Top shelf!
It’s been almost four years since Wreck-It Ralph smashed its way into movie theaters with a $471 million haul, propelled by its colorful style, witty characters, and a plethora of video game cameos and parodies. Today, Disney announced a Wreck-It Ralph 2 for a 2018 release-and it looks like they’re planning to up their game.
Disney dropped the news through a Facebook Live stream with the directors, Rich Moore and Phil Johnston (both of whom directed and wrote the original respectively) and the voice of Ralph himself, John C. Reily. In addition, Disney’s social media accounts posted a piece of concept art showing Ralph and Vanellope von Schweetz, the Candy Crush racer and deuteragonist of the original film, standing tall over a city illuminated with neon signs parodying popular websites, including Gugle (Google), Amazing (Amazon), and Buzzzaholic (Buzzfeed), among others. This, it seems, is the film’s version of the Internet.
In an interview with Collider, Moore, who recently directed Disney’s Zootopia, confirmed the film would be more focused on the Web and the modern-day tech scene than on classic arcade games like the original film. He emphasized that “this is also a contemporary world with newer games, newer-everything you can find on the Internet…we’re trying to kind of make that balance of both.”
I’m actually pretty excited about this change-up. As much as I loved the arcade setting of the original game, there’s only so much more you can do with that setting in the modern-day landscape of consoles and PC gaming. Having the Internet as a whole be the setting could provide a lot of opportunities to parody and comment on the modern interconnected gaming landscape. I could certainly imagine Ralph getting caught up in a forum debate about his game, or Vanellope getting hypnotized by a “Stem Sale” on digital games. I’m looking forward to what this sequel-one of Disney Animation’s first in a long while-has to offer.
The film releases on March 19th, 2018. Better start saving those quarters.
Sources: Disney Facebook, Entertainment Weekly, Collider