Toy Story 1 & 2 Goes Back to Theaters in 3D

Today, it was announced that the first two films in Pixar’s sole and signature franchise, Toy Story and Toy Story 2, are headed back to movie screens October 2nd, 2009 and February 12th, 2010, respectively, with a complete digital 3D makeover, called Disney Digital 3D.

Toy Story Voice Cast

As you will recall, the cast of celebrity actors in the Toy Story franchise include Tom Hanks as Woody (voice), Tim Allen as Buzz Lightyear (voice), Joan Cusack as Jessie, the Yodeling Cowgirl (voice), Kelsey Grammer as Stinky Pete the Prospector (voice) and John Ratzenberger as Hamm the Piggy Bank (voice) among other notable actors.

Disney Digital 3D

Disney Digital 3-D is a brand used by the The Walt Disney Company to describe digitally animated three-dimensional films shown exclusively using digital projection. It is essentially a Disney brand of Real D Cinema technology.

How It Works

Audiences viewing a film presented by Disney Digital 3D are given a pair of plastic 3D glasses. The glasses have circular polarized lenses, each polarized differently. Circular polarization allows much greater head movement than linear polarization without loss of 3-D effect or ghost images. This increases audience comfort and helps to mitigate the “3-D headache” caused by many 3-D systems, especially those relying on film projection.

Lead Up to Toy Story 3

The films will be an audience primer for Disney-Pixar’s digital 3D Toy Story 3, which hits screens on June 18th, 2010. John Lasseter, director of the first two Toy films and a Pixar poobah, is supervising the 3D process on both, while director Lee Unkrick continues his work on the second sequel.

Sources: SlashFilm and IMDB