Comic-Con: Tim Burton talks 'Alice' and the Jabberwocky, taking on 'Dark Shadows'

Director Tim Burton

Credit: AP Photo/Denis Poroy

Without much detail, director Tim Burton has confirmed that his next project in line after "Alice In Wonderland" is finished will be the Dan Curtis television series "Dark Shadows" - that is, "if I ever finish this one."

Particularly judging from preview photos of characters from the re-imagined film, Burton's "Alice" will keep him busy, indeed, until its release in March 2010. The wacky costuming, absurd characters and Alice's impossible journey, Burton said during a press conference at Comic-Con, is all just a reflection of human emotional states. In its previous incarnations, the "Alice" story has never satisfactorily fulfilled that vision.

"I just felt like I'd try it a different way. I've never really seen a movie version that I really liked, or one that I make an emotional connection to," he said without any irony, considering that this movie's parent company, Disney, had already released an iconic version of the "Alice In Wonderland" tale.

"I wanted to give it some emotional grounding that you've never seen in any other version before. Every character is weird [in the story] but the characters indicate some mental weirdness that [anyone] goes through... Any kind of thing that has strong dream-like imagery that stays with you is important -- to your subconscious, your thinking."

That subliminal state of being will be exemplified through Burton's story-telling, his shifting of elements from Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There" and re-arranging them into his own version of the tale. Particularly, Burton says he focused  in on the gibberish poem "Jabberwocky" from the book - a relatively small diversion from the prose - and expanded on that as part of his structure.

And then, of course, put that all in a 3D feature. However, even with newly available technologies in cinematography and computer graphics, Burton chose to stick with "traditional animation" to combine with live action. But view for yourself just how far "traditional" goes in the teaser trailer below.

Katie Hasty
Managing Editor

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After five years as a columnist and editor at Billboard, Katie Hasty joined HitFix in 2009 for music and film reporting out of New York. The Midwest native has worked as a writer, music promoter and in A&R since 1999 and performs with her band Numbers And Letters.