The Hollywood Reporter states that DreamWorks has established the principal cast for their approaching movie Me & My Shadow. Josh Gad, Bill Hader, and Kate Hudson have signed on to star.

Created in-house as an original movie, Shadow focuses on Stan, a shadow (Hader) who wishes for a more thrilling life than being attached to a timid human called Stanley Grubb (Gad). When a crime in the shadow community places both of their lives at an increased risk, Stan is pushed to assume control of Stanley, pushing both of them into an adventure presenting a shadowy villain, who plans to lead a rebellion to dominate the human world.

The CG/traditional animation movie is being directed by Alessandro Carloni (head of story How to Train Your Dragon), with a screenplay by Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember based on a draft by Steve Bencich and Ron J. Friedman (Brother Bear, Chicken Little, Open Season).

The cartoon Rio surpassed the $140-million level at the family box office.  And on Tuesday morning, it received an Oscar nomination. All of those indicates the potential for a follow up, which we now find out is on the horizon.

The Oscar nomination was for Sergio Mendes’ original song “Real In Rio,” and not really for the film’s lively computer animation. Yet it was Mendes who exposed to HitFix that Rio director Carlos Saldanha is advancing on a follow up.

Fox studio representatives did say that no script deals have been established, but it appears like the ball is moving.

The nominations for the 84th Academy Awards were released, and like all years, there were some surprises. Chosen in the Best Animated Feature category were Rango, Puss in Boots, Kung Fu Panda 2, A Cat in Paris and Chico and Rita. Obviously absent from the category were Arthur Christmas and The Adventures of Tintin, two really acclaimed cartoon movies that were predicted to be selected. Tintin did have a nomination for composer John Williams in the Best Musical Score category. And Man or Muppet from The Muppets and Real in Rio! from Rio were the only two melodies to be selected in the Best Original Song category.

In the mean time, the Best Animated Short category discovered nominations for Pixar’s yet to be released La Luna, A Morning Stroll, The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore and Wild Life. And Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, Hugo, Real Steel, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, and Transformers: Dark of the Moon were the selections for Best Visual Effects.

The winners will be presented on February 26th.

“Tangled” rocked the traditional Disney princess formula, including a male lead and a splash of humor to go along with the 70 feet of golden hair and shining tiara of the classic story. Almost all of the movie’s principal characters have returned in “Tangled Ever After,” a new cartoon short that opened in cinemas this weekend, displaying before the 3D re-release of “Beauty and the Beast.”

“We don’t want to do a sequel for the sake of sequels,” explained Byron Howard, a Disney animator who along with Nathan Greno directed the 2010 movie and the new short. “The story has to be worth telling.”

“The movie kind of buttons up, but the one thing we didn’t do in the movie was a wedding,” Greno affirms of the picture. “There’d be a beautiful wedding of Flynn and Rapunzel, just like the royal wedding. It would be this big, grand event.” The directors talk about during the interview how that result in the short’s plot of Pascal the chameleon and Maxiumus the horse losing Flynn and Rapunzel’s wedding rings on their big day.