Two features have locked release dates...
Titmouse, the house behind Adult Swim favorites like Metalocalypse and China, IL, completed Nerdland a while back and it screened at festivals earlier in the year. Now, it has a concrete release date. Previously, we learned that The Samuel Goldwyn Company was distributing the picture sometime next month. The official date is now December 6th.
But the catch? A very limited Fathom Events theatrical release, it's actually going to be a VOD release. Kind of a shame, because it looks like it cost nothing to make, and could probably make a small profit as an indie theatrical release. Little Prince route it is.
Perhaps it finally getting something of a release is all due to Sausage Party's success, which is good, hopefully that film succeeding makes the industry more confident in adults-only fare. Like I've said, if it's going to take a string of raunchy immature comedies to get to the good stuff, I'm all in. A new trailer has also been released...
Getting a wide release on the other hand is ToonBox's Spark. Like Nerdland, Spark was finished a while ago and even screened at a festival towards the beginning of the year. It was always meant to open between The Nut Job and its sequel. Open Road Films, distributor of the Nut Jobs, has finally picked it up. They will release the film on April 14, 2017. That's one week after Sony's Smurfs: The Lost Village, and that pic opens a week after DreamWorks' The Boss Baby. C'mon guys, space 'em out!
Spark is lower budget, so they don't have to worry. Smurfs: The Lost Village should cost around the amount of Sony Animation's more recent films, it'll mostly get its help from the worldwide box office given the fact that the Smurfs themselves originate from Europe. It's The Boss Baby I'm worried about, being a $120 million DreamWorks flick... but then again, Fox is probably willingly dumping this and Captain Underpants. I just hope, even though DreamWorks is now part of Comcast, that the animators don't get hit for these films flopping, should the films do so.
Spark is also one of three animated movies that Open Road is unleashing next year, alongside ToonBox's own The Nut Job 2 (5/19/2017) and Mass' Blazing Samurai (8/4/2017). No proper trailer is out, yet. I've only seen a clip months and months ago that unfortunately got pulled, wasn't too bad.
Anyways, it's good to see films locking dates. As far as 2017 animated movies go, we're still waiting on Blue Dream's Animal Crackers and Parallax's Musical to get distributors/dates. There's probably a couple others at the moment that could be squeezed in as well, but 2017 is almost rounded out.
What say you?
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