The Lorax in 3D coming in 2012

As I was watching the footage of Avatar at San Diego Comic-Con I was thinking, "this is one of the coolest fluorescent colored worlds I've been to." But it wasn't the first. There was Felucia, of course, where Aalya Secura bought it after the issue of Order 66 in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. And, before that, there was the imaginative pages of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax.

When Al Gore was still in knee-pants, running around hotel lobbies, Dr. Suess’ colorful tale of a stumpy, mustachioed environmentalist was among the first warnings many of us had about crapping up mother earth.

Does everyone truly need a thneed?

If you weren’t fortunate enough to read this book as a youngster (and to gaze at row after row of fluffy Truffala Trees) today’s news in Variety is good. Chris Renaud and Cinco Paul & Ken Daurio, all alum of Horton Hears a Who, have announced their plans to make a feature length-film version.

Universal and their animation arm Illumination Entertainment say a 3-D version of The Lorax is headed for theaters on March 12, 2012. Assuming the hole in the ozone layer hasn’t fried us all by then – or that a South-Going Zax doesn’t block this North-Going Zax – there’s little that will prevent me from seeing this.