Comic Con 2009: Zemeckis's 'Christmas Carol' Panel with Hints of Roger Rabbit Sequel

"3D: Its the future" Robert Zemeckis. He's unafraid of the uncanny valley, defiantly points out the illusion of cinema in general and prosthetics as things we have become accustomed to that exist in that valley;  Bob even jokes that a bad actor is more distracting.

Jim Carrey plays an amazing 8 roles. They presented him at 5 different ages of Scrooge and 3 ghosts.

In the first clip we saw, Scrooge hovers over the face of the deceased Jacob Marley. In 3D the stillness is creepy. Scrooge is present with a death certificate which he signs quickly. He looks Marley over one more time and removes the tuppence covering his eyes. He looks to a boy in the funeral parlor and rubs the tuppence together. "Tuppence is tuppence" Scrooge says before palming them.

Cut to a scrooge walking into his estate, the camera is be behind a gate watching him as a voyeur.

Night time now. Scrooge is preparing to sit in front of a fire. A moment of pause in front of the fire. A bell above the door across the room begins to ring, then more bells above the door ring, then more unseen; the tone of the bells rings higher and higher into a deafening climax.

A door across the room has a air of some presence behind it withe the now absence of sound. Scrooge looks fearfully to the door. Once the tension breaks. a large block bound in chairs flies at camera in ghost form not breaking the door. 3 more chain bound blocks fly out the door surrounding scrooge. A figure, Marley, moves through the door floating weighed down by only the blocks.

Marley must pick up the chains and the blocks and throw them to move. The conversation is between two friends, one dead other other thinking he's eaten bad food. The dialog holds tension and humor as Marley's jaw and mouth flop to the point of nearly falling off, which is both gross and funny. Marley exits after his warning... violently.

The montage shows the introduction of the ghost of Christmas past, whose head is a flame and no visible neck, he could be a candle, he is holding what looks like a mega phone but is an over sized candle snuffer. Scrooge grabs the suffer and smothers the ghost, requiring Scrooge to climb on top of it with his full body weight. The snuffer blasts with light jetting Scrooge skyward. The rocketing snuffer burns out leaving Scrooge flying with the moon behind him. Scrooge yells bah humbug. The clips cut quicker now. Showing ghost of past-present-future. Ending with Scrooge looking directly into camera a single snow flake falls on his nose he blows it off and says the classic bah humbug.

"We have the technology to perfectly read the retina" Zemeckis says attacking the the previous critics of Polar Express. He details that they use 4 HD eye capture cameras that the actors wear shooting at 64fps. Using the footage they can track the iris and every pore and facial crease around the eye.

Robert praises Jim as a great character actor saying Jim would use his whole body to emote the performance beyond his voice work. "Never say never to live action if the muse hits me."

ROGER RABBIT:
Robert said "As far as Roger Rabbit, I can neither confirm nor deny"... "CONFIRM or deny" (We got the hint Bob). He also said "hypothetically" if it was being made "the 2D characters will stay 2D and not be dimensionalized, that's not to say there wont be 3D but. the 2D characters would stay 2D"