That’s what they had paid for a proof-of-concept screen test for an upcoming film. If they liked what they saw, the project could move forward. If they didn’t, the movie would likely get axed. What they saw, left them baffled. One confused executive asked producer Don Hahn “What is that? Is it a guy in a rabbit suit?” It wasn’t.
But that was precisely the reaction Hahn and his team were looking for — because the test had blended an animated character with live-action elements so convincingly, it fooled the Disney execs. They didn’t even realize they were looking at animation. They thought it was a dude in a costume. The 42-second clip — starring a young Joe Pantoliano as the live-action detective — was a test for a movie based on a book about a comic strip hero who gets murdered. The book was titled looks fantastic; a throughly persuasive illusion of a world where man and cartoon co-exist. Some films had blended live-action and animation before , where Dick Van Dyke waddled with a flock of animated penguin