characters are real now? Seriously? When we see characters like Garfield, Marmaduke, the Chipmunks, Yogi Bear, etc. interacting with humans, animated to look like they were born of this world, organic, living creatures that look freakishly unlike other animals of their species (is Yogi an av-er-age bear in this world, or is an average bear an average bear? or is Yogi the only one like that? WHY? What happened?), how is it that the humans with whom they interact don’t question it?

Did you know that Zynga, makers of Farmville, sued Disney Entertainment more than a year ago? You see, Disney had just acquired one of Zynga’s competitors Playdom. Playdom, according to Zynga, had been poaching ex-Zynga employees and had even gotten a hold of Zynga’s “playbook,” a guide to the company’s – ahem – “secret sauce.”

The spurning of a legacy, or a sign of the times? According to a recent Los Angeles Times report, Disney’s soon-to-be-released Tangled, notable for being the company’s 50th animated feature film, marks a major shift in the entertainment company’s strategy: Away from princesses, and towards more “gender-neutral,” male-friendly entertainment.

Reportedly miffed that 2009′s The Princess and the Frog failed to be the megahit that it had hoped for (despite grossing more than $250 million worldwide on a $104 production million budget) on account of its overfocus on younger girls, Disney is said to be trying to bring “boys, teenagers and adults to the theater,” with a “romantic male lead as a wise-cracking thief who mixes it up with bandits and beer-swilling thugs.”

But it’s not just that Disney wants to bring more boys into the fold. What girls want has changed as well, thanks to the likes of, well, The Disney Channel:

The real joy of this list is remembering some of those real obscure Disney films, like The Black Cauldron, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride, and freakin’ Dinosaur.  No Song of the South, though.

Oh, and spoiler: A lot of people live happily ever after.

Ok, seriously: if you just can’t guess the ending to Tangled and don’t want it given away, stop this video before they get to #50.

Last month fans jumped at the news that Disney and Marvel would be bringing two Marvel properties to the small screen, and one of them would be an Incredible Hulk show. There was, however, no official announcement from ABC television regarding Marvel’s statements. Well, now we’ve got it from an even higher source, Robert Iger, the CEO of the Walt Disney Company.

We’re developing three live-action series for ABC and ABC Family.

There’s no confirmation yet on which Marvel properties will be chosen for the TV treatment, but there are some indication of which ones are most likely.

There Will Be Blood for the SNES (Tomfoolery Pictures)

Robot Lincoln. Nuff Said. (Disney Parks Blog)

How to Make a Wireless Router Out of a NES Cartridge (The Unconventional Hacker)

First Tiny Look at the New Muppets Movie (Wired)

Google/Facebook Data Throughdown (Reuters)

Fossilized Dinosaur Poop, This Year’s Go-to Stocking Stuffer? (Flickr)

Darth Vader’s Hawaiian Vacation (Hawaiian Seamonkey)

(Fail Whale Hat via Geeks are Sexy.)

Disney has officially announced a long rumored animated series based on Tron, to debut in the summer of 2012, so, only a year and a half after the movie comes out. But the news here really is not really the what. It’s the who. By the off-screen credits alone, Tron: Uprising will have Baconesque connections to Dexter’s Laboratory, Animaniacs, Ren & Stimpy, Batman: The Animated Series, Tiny Toons, and Lost.

And then there’s the cast.

When the Marvel/Disney merger was made official, a lot of people immediately plundered the wide ranging crossover potential, from Spider-Man in Kingdom Hearts to a Beast buddy movie.

Today we see the first shamelessly tied in fruit of that union, in the form of a series of variant covers for Marvel’s November titles, where ten of Marvel’s biggest characters get reinterpreted Tron-style.

Dangit, Tangeled!  We were all ready to snub you after some knucklehead decided that you wouldn’t become the next beautiful 2D animated movie to come out of Disney, and instead would be handed over to Disney’s CGI studio.  No matter how beautiful your concept art was.

In fact, we wanted to snub you because of how beautiful your concept art was.  We want to see that stuff drawn into motion!

But now there are these videos of actual footage, and it’s really pretty, and pretty funny, and clearly has some great character animation, and…

ಠ_ಠ

Stop messing with our heads.

(via Bleeding Cool, more videos here.)