About a month ago, one of the executives at Disney let slip that the House of Mouse would be teaming up with an influential figure of stop-motion animation for a new picture. At the time, we had no choice but to speculate Tim Burton was the mysterious figure. Sure enough, a month and a half later, Variety has confirmed a two picture deal between Disney and Burton.

The rumors that followed the speculation hinted that we would see a full-length version of Frankenweenie, Burton’s classic short film about a boy that brings his dog back to life. Indeed that is the plan. One has to enjoy the irony of Disney joining up with one of their former employees to make a bigger budget version of the short film that was part of the reason Burton stopped working for Disney in the first place.

Frankenweenie isn’t the only planned film, however. First Burton will direct a new rendition of Alice in Wonderland. There’s no indication if the adaptation, scripted by Linda Woolverton (The Lion King), has anything to do with Disney’s classic version of the Lewis Carroll story, but Burton’s version will be part of Disney’s expanding 3-D animated picture library. Unlike Disney’s Pixar movies, Alice will combine live action with motion captured animation, like this weekend’s Beowulf.

I’m excited about the idea of Burton and Disney working together, but the irony behind Frankenweenie and the motion capture aspect of Alice makes me wonder if Disney isn’t trying to short-cut things too much. Frankly, I don’t get why they even need Burton when they have all of Pixar at their disposal. Pixar’s animated flicks have outperformed the non-Pixar animated tales, so why expand that part of their library? Even with a big name like Burton involved, I’m not sure this is the right direction for success at Disney Animation.