Walt Disney Pictures has released a brand new featurette for “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” taking a look at Young Dastan, played by William Foster, and the importance of seeing the character in his earlier years. Foster took parkour lessons from actor/stuntman David Belle.

Indeed, the Don Draper Barbie does capture some of Draper’s existentialist ennui, if not his inner demons spurring from all the lies he’s living. Sounds like a fun dolly!

Speaking of fun, there’s also this way adorable, blocky Lego rendition of Jake Gyllenhaal‘s Prince of Persia character. But is there money forthcoming from all that happy plastic?

Not likely, entertainment attorneys tell me.

“In most circumstances these rights get dealt with as part of the initial deal with the actor,” says Miles J. Feldman of the law firm Liner Grode Stein.

Courts have heard arguments about just how much an actor’s image is entwined in an iconic character. But “generally,” Feldman says, “the copyright holder has the exclusive rights to exploit the characters.”

In other words, no extra pay, really. Everything’s built in to the actor’s fee or weekly salary.

Unless a TV show’s producers didn’t anticipate huge success when they first signed on the actors—the kind of popularity that spurs Barbies.

In that case, the show producers or toy manufacturers may cut a separate, new deal with the actors after a show is hot, but only in the context of the franchise, such as Mad Men. Enter a Don Draper doll, dressed in all his ring-a-ding-ding finery, but not a Jon Hamm doll.

That would be a thoroughly unrelated type of hot.

None of this means that stars don’t get some involvement in their toy merchandising.

When NBC announced a charity auction of some signed bobble heads modeled after The Office character Dwight Schrute, the actor who played him, Rainn Wilson, got to choose the charity.

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Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures has tapped key cast members and filmmakers from three upcoming films to take part in WonderCon 2010, one of the industry’s most popular comics and pop culture conventions, April 2-4, 2010, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures’ presentations include:

• “PRINCE OF PERSIA: THE SANDS OF TIME” – Jake Gyllenhaal (the film’s Prince Dastan), Jordan Mechner (executive producer and creator of the video game that inspired the film), director Mike Newell and producer Jerry Bruckheimer share insights about and footage from this epic action adventure set in the mythical lands of Persia.  Geoff Boucher will moderate.  Saturday, April 3, 2010, 12:15-12:45 p.m. Esplanade Hall.

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Coming from a family steeped in the business, Jake Gyllenhaal knows the routine. When it comes to promoting a film, you can never say enough good things about your co-stars.

“It’s true, actors do this stuff: ‘Oh, he’s great — he pisses lemonade and he shits rainbows,”‘ he says.

But no more. Such was the positive experience Gyllenhaal enjoyed with his new best buddy Tobey Maguire in Brothers, he’s committed to working on projects where the camaraderie is real.

“I don’t believe any more I can make a movie when I don’t care … about the other people in the process,” says the actor, whose father is a director, his mother a writer and sister is the Oscar-nominated Maggie Gyllenhaal. “I don’t think I’m any good when I don’t interact.”

Once poised to take over from Maguire in the Spider-Man franchise, 29-year-old Gyllenhaal credits his on-screen brother for initiating a meaningful and professionally rich relationship when the pair decided to do the film.

“We’d work out together, we’d play basketball together,” Gyllenhaal says. “Not only is he a great actor, he’s also a great producer in some ways.

“He’s 100 per cent always involved.”

Gyllenhaal’s career has remained buoyant since he was nominated for an Oscar alongside Heath Ledger for Brokeback Mountain in 2005, although he’s yet to become the next ubiquitous Hollywood star as many had expected. Ironically, Gyllenhaal turned down the lead role in the blockbuster Avatar but with a raft of diverse roles, including the big-budget Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, coming to screens this year, he is destined to reinforce his reputation as a marquee name.

“Working on a movie like Prince of Persia was awesome,” he says. “It was really great fun to be like an action hero, jump around and run off walls and fight bad guys, have great quippy lines. Wearing half your clothes is always really fun.”

Gyllenhaal worked furiously for seven months to hone his physique for the fantasy adventure movie, based on the video game series of the same name. The $US150 million ($164 million) film is scheduled for a May release.

He has other significant films in the can, among them Love and Other Drugs with Anne Hathaway and the comedy Nailed alongside Jessica Biel.

Gyllenhaal is now shooting sci-fi thriller Source Code, capping a hectic 12 months during which time he also split from his partner, Reese Witherspoon.

“Whatever I dreamed and hoped for in my career and life is not how it’s gone in a lot of ways and I love that.”

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More new movie stills from the upcoming “Prince of Persia”!

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Movie Productions > Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (2010) > Stills