Director Tim Burton started out as an animator at Disney, and after working on such milquetoast projects as "The Fox and The Hound" and "The Black Cauldron" he was greenlighted to develop some of his own stuff. After a few animated shorts, he made his first live-action film at age 25 in 1984, "Frankenweenie." This was slated to be the "special feature" with a rerelease of "Pinocchio," but Disney refused to release it after it landed a PG rating. When Burton asked what he could do to fix it, he was told: "There's nothing you can cut, it's just the tone."
Thus you can imagine Burton's pleasure when, some 30 years later, his new version of "Frankenweenie" opens with the trademark logo of the Disney Magic Kingdom suddenly turning black under a full moon as lightning flashes ominously. Yes, revenge is sweetest when served cold, and it's easy to imagine Burton madly rubbing his hands together and cackling with glee.
The new "Frankenweenie" is being called Burton remaking Burton, but it's more like a mashup, lifting the story (and camera setups) from the 1984 film and wedding it to his quite popular Goth-cute stop-motion animated style, as seen in "Vincent," "Corpse Bride" and "The Nightmare Before Christmas." It goes deeper than that, though — all three of those films featured dogs: a live one named Abercrombie subjected to mad-scientist experiments in "Vincent," a ghost dog named Zero who saves Christmas for Jack Skellington in "Nightmare" and a dead dog named Scraps whose bones come back to life in "Corpse Bride."