Tim Burton's Frankenweenie, a black and white short he made while still toiling as an animator at Disney, has been slated for the big-budget, stop-motion, feature-length treatment for a while now, ever since they brought him on board to make the 3D Alice in Wonderland that everyone is salivating over right now.

It's been presumed Frankenweenie will be gearing up once Alice is finished, in time to meet its 2011 release date, and Coming Soon spoke to producer Allison Abbate to find out just that. The real news is that they're still considering making it in black-and-white and 3D, which I'm pretty sure would be a first for the digital 3D format. I'm surprised that they haven't committed to 3D yet, actually, given that every other Disney animated movie is committed to 3D in the foreseeable future, and they've been planning Frankenweenie for years.

The other tidbit of news is that the film will be shot at Three Mills Studio in London, where Wes Anderson's stop-motion The Fantastic Mr. Fox filmed earlier this year.