Going for Gold: Netflix Plans Their First Animated Feature

Netflix is finally getting in on the animated feature action...

Their first entry will be an animated feature for...

Adults.

Not a family film, not something to rack up bucks and sell toys everywhere. No, an adults-only animated film from Archer creator Adam Reed and executive producer Matt Thompson. Thompson will direct, the script is being handled by Expendables scribe David Callaham, and the dynamic Lord-Miller duo are involved as well...

It'll be an R-rated, comedic, revisionist take on American history. It's titled America: The Motion Picture... Channing Tatum has been cast as George Washington.

While other up-and-coming studios and new-to-animation companies are starting out with tried-and-true family films, Netflix is aiming higher. They seem to know that there's an audience for adult animation here in America, good adult animation. They happen to have fostered BoJack Horseman, which is above your usual Family Guy/[adult swim] stuff, an adults-only animated series that actually is "adult," not stuff that's only "mature" if you're 12 years old.

That all being said, I'm not sure what direction America: The Motion Picture is going to take. Will it be brilliant while also being gratuitous and happily immature? Or will it really have something to say? It's clearly aiming to be comedic, and given these guys' backgrounds, I'm not expecting too, too much out of this other than some wit and some creativity. Maybe I'll be pleasantly surprised, but I'd say it's a good step forward. I also don't doubt that Sausage Party's success probably helped make this a reality, among other things.

Will it not be a CG film? Probably, for Archer, Frisky Dingo, and Sealab 2021 weren't CG cartoons. I expect the art style to resemble those, but it would be cool if it was something different. All I keep thinking of, actually, is a Robot Chicken skit that meshes the Revolutionary War with 300... And ironically Zack Snyder said not too long ago that he was thinking of making just that. (This wouldn't be the first time Robot Chicken was rather prophetic about Hollywood.)

Definitely an exciting development, and I'm looking forward to seeing where Netflix goes with their original feature animation...

What say you?

More Fantasy: DreamWorks To Adapt Cressida Cowell's Next Book Series

Once the dragons fly away, the wizards will come in...

DreamWorks Animation announced earlier today that they have acquired to rights to Cressida Cowell's upcoming book series The Wizards of Once. Cowell, as many of you may know, conceived How To Train Your Dragon. Her 12-book series inspired DreamWorks' two epic fantasy stories, and the third entry in the series is due out in March of 2019. The movie series will end there, not sure about the TV side of things...

The Wizards of Once is about a wizard boy and a warrior girl who were taught to loathe each other, but things change when their two worlds come together. The full premise, via Amazon...

Once there was Magic, and the Magic lived in the dark forests. Until the Warriors came...

Xar is a Wizard boy who has no Magic, and will do anything to get it. Wish is a Warrior girl, but she owns a banned Magical Object, and she will do anything to conceal it.

In this whirlwind adventure, Xar and Wish must forget their differences if they're going to make it to the dungeons at Warrior Fort.

Where something that has been sleeping for hundreds of years is stirring...

The first book will hit shelves this coming autumn. This isn't the first time DreamWorks acquired a book series that was then yet to come out. Their 2012 fantasy adventure Rise of the Guardians was based on William Joyce's The Guardians of Childhood, which at the time of the film announcement, wasn't published. Sadly, Rise of the Guardians didn't go over due to the marketing's mishandling of it, and the gargantuan budget it was saddled with.

New DreamWorks head Chris DeFaria seems very gung-ho about this one...

“Cressida is part of the DreamWorks family and with The Wizards of Once she once again anchors a new franchise for us... The story is packed with the perfect elements to create a unique magical universe inhabited by adventurous, funny and memorable characters that will enthrall generations to come. We are honored to have another opportunity to partner with this amazingly creative author.”

This marks the second project that DeFaria and the new executives have approved of, the first of which was the Trolls sequel. At the moment, I think this is a very smart move. Years back, DreamWorks hinted at a transition into making big, epic, and even dark fantasy pictures. Movies that would align with the How to Train Your Dragon movies. Rise of the Guardians seemed like the kick-off to a future that included things like The Grimm Legacy, Alma, Rumblewick, and several other fantasy adventures.

Rise of the Guardians' box office collapse in fall 2012, unfortunately, brought that to a quick end. Despite how badly the likes of Turbo and Mr. Peabody & Sherman did, former CEO/founder Jeffrey Katzenberg - in his last years at the studio, and his last years being in control - felt the right way to go was with movies like The Boss Baby and Captain Underpants. Lightweight family comedies that weren't dissimilar to Turbo and Peabody...

So the possibility of DreamWorks getting back on the fantasy adventure kick excites me. I feared for a little while that their future slate would be mainly Minions-lite stuff (because Universal also has Illumination), but maybe that was hyperbolic. Now, nothing is set in stone. In a year, DreamWorks' heads could turn this away and instead greenlight a Minions-y trash movie, but we shall see what happens. How To Train Your Dragon 2, while successful, wasn't the leggy monster its predecessor was at the domestic box office. Worldwide, it did significantly better. I do know that their heads at the time were disappointed with its run.

How To Train Your Dragon 3's delays had more to do with their schedule constantly changing. They initially thought that they could get the thing out last summer, but then (and this was back in 2014, mind you) they moved it to summer 2017. Then DreamWorks' fallout occurred at the end of 2014, How To Train Your Dragon 3 got pushed to summer 2018, because they wanted to reduce the amount of movies they were going to put out every calendar year. Dragon 3 would've shared this year with 3-4 other movies! The final move to spring 2019 happened because of the Comcast acquisition, and under Comcast, several in-development projects got the boot.

Since 2018 is now without a DreamWorks movie (following the regrettable cancellation of Larrikins), it's very possible that How To Train Your Dragon 3 can slink its way forward, but for now this is all speculation. Whenever it hits, hopefully it's a hit.

Do you think this adaptation will take off? Sound off below!

More The Merrier: Second Teaser/Short for 'Coco' Arrives

Well how about that? Another look at Pixar's upcoming original story Coco has been released!

A sort-of teaser/short film, it's a fun watch. There's lots of classic cartoony slapstick here, though I wonder if the movie itself will have that kind of humor. Maybe, maybe not.


Now this was actually shown in other countries. Someone leaked it onto YouTube (it was a recording in a movie theater, and it was in Spanish) a couple weeks back when the American teaser was released, so it's cool to see that Disney's marketing and Pixar have released it here.

Just a month in, and this campaign is pretty strong so far. Definitely a real 180 from how they marketed The Good Dinosaur, which like Coco, was a fall release in 2015 that came off the heels of a summer Pixar event - Inside Out. Coco is the fall Pixar movie this year, Cars 3 is the summer release. Looks like the same mistakes won't be made again.

Now, will they attach this to something in theaters? The next family-friendly Disney release is the Disneynature film Born in China, it could show up before that, but there's already a great teaser out so maybe not. Or maybe they'll combine the two, for Cars 3's first extended look combined the teaser and new footage. (And that "extended look" is rolling in theaters, I catch it frequently at the theater I work at.)

Who knows what they'll do.

UPDATE: I'm hearing it was shown before Beauty and the Beast. I didn't get to catch the preview reels for that at work.

What did you think of the short?

Tidbits: Ralphie's Title, STX Animation & 'Leap!' Leaps Again

Two of today's bits come from CinemaCon, one didn't...

Walt Disney Animation Studios' sequel to their 2012 video game adventure Wreck-It Ralph finally has title...

It is...

Next year, he's gonna break it 👊. Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2 opens in theatres on March 9, 2018. pic.twitter.com/u1qQn7TUUI

— Disney Animation (@DisneyAnimation) March 29, 2017

Ralph Breaks the Internet: Wreck-It Ralph 2...

Ummm... I don't know what to think of this title. Right now, I'm thinking, take off the "Wreck-It Ralph 2" subtitle, or move it to the front, and it's a bit better. The placement is what's bothering me, not so much the title. The logo is also giving me an Emoji Movie feel, which isn't... Quite... Good...

But this is from Disney Animation. This is from Rich Moore and Phil Johnston. They've been working on this for a while, so... A title is just a title. I still think it could be better, though.

Someone also happened to snap a photo of the big slate Disney showed off during their presentation, which looks exactly like the one they showed roughly two years ago...

So now we know what The Incredibles 2's logo looks like. No more Roman numeral. Disney Animation's second 2018 release, Gigantic, didn't see a logo change. I say they should stick with it. Interesting that the "untitled fairy tale" slated for 7/28/2017 is still on there... It's less than four months away, and no title, no info, no this, no that. What could it even be? I thought it was going to be this currently-filming pic called Magic Camp, but I hear that's not it. Hmmm...

Next up... STX has their animation plan...

Earlier, STX - quietly making the waves as a distributor amongst the heavies - went over some animation plans. For a while, we've known that they've been planning an animated film based on the Uglydolls toyline. Illumination was once set to do that film, but after abandoning it, STX got a hold of it. Simply titled Uglydolls, STX plans to release it on May 10, 2019. Robert Rodriguez is set to direct it... A very interesting choice! Rodriguez has quite the resume, though not all of his family films were winners.

Anyways, I still think it's quite the pick. I have few feelings about this project, being something based on a toyline and all. The dolls themselves are certainly odd-looking, and it's a nice break from the typical character designs you see. It looks like something Illumination would've sunk their teeth into, but... I'm interesting to see how Rodriguez pulls this off.

STX also has an original animated movie on the docket, one starring Eddie Murphy. Apparently titled Bo the Bull, all we know is this: It's about a bull who wants to be a clown.

Another animated picture on their slate is a planned adaptation of Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat, the nearly 50-year-old stage musical by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. A psychedelic update of the Biblical story of Joseph, it falls in line with STX's apparent need to make family-friendly animated features. Of course, we animation fans know that Rice got around long after this production... Doing such minuscule things like... Writing the lyrics for Aladdin and The Lion King's songs...

Not the most thrilling slate, as I was kind of (naively) hoping that STX would break the mold and do bolder animated pictures... But it looks like they'll playing the same game everyone else is in on. I still wish them luck, though.

Lastly, the Weinstein Company - to no one's surprise - has delayed Leap! yet again.

The film, delayed for the second time, will now debut on August 30, 2017. No real compelling reason was given, it's probably just an excuse for Harvey Weinstein to further destroy the film. That's nothing new in the world of Weinstein. It probably would've been so much easier for them if they had just left Ballerina (the original film) alone, and just released that here back in March, like they had initially planned to do. As far as I'm concerned, Leap! really ain't Ballerina... Just like how Doogal ain't The Magic Roundabout. I don't understand how the guy doesn't get it...

All of the non-American animated films he has hacked up have sunk like stones. The one family film he didn't destroy, Paddington, did pretty well at the domestic box office. It was leggy, it got outstanding reviews by US critics, how could he not learn from that? How could he not learn from Arabian Knight and Doogal?

Anyways, Leap! is looking to be Underdogs Deux. Underdogs is his "re-imagined" version of the Argentinian animated film Metegol, which already got a halfway-decent English dub (released in the UK) before he got his hands on it. It was delayed roughly four times, and then it just went straight to video. I think Leap! will suffer the same fate... Of course, they wouldn't ask themselves, "Was the 're-imagining' of it even necessary?"

Well, if ya had only left it alone...

Mountain Splat: Paramount Animation Launches New Nick-Heavy Slate [UPDATE]

During their presentation at CinemaCon earlier today, Paramount revealed some big changes to their animated movie slate...

Their animation presentation was overall pretty short, but footage from next year's Amusement Park was shown. Reactions seemed rather mixed, some said it looked like kids-only fluff, others said it looks like it could have some substance. The release date is now August 10, 2018. It used to be July 13, 2018. The change was obviously going to happen. Hotel Transylvania 3 recently landed in the mid-July slot. Smart move, Paramount.

Paramount will team up with Nickelodeon to do more animated pictures, no shock there. Ever since they established the animation label in 2012, Paramount's plan always included lots of Nick-based features. They started on a Nick-based movie, the successful Sponge out of Water. A third SpongeBob movie has been on the slate for quite a while, it is no longer opening the same exact day as The Lego Movie Sequel. It's now set for August 2, 2019. Another smart move right there...

They have also announced a movie based on the current Nick hit, The Loud House. I'm sure that will raise the roof somewhere... That film is currently set for February 7, 2020. Will it be a traditionally animated picture? Or a CG'ed take on the show? Hopefully the former, even if its success won't mean anything for 2D's future here in America outside of TV show adaptations.

The plan is to release six animated movies between 2018 and 2020. So far, that's four...: Sherlock Gnomes (1/12/2018), Amusement Park, SpongeBob 3, and The Loud House.

The next two? They will also be Nick pics (slated for 3/22/2019 and 7/31/2020, respectively), and the sixth? Probably one of the films they announced some time ago, like Beastlies, The New Kid, Shedd, or maybe something else. Hopefully something original and/or fresh.

I'd say it's a smart strategy, because if they do the Nick films in 2D, it won't cost them too much. They can make easy profits off of those, and save the $70 million+ budgets (should they go that high) for the more "event"-type pictures. One thing is for certain, Paramount Animation is not a studio. It's a group, with various studios doing different features for them. Just like Warner Animation Group!

That all being said, what will the other two Nick movies be? My guess... One of them will be The Fairly Oddparents, as that show is still going. Like SpongeBob, it just won't stop, and it's now their second longest-running animated show. In terms of currently-airing shows, maybe Rabbids? An animated Rabbids movie was talked about before, but Sony was set to do that. I kind of doubt Pig Goat Banana Cricket is a candidate, because that show seems like it's on ice these days.

As for an older Nicktoon? Maybe, although Hey Arnold!'s long-delayed "Jungle Movie" is going to be a two-part TV movie this coming fall. Some Nick classics like Rocko's Modern Life are coming back, but will they get the theatrical movie treatment? Who knows, who knows... Maybe it'll be that rumored Nicktoons team-up movie, apparently the thing was indeed pitched, but never made it past that stage. Or maybe... It's possible that it'll be a feature-length pilot for an upcoming Nick series.

Maybe it won't even concern a TV show. Nick's name has been attached to numerous family movies released by Paramount, including the likes of Rango and The Adventures of Tintin... So one of those pictures maybe is not a Nick show-based movie. Amusement Park looks to carry the Nick name, and will get a Nick show next year, so yeah...

UPDATE (3/29/2017)

BoxOfficeMojo lists the untitled 7/31/2020 Paramount/Nick film as a "Hybrid", while the 3/22/2019 Paramount/Nick flick is labelled as "Animation"... So the 2020 film is a live-action/animation hybrid? Welp, so much for Paramount being done with those. They said they'd move on from those because of how badly Monster Trucks turned out, but hey... Maybe it'll be a live-action/unreal animation hybrid. Still boring to me, but it's what they want to do.


What say you?

In the Ring: Trailer for 'Ferdinand' Arrives

At last, a trailer for Blue Sky's new animated picture is out!

Ferdinand is based on the classic children's book that was first published in 1936. Walt Disney himself adapted it into a solid animated short two years later, this Blue Sky adaptation happens to be the first feature-length film take on the story. Rio director Carlos Saldanha is at the helm. It also has two co-directors attached, four writers, and a long-list of producers... Paul Fieg (Bridesmaids, Blue Sky's own Peanuts Movie) being one of them.


I have to say... This was a pretty decent trailer!

It was refreshingly quiet, quieter than most American trailers for animated movies that is. No ping-ponging, no noise, surprisingly it's quite calm. It introduces the titular bull with no fuss, it hints at the picture's more emotional side, the montage set to the song is pretty good, and the china shop gag is actually a lot of fun. If we are to believe Mythbusters, a bull would likely navigate a place like a china shop with precision. It was cool to see them play with that gag here.

Yes, I am more curious now. It looks like a potential dark horse, ermm... Dark bull? Anyways, I hope it fares well this coming holiday season. 20th Century Fox apparently thinks this thing can do well as counter-progamming against The Last Jedi, let's just hope the budget wasn't much higher than usual $90-100 million Blue Sky usually spends on their features, and let's hope the overseas markets are charitable if the film comes up short in the domestic market.

What say you?

New Batteries?: 'Toy Story 4' Adds a Writer

It turns out that someone else might be playing with the toys...

When reporting on an upcoming Pharrell Williams-driven musical movie called Atlantis, Variety and various publications mentioned that the screenwriter of the project - Martin Hynes - is a writer on Toy Story 4.

Up until now, we knew that Rashida Jones and Will McCormack (Celeste and Jesse Forever) were handling the screenplay for this Pixar fourquel. Fresh outside voices that hadn't tackled one of the Emeryville studio's films before. Now it looks like Hynes (who wrote and directed The Big Split and The Go-Getter, and also played George Lucas in the short film George Lucas in Love) is in the sandbox. Funny how it usually somehow goes back to Mr. Lucas...

We know little beyond this, though. We don't know if he is rewriting the script, or if he's aiding Jones and McCormack. I have a feeling the former might be the case, because... Toy Story 4 was delayed twice after it was first announced. Pixar originally unveiled the project in November of 2014, and a summer 2017 release date was inked. Nearly a year later, the movie got pushed to summer 2018, Cars 3 took its original spot from it... But then last autumn, it lost the summer 2018 slot to The Incredibles II. It is now set to open in the summer of 2019, and no Pixar films have been slotted beyond that.

Now perhaps this happened because Cars 3 and The Incredibles II just so happened to surge ahead in development, and reached that "in good shape" state before Toy Story 4 could. The movie is still a good two years away, so at the same time I assume that these delays happened for another reason. It's no surprise, for Pixar is following up what is pretty much a perfect ending. Toy Story 3 ended everything on such a high note, making the series that rare trilogy where every installment in it is great.

We may have been told over time that Toy Story 4 wouldn't be a continuation of the "master story", as I like to call it, but that it would be its own standalone movie. Basically a feature-length Toy Story of Terror! or Toy Story That Time Forgot. I was fine with that, until they revealed that it was going to be about Woody and Buzz setting off on a road trip to find Bo Peep, Woody's long-lost love interest who was given away between the events of Toy Story 2 and Toy Story 3. Ever since that announcement, I've been unusually skeptical of this film... How could they bring her back into Woody's life without softening the bittersweetness of Toy Story 3?

What makes the Toy Story trilogy so great is that it deals with abandonment, among other great themes. Woody and Buzz and the gang know that, one day, Andy will grow up and will stop playing with them. This comes into play in Toy Story 2, and it's the main focus of the third movie... And Pixar, being the studio that they are, didn't sugarcoat things. They didn't make things all rosy-rosy, instead they made a rather melancholic movie! I remember some complained at the time that it was too dramatic, and that it wasn't funny enough. Andy ends up giving his toys to someone else, friends have disappeared over time, the villain has a bleak outlook on toy life, the Prospector was ultimately right in some ways...

But what mattered was that most of the gang was still together, and that someone Andy knows will take good care of them. That's life. It can't always be perfect. It was very similar to Up in that regard, Carl doesn't live his dreams with his wife, his childhood hero is a monster, and he ultimately ends up losing his house. To me, bringing back Bo negates a chunk of the series' emotional core. Now, I have said before that I'm willing to be wrong on this. I don't doubt for a second that Pixar's story team could make that story work, despite how I feel about all of it.

Maybe the delays and the addition of another writer suggest that they may have rewritten the story completely, or have worked very hard to make the return of Bo Peep an emotionally satisfying follow-up to a great trilogy. I don't know, I'm not a fly on the wall at Pixar, but it seems like development on this one has been pretty rocky. Of course I'm not too phased that we're not getting this movie in less than three months, because I'm used to animated movies getting release dates and then getting delayed. I'm also used to many cool-sounding animated movies getting cancelled. If they need a lot of time to make Toy Story 4 excellent, so be it!

What say you?

Boys will be boys

Mom told me, 'Boys will be boys. They are always busy with their hobbies.'
When I found the site, then I think that she is quite right. ;-)

Ready for Take Off: Trailer for 'Captain Underpants' Arrives

At long last, the trailer for DreamWorks' Captain Underpants is finally here.

... and just in time for the release of their newest film, The Boss Baby...


I've said it before many times on here, I like that they are going the Peanuts Movie route with the visuals. That way, the look of it can be more faithful to the illustrations in Dav Pilkey's books. The movie itself looks gleefully silly, and some of the action bits are pretty funny. I wasn't blown away by this trailer by any means (then again I didn't really read the Captain Underpants books when I was little), but it looks like a fun romp from DreamWorks. While Boss Baby's latest trailers and spots have left me unsure, this looks pretty straightforward. They also set things up nicely, before it all becomes noise. Typical of 95% of American animated movie trailers, but ya know...

For those who don't know, this is the final DreamWorks movie that's being distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was outsourced to Mikros Image, the intention was to get this thing done on a lower budget, so I guess that's why Fox waited till now to launch the marketing. Yes I know Boss Baby is right around the corner, but they could've started the campaign earlier. Either way, not much seems to be at stake. I'm going to assume this thing cost around $70 million to make, as opposed to the usual $120 million+ budgets DreamWorks usually blows on features.

And yet, for a lower budget feature, visually it's a lot more exciting than most of the CG films we're getting nowadays. They took full advantage of the budget, and made a very neat, cartoony-looking CG film where everything is done in a simplistic, weirdo style. I dig it.

What do you think of the trailer?

Still Bustin': Animated 'Ghostbusters' Seemingly a Go

It looks like the Ghostbusters franchise still has some life left in it.

Last year, the mega-budgeted reboot Ghostbusters: Answer the Call lost money at the box office. Despite that, Sony indicated that they would press on with the series. Talks of an all-animated Ghostbusters movie had happened, and that it would be the next attempt at rebooting the franchise for a modern audience. Now, it's looking like a reality.

In an interview with io9, original Ghostbusters writer/director Ivan Reitman outlined some of the plan. He says...

We jumped into an animated film [after the last movie] and we are developing live-action films. I want to bring all these stories together as a universe that makes sense within itself. Part of my job right now is to do that.

I'm honestly okay with Ghostbusters going animated for the big screen. It worked for the small screen, so why not? In a day and age where Disney gleefully assimilates its animated classics into superior live-action/photoreal CG, this is actually refreshing and kind of exciting. When's the last time you saw a live-action film franchise go animated? Outside of Star Wars: The Clone Wars, I have no idea! And direct-to-video animated sequels like The Animatrix don't count!

You might bring up The Smurfs, but here's the thing... The first Smurfs movie - a package feature of roughly five previously-released animated shorts - came out in 1965, in Europe only. Then there was The Smurfs and the Magic Flute, which debuted in Europe in 1976, and came out in the US in 1983 after the success of Hanna-Barbera's Smurfs TV cartoon adaptation. So that went from animation to live-action/animation hybrid, and then back to animation. Headspinner! A Sony headspinner! Tintin flipped back and forth in Europe, there was a stop-motion film in 1947, followed by live-action films and traditionally animated films, long before Steven Spielberg's all performance-capture adaptation. Though Scooby-Doo is based on a long-running cartoon series, I guess that could count. Two live-action theatrical Scoobs, and now the all-animated one from Warner Animation Group is coming next year.

Given that Ghostbusters was arguably given closure in the form of 2009's Ghostbusters: The Game, I think they can go anywhere with it now. Perhaps Answer the Call should've been connected to the main master storyline, but it decided to be its own new story instead of a truly soft reboot. A sort of "Next Generation" kind of Ghostbusters story. Hopefully the animated film honors the original, but is also successfully its own thing as well. Ghostbusters is a bit of a hot button because of what happened last year, but really, I think Answer the Call's failure had more to do with its absurdly big budget and Sony's piss-poor marketing. Even Reitman thinks the budget ballooning was a big problem.

So apparently the animated movie will share a universe with new, in-development live-action movies. This sounds like a very Sony Pictures kind-of thing, as the company I believe has been making some rather tone-deaf decisions these says, especially since the post-hack management change. I mean... The Girl in the Spider's Web not bringing back Rooney Mara? An MCU-less Venom movie? C'mon...

But hey, if they can somehow make it work, I'm all for it. A shared universe having both live-action and animated movies? Either this is a big clustercuss in the making, or something that could change shared universes. Who knows!

Also, Reitman apparantly said he hopes the animated picture will be out by 2019 or 2020. Sony Pictures Animation has multiple "franchise" films set for 2019 and 2020, so it could fill one of those slots.

What say you on all this Ghostbusters business?

Shattered Dreams: Is Oriental DreamWorks Being Phased Out?

DreamWorks' Shanghai unit apparently is the next casualty of the Comcast acquisition of the company...

The moon boy studio, according to Variety, is going to give up their 45% stake in the overseas unit.

The Shanghai unit, which is called Oriental DreamWorks, has actually had it kind of rough. Attempts to jumpstart live-action pictures fell through. It took a while for their homegrown Everest (set for fall 2019) to get off the ground, and now that picture (according to this) has apparently been ported back to Glendale.

Variety also mentions that Kung Fu Panda 3, despite grossing a strong $521 million against a $140 million budget, was seen as something of a disappointment. Though Kung Fu Panda 3 took in over $150 million at the Chinese box office, I can see why they could've been disappointed with the results. The film was pretty much localized, a whole other version of it was made specifically for China with some alterations here and there. It doesn't help that Zootopia blew past it with ease a few weeks later. A film that wasn't an entry in a pre-existing franchise, and one that wasn't either overtly American or Chinese. No one predicted how huge it was going to be.

Not too long ago, the Shanghai unit laid off 40 animators. The staff number was 250 in 2014, now it's less than 100. Universal has their own Chinese distribution firm, and supposedly they see Oriental DreamWorks as extra weight. A source told Variety, "It’s not because it’s not an important or successful business, it just duplicates what they already have in China."

It's yet another Jenga peg being pulled out from the tower, the tower that is the old DreamWorks. After Comcast's acquisition of the company, the now 23-year-old animation studio is changing quickly. Many layoffs ensued, ties with the India-based unit were broken, the new executives pulled the plug on movies like The Croods 2 and Larrikins, and the film slate was reshuffled. While Everest was on DreamWorks' docket long before the acquisition, the only film given the go-head under Comcast/Universal so far is Trolls 2. A film that did far better in the merchandise department than at the box office.

What DreamWorks gets mutated into by the end of the decade, I have no idea. My brutally honest opinion? I don't think things are looking too good right now. The one project of theirs that I was interested in is now dead, and I kind of fear that the new executives may just turn DreamWorks into an Illumination-lite hit-house. Maybe, maybe not. If Edgar Wright's Shadows gets the greenlight, maybe I'll have a little faith.

What say you?

Alive and Howling Elsewhere: Trailer for 'Wolfwakers' Surfaces

The American animation industry may have little to no use for traditional animation when it comes to wide-release theatrical movies, but in other countries... It's a whole different story.

Game-changing Irish animation studio Cartoon Saloon and founder/director Tomm Moore, the good folks behind The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, are readying a new fantasy epic called Wolfwalkers. The same studio is also working on another traditionally animated film that should be out by the end of this year, that picture is The Breadwinner. When Wolfwalkers debuts... I don't know.

We've seen things from Wolfwalkers for a little while now. A film that Moore describes as the "final panel of Cartoon Saloon's "Irish folklore triptych," it tells the story of a young apprentice hunter named Robin Goodfellowe, who is set to help her father exterminate the last pack of wolves in the area. After saving a native girl in the forest, she meets the Wolfwalkers. She becomes one of them, putting her life at risk.

Today, a sort of "concept trailer" was posted by Cartoon Brew...


Like the last two films from this studio, it looks very atmospheric. The teaser also promises an intense, beautifully-directed story that isn't afraid to go down some dark paths. The staging of the deer running through the woods is a standout moment, the kind of staging that you can indeed get in a traditionally animated picture without conspicuous CGI.

Once this film is completed, I have a feeling GKIDS will probably handle the US distribution, like they did with Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea, and presumably The Breadwinner. I'd argue that right now, Cartoon Saloon is leading a sort of 2D charge on the other side of the Atlantic, while keeping innovation in animation alive. They don't blow mega-budgets on these things (Kells and Song, combined, cost less than $15 million to make), and yet they look every bit as dazzling as the hyper-real films we churn out here for roughly $80 million apiece. They're more exciting to me, because they truly take advantage of animation as a medium, instead of trying to closely recreate real life. If only context-ignoring executives here in the states got the memo...

What say you?

Box Office Catchup: 'Batman' Holds On, 'Rock Dog' Disappears

A few weekends have gone by, nothing of note had really happened.

This weekend, The Lego Batman Movie held its own against Disney's beast of a movie. Still in the Top 10, The Lego Batman Movie collected $4 million for the weekend, and is now up to $167 million domestically. Worldwide, the film has pulled in $287 million, as it's still bubbling up overseas. Not a bad gross if you think about it, considering that The Lego Movie made less than $500 million worldwide. Lego Batman, like its predecessor, cost $80 million to make. They're all set...

In 19th place is Moana, even though the Blu-ray has been out for a couple of weeks. It's up to $248 million here, I wonder if Disney will fudge some numbers and get it past two-five-oh. Sometimes, they'd do that by double-billing the movies with their then-newest releases. For example, by the time Tangled was out on all home media formats, it was at $198 million domestically. Disney kept it in theaters all throughout April, and when Pirates of the Caribbean's fourth entry came out in May of that year (2011), some double-feature screenings had Tangled. Tangled finally crawled past the $200 million mark, the first time a Disney animated film had done that since The Lion King.

So maybe Disney may do just this for Moana when Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 2 comes out in May. Or maybe, coincidentally, Pirates of the Caribbean cinque.

Worldwide is another story. The picture is finally out in Japan, and the opening gross was around $5 million. Some are questioning this, but Zootopia had opened with $3 million, so it all depends on the legs. Things play out differently in Japan than they do here. Moana's next target is Big Hero 6, which finished up with $657 million worldwide. It may or may not beat it, I think it has something of a shot at doing it. If it does, then it'll the third biggest Lasseter-era Disney animated feature.

Sing is right below Moana on the domestic weekend chart. $269 million here, $589 million everywhere. Should be wrapping up its run soon.

In 24th place is Rock Dog. Losing roughly 900 screens this past weekend, the film 75%. $10 million looks like the final total here, and that's around the same amount it made overseas. Lionsgate will probably yank more screens next weekend when their Power Rangers hits. A big flop, sadly.

Trolls still rolls in 69 theaters, but there has been no dramatic change with the numbers. No matter, Comcast is clearly pleased with the results, if Trolls 2's release date didn't already confirm that.

In limited release, the Swiss-French frontrunner My Life as a Zucchini has made $219k. The Red Turtle has made $788k. For some reason, the 2004 Danish CG flick Terkel in Trouble is still playing! Running in 12 theaters last month, it's now playing in 2, and the thing has made $104k to date. This is way more than what its first two (!) American releases took in, combined. Those American releases occurred in 2010, six years after the film came out in its country of origin.

Strange, strange, strange...

Sky's the Limit: Skydance Gets Into Animation

The blockbuster end of Paramount is now looking into feature animation...

Skydance Media has produced and co-financed several tentpole pictures for Paramount, such as the newer Mission: Impossible films, the two Abrams-Star Trek sequels, and both Jack Reacher films. Though they are doing more films with the mountain studio, they are apparently set to end their partnership soon, which explains why two upcoming projects of theirs - Life and Geostorm - aren't Paramount movies.

Ilion is already hard at work on a feature for Paramount Animation, which is next summer's Amusement Park. Prior to Amusement Park, they did Planet 51 and a local film called Mortadelo and Filemon: Mission Implausible.

Two projects have been launched... The first of which is an untitled fantasy tale that will be penned by Linda Woolverton, screenwriter of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. According to Deadline, the film "tells the story of Elian, a teenager who comes of age using her magical powers to defend her family when the opposing forces of light and darkness threaten to divide her kingdom." That's currently aiming for a 2019 release.

The other picture in the works sounds more interesting. Titled Luck, it's about organizations who are behind the good and bad luck in our lives. The premise kind of makes me think of Reel FX's upcoming film WISH Police, which is about a secret team taking on evil forces who attempt to make people's malevolent wishes come true. Glenn Aibel and Jonathan Berger, writers of the Kung Fu Panda trilogy and Trolls, are handling that one. Skydance CEO David Ellison will have a hand in producing both.

There is no word on what distributor Skydance is prepping these pictures for. Again, Paramount and Skydance are set to split soon, but some co-production pictures are still on the docket. However, those two films - Mission: Impossible VI and World War Z 2 - are entries in Paramount franchises that Skydance previously worked on. So right now, I don't know if these will be Paramount Animation films or if they will be released by someone else. That being said, I'm looking forward to seeing what they have in store for us. One has a cool concept, the other sounds like a fun old-school fantasy story.

What say you?

Rock-Solid: 'Early Man' Teaser Debuts

Alrighty! A teaser for Aardman's next stop-motion animated picture has arrived!


As expected, the teaser displays Aardman's wit, their sense of humor, and some lovely visuals. It's a nice little poke at how some trailers for big blockbusters are, and I especially liked the little Monty Python and the Holy Grail hat-tip. From everything we've seen plus this new teaser, I think the movie looks like it'll be a fun, eccentric good time.

Of course, I'm a rather impatient American. No American distributor has picked this one up yet, and it's due out in Europe in January. Will it get a US distributor soon? Or will we have to wait like last time? Aardman's previous film was Shaun the Sheep Movie, when that entered production they had ended their partnership with Sony Pictures Animation. Sony, like former partner DreamWorks, would release the films around the same time they were released in Europe. Shaun the Sheep Movie didn't land a US distributor until after its European debut in February 2015, Lionsgate picked up the film and then dumped it that following August.

Something tells me that this one will get picked up before it comes out overseas. Shaun the Sheep Movie was based on a fluffy little TV series (made by Aardman themselves, of course) that was barely shown here in America, whereas this is an original movie. Perhaps distributors will find this one to be an easier sell? Plus there's dialogue, Shaun the Sheep Movie was mainly silent.

Who knows. Aardman only scored one domestic smash hit, and that was their first feature-length film: Chicken Run. For a little while, it was actually the highest-earning non-Disney/non-Pixar animated feature until the release of Shrek. Wallace & Gromit did okay business here at best, the rest of their films did even worse. Overseas totals and low budgets keep the future features afloat... But I myself would like to see Aardman score another good-sized hit here in the states. Maybe Early Man is it, maybe it isn't.

What say you?

A New World: Teaser for 'Coco' Surfaces

It is finally here! The teaser for Pixar's new original tale, the Day of the Dead story Coco!


What a teaser this was!

Not only does it successfully establish the concept *and* some of the storyline itself, it also has a great atmosphere, a very nice retro vibe (VHS and LPs!), and lots of little subtleties. Pixar's take on the Land of the Dead is a country mile from The Book of Life's depiction of it. While Book of Life's was a painterly, visually amazing city... This is like a forest of town neighborhoods and highways, they almost look like individual trees with buildings wrapped around them. It's big, complicated, and stunning.

The music also sounds great, and also boosts the atmosphere. I think the teaser really shows how songs will be worked into the picture, and how the film won't be a more traditional break-out-into-song musical, as that has been emphasized long before this teaser was put together. I'm quite fine with this direction, though one day it would be cool to see Pixar take their crack at the classic "singing" musical.

The teaser is definitely a nice change of pace from jokes-jokes-jokes.

In fact, Pixar's teasers have been rather different as of late. Pixar actually sort of pioneered the gag-based animated movie teaser.

For their second feature, 1998's A Bug's Life, they made a teaser composed of animation made just for it that wouldn't be used in the film itself. Ever since that film came out, Pixar has done this for almost every subsequent picture of theirs. Now, for a long while, these were also very humorous teasers. WALL-E's teaser broke the mold a bit and Up's was a little cryptic, but it was back to the funny teaser after that. Then the teaser for Brave showed up. Not a joke in sight in that one, it was rather serious and it ended on an intense moment, not a gag.

Now... The current trend we're seeing began with, oddly enough, The Good Dinosaur. That film's teaser showed the film's opening minute with the asteroid missing Earth, and then a montage of clips from the actual movie - not special animation made just for the teaser - set to some pretty epic music, no dialogue at all. Finding Dory's teaser was an alternate version of a scene from the movie, this very version was going to be in the movie before the filmmakers decided that it wasn't up to snuff. (You can see this on the Blu-ray's selection of deleted scenes.)

Cars 3, their next feature, had a teaser that had maybe one line of dialogue... It was just shots of a race, and then Lightning McQueen crashing and flipping over in slow-motion. The race is also in the movie itself, though it was re-lit for the teaser. McQueen's climactic crash is actually going to take place at nighttime.

Now we've got this. This has got to be footage from the movie itself, all of it. If it isn't, I'll be surprised. There's very little humor in here, and it's all about story, Miguel's character, the atmosphere, and the premise itself. This is one of Pixar's best teasers yet...

What say you?

Shiftin' Sony: Sony Animation Gets New Head of Production

Change continues to happen at Sony Pictures Animation.

Regardless of what we may think of the pictures they are releasing over the next eight months, this is a big year for Sony Animation. For the first time ever, they are releasing three animated features in the same calendar year. Something DreamWorks tried to do a few years back, but that ultimately backfired. Walt Disney Animation Studios once tried this as well, at the beginning of this century. That plan also backfired for various reasons. Now Sony Animation is stepping up to that plate...

The first of the three features - franchise reboot Smurfs: The Lost Village - is opening in less than a month. Perhaps because she is confident in this slate, Sony Pictures Animation's president Kristine Belson has named Pam Marsden head of production. A key player at the studio for years, Marsden produced both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films, and has been in the field for quite some time. The producer of Disney Animation/Secret Lab's Dinosaur (one of the three WDFA features that was wide-released in 2000), she went on to produce the DTV feature Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas and Nickelodeon's Barnyard.

I'm not quite sure about this choice, because out of all those movies, Cloudy uno is the clear home run here. Sony Animation's slate looks like a mixed bag to me, and I feel Marsden's resume is just that as well. I'm not sure what this change will mean for the studio.

Call me a bitter person who can't let go of the past, but... Belson seems to have gutted the place. The more interesting projects that were in development are gone or have been watered down, and they have made way for things like The Emoji Movie. We got some bone-tosses here and there, like Animated Spider-Man and the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical Vivo, but the rest of the slate is rather... Uninteresting. Having seen the latest Smurfs: The Lost Village trailer, I'm not really onboard that flick. The Star could be a decent Nativity retelling, or just another generic talking animals movie. Hotel Transylvania 3 could be uneven likes its predecessors, or maybe it could be a genuinely good comedy romp.

For now, I remain skeptical of Sony Animation, and Sony Pictures in general. That whole division seems to be digging its own grave. I know SPA can be a great studio, and they've shown it before. Have you seen Surf's Up? Have you seen the first Cloudy movie? Both high points, I think. Hopefully once we get past schlock like The Emoji Movie (and I'll eat lots of crow if Emoji somehow turns out to be a good movie), we'll see what this house - under Belson - is really made of.

What say you?

Animated Alcon: Alcon's 'Darkmouth' Gets Directors

For a little while in animationland, Alcon Entertainment has been bubbling under the surface.

A now 20-year-old studio, they are still big partners with Warner Bros. Last we've heard, they're working on a new all-animated Garfield movie with Davis Entertainment, and given their deal with the big shield, that will probably be billed as a Warner Animation Group picture.

On their docket is Darkmouth, an animated adaptation of Shane Hagerty's fantasy book series. The premise? A kid who wants to be a part of his family business, which is... Going after monsters. He has to protect his monster, Darkmouth, from sinister creatures called Legends... But he isn't quite good at his job.

Two powerhouse directors have been tapped to take it on... Doug Sweetland and Dave Pimentel. Sweetland needs no introduction, being a long time Pixarian who left the lamp after directing his great, energetic, Looney Tunes-esque short Presto. Years later, he and Nicholas Stoller gave us WAG's also very Looney Tunes-y feature film Storks, a film that seemed to be pretty divisive. I happened to really like it, and felt it was one of the better zany animated comedies out there. So I'm happy to hear that Sweetland is moving from cartoon hijinks to epic fantasy.

Pimentel, also a veteran, worked at Disney Feature Animation from roughly 1995 to 2001 as an animator, spent some time at DreamWorks as a story man, and then returned to Disney, doing story work for Big Hero 6 and becoming head of story on Moana. It's good to see him spreading his wings and landing new gigs.

The film is set to be written by Lloyd Taylor, who - according to Variety - worked on Blue Sky's upcoming Pigeon: Impossible. We now know the directors of that picture as well: Troy Quane (longtime animator and storyboard artist) and Nick Bruno (Blue Sky animator since Ice Age: The Meltdown). It'll be a co-production with Chernin Entertainment. Lloyd's resume is rather scant, and apparently he contributed additional story material to... The Wild...

Darkmouth's got a ton of producers attached, too, one of them being another Disney Animation face: Craig Peck. He produced their short Chalk, a sort of training project made years ago that can be viewed here.

Anyways, it's good to see some more animated high fantasy moving forward, and it's also cool to see another player getting into animation, even if they may end up being one of the studios doing work for the umbrella that is Warner Animation Group.

Do you think Alcon's two animated projects will end up being WAG releases? What do you think of Darkmouth being adapted? Sound off below!

Not Quite the King: A 'Skull Island' Review

Does the king roar again?

This review contains SPOILERS...

Not too long ago, Legendary Pictures unleashed Gareth Edwards' Godzilla. The first big blockbuster tentpole from the indie director, Godzilla proved to be a pretty rocky movie for critics and audiences alike. One side loved the film's suspense, use of build-up, focus on the humans, and how it treated Godzilla as a force of nature rather than a entity that the "good guys" must stop. It was the exact opposite of Roland Emmerich's 1998 blow-em-up take on the classic kaiju, and rung much closer to the original 1954 Gojira.

That wasn't enough for the other side, though. The other side felt the film suffered because of the vanilla lead characters, the amount of time Godzilla is actually onscreen, and Bryan Cranston's character dying in the first act. I on the other hand acknowledge the film's issues, but I absolute love how it pulled everything off. I thought it had enough Godzilla in it, for I felt this was a film that looked at such large-scale creature action from a human point of view, it didn't make a big deal out of the monsters, it instead asked "What would it be like to us?" It's a very grounded movie, and in the best possible way. There's plenty of suspense along the way as well, along with some knock-out action, a great atmosphere, and some neat worldbuilding.

Now, not too long after Godzilla came out, it was made clear that its sequel and an upcoming new take on King Kong would be tied together in what is now called the Legendary Pictures' MonsterVerse. Kong: Skull Island would be similar to Godzilla, in that it would be directed by someone with an indie background, boast a strong ensemble cast, and promise a unique take on the giant ape.

Given how I felt about Godzilla and how I don't object to the idea of bringing kaiju together onscreen, I was sure I was going to love Jordan Vogt-Roberts' Skull Island.

I didn't.

Kong: Skull Island has what's expected: The worldbuilding, the connections to Godzilla, and lots of monsters. Lots of them. I think the team behind the movie excelled when creating this Skull Island, a lost island not dissimilar to the Skull Islands we've seen before. Though not rife with prehistoric beasts, Skull Island instead is home to all sorts of creatures: Giant cape buffalo things with horns that branch off like antlers, giant spiders, a bug-tree monster, two-legged boneheaded lizards called Skullcrawlers, deadly pterosaur beasts, and more. Kong himself is much, much bigger than the classic version we all know.

It is also a neat period piece. Set in 1973, it works in the US's withdrawal from the Vietnam war, hippie culture, politics, all sorts of things into the story. The soundtrack featuring the likes of Creedence Clearwater Revival (it wouldn't be a Vietnam War-era movie without that!), Iggy Pop, The Hollies, Jefferson Airplane and several more is a nice supplement to the already cool and memorable score by Henry Jackman. Jackman used psychedelic trickery in his pieces, adding to it greatly. Visually, it channels many Vietnam war movies, particularly Apocalypse Now (if the marketing didn't emphasize that enough!), and overall has a very unique color scheme. A nice break from the usual.

Instead of a beauty and the beast story, we get a refreshing take that simply treats Kong the way Godzilla treated its titular titan, he's a force of nature. He's at war with skullcrawlers, especially after what they did to his family. That stuff is all good, as are the sequences showing off various different monsters. Vogt-Roberts is clearly having a blast throwing all this stuff at us, and some of the action beats are strong.

Sadly, it's lacking in its first half and the script does little with some of its great cast. Tom Hiddleston and Brie Larson? Underused, they're just kind of... There. John C. Reilly completely steals the show and saves the day, but he doesn't come into the picture until later. Samuel L. Jackson turns out a decent performance as the baddie, John Goodman also turns in a memorable performance, but yeah... There's little to these characters. Now, the same can be said about Godzilla, and I loved that. So what doesn't work here?

The first half is all over the map. The pacing is way too quick, and there isn't any of that build-up or carefulness that made Godzilla work. Straight to the island, straight to the creatures, boom! Action! The directing is uneven here, too, and the editing seems like it's post-production choppery. Knowing Warner Bros these days, I wouldn't be surprised if this thing was mangled in post. I feel this film really starts to come into its own once we meet Reilly's character, a World War II veteran who got stranded on the island with a Japanese pilot, and got to know the land, the indigenous people, the creatures, and Kong over the course of roughly 30 years.

He, despite being in no more than maybe an hour of this movie, gets a decent story arc that ends very nicely. My thing is, if this was meant to be a movie that wasn't meant to be about a bunch of survivors on an island full of monsters, then why cast such great actors for the stock humans? To draw audiences in, I guess? I don't know, but I feel more could've been done with them given their backgrounds, what's set up and all. As an unabashed monster mash, it works fine enough, bolstered by its second half, which nails it in the directing and pacing departments. Kong shredding monsters and causing mayhem was good stuff!

On the whole, it's a fun two hours or so. There's a lot to like in the picture, and aesthetically it's very pleasing. With tighter direction and editing in the first half, it could've been an overall stronger creature feature. As it is, it's got a lot of good in it, and I am very much looking forward to future MonsterVerse films.

The Party Starts: Teaser Poster for 'Coco' Debuts

With its teaser debuting next week, a proper poster for Pixar's new original tale Coco is here!

It's a pretty interesting teaser poster. I love all the little hints at the story and such: The guitar, the flying petals, and the skeleton petting the xolo - appropriately named Dante. It definitely shows what kind of picture we're in for.

The teaser trailer is confirmed to be around a minute and a half long, and could quite possibly be the compilation of footage D23 attendees saw back in August of 2015.

Pixar and Disney marketing are going about this one differently...

This year marks the second year ever where Pixar released two pictures. 2015 was the first, and the placement was the same. One movie in mid-June, the second during Thanksgiving. In 2015, Inside Out was the June title and The Good Dinosaur debuted during Thanksgiving week. This year's models are Cars 3 and this.

So, 2015... Disney marketing began the campaign for Good Dinosaur in June of that year, did a teaser and a few trailers, some TV spots, some other stuff... It was an unusually sparse and vague campaign for a Pixar film that ended up sinking the overbudgeted film on opening weekend. From the looks of it, I think they'll treat Coco as more of an event, for Good Dinosaur was honestly kind of a hard sell, being a weirdo minimalist Western that starred cartoony-looking prehistoric beasts. The more I think of it, the weirder it is... For a Pixar movie, even! Coco has Day of the Dead, music, timely elements, and a lot of other cool stuff.

To me it just seems like a bigger movie. The teaser coming this early makes me think they're actually prepping this one to be a holiday season smash. I didn't sense that confidence with The Good Dinosaur's marketing.

But what's also weird is that many of the recent Walt Disney Animation Studios hits - all of these particular ones being November releases - didn't have this kind of rollout, either. All of Disney Animation's November releases since 2010 have had their marketing campaigns begin in the Junes of their respective years. Yes, even billion dollar smash Frozen! Again... March, for a November animated release - WDAS or Pixar - I think indicates confidence... And there's a whole other Pixar movie opening before this one, too.

Now I'm not saying this is the next Frozen in terms of the box office, I just think it'll be a hit and Pixar will have greater success this year than they did in 2015.

Anyways, I'm excited for the teaser. What do you think of the poster?

Leaving the Outback: DreamWorks Cancels 'Larrikins'

DreamWorks' weirdo-sounding Outback musical Larrikins has been left to die in the desert...

Musician/songwriter/comedian Tim Minchin, who conceived the Australian-set rock-and-roll musical, revealed this recently... He is quite distraught...

I’ve recently been working in 3 different continents, missing my kids a lot, sleeping too little and not playing piano enough.

And then a couple of days ago, the animated film to which I’ve dedicated the last 4 years of my life was shut down by the new studio execs.

The only way I know how to deal with my impotent fury and sadness is to subject members of the public to the spectacle of me getting drunk and playing ballads.

I shouldn't be surprised, because DreamWorks in the recent years has canceled projects that I was very excited about. The traditionally-animated/CG hybrid Me and My Shadow got the axe many moons ago and got recooked into the presumably all-CG feature Shadows, and a Mumbai-set musical about monkeys got shuttered a few years ago as well. Instead, they pushed for safe-as-vanilla fodder like The Boss Baby.

Larrikins seemed to be up in the air when Comcast acquired DreamWorks this past autumn. The movie was set to come out in mid-February of next year, but DreamWorks was very hush-hush on it. No logo, no concept artwork, no information. I assumed this was so because of the transitioning, and all the changes in management and such, but no... Larrikins is dead. Like Bollywood Superstar Monkey and Me and My Shadow before it, it's not happening. It'll join those two, alongside The Croods 2 and B.O.O., in the morgue.

This also means that DreamWorks will not release a single picture next year. 2018 will be the first year without a DreamWorks movie since... 1999.

We can speculate all we want for the time being. Was it canceled because it was too weird for them? Not candy-coated Trolls-y enough? Or was it actually a hot mess? I remember hearing rumors that the picture was going to be "pulled back into story", despite keeping its early 2018 release date. All I can say is, having been exciting for the project since the day it was announced in 2013, I am officially bummed.

While DreamWorks has How To Train Your Dragon 3, the interesting-sounding Everest (no longer an Oriental DreamWorks project, which may or may not spell trouble), and Shadows (recooked or not, Edgar Wright is currently set to direct it) on the horizon... I can't help but worry a bit. Maybe those concerns of Comcast turning DreamWorks into a reliable Illumination-like machine without much of an identity are valid after all, or maybe not. Again, we know very little. We haven't seen reels of Larrikins, we have next to no idea of what this thing was even going to be like. What even is new leader Chris DeFaria's plan for the studio?

I wouldn't set my phasers from worry to flip out just yet, but... Well... Given how things tend to go in mainstream animation-land, I am not too optimistic about what DreamWorks could mutate into in the next 3-5 years. More context on Larrikins' shut-down would be nice, but it to me is bad news all around. Larrikins sounded like something above the likes of The Boss Baby and even the psychedelic Trolls, something quirky and different, directed by someone from the outside... But like many cool-sounding projects that get conceived in this field, it was kicked out the door...

East to West: 'Everest' No Longer an Oriental DreamWorks Film?

When DreamWorks set up an animation studio in China, big plans were put into place.

The studio, called Oriental DreamWorks, was always set to make their own animated features in addition to live-action productions. They co-produced Kung Fu Panda 3, for starters. A certain mystery production, which turned out to be a yeti tale called Everest, was set to be the first animated feature that they would make on their own. Or so it seemed...

It appears that the film is no longer going to be done up at DreamWorks' Shanghai unit, so I was told...

@DeLuxODonnell92 Everest is no longer an ODW production. It's been brought back to glendale & will be released as a normal DWA film

— Jonathan Hernandez (@jhun88) March 2, 2017

Hernandez's bio says he works for DreamWorks, so yes, there you have it.

Perhaps that explains the director change as well. Originally, the film was going to be written and directed by Jill Culton, but by the time the film was officially slated (which was this past December), she was off the project. I wonder why it has been taken back. Early rumors suggested that DreamWorks was going to scale down and make just one Glendale movie every year, which lead me to believe that they would outsource certain films in order to still get two out there in certain years. Captain Underpants, opening this summer, was outsourced to Mikros.

I was wondering if that would continue. It was similar to the way Disney Feature Animation used to do it in the 90s and early 2000s. Some smaller-budgeted features - such as Lilo & Stitch, Brother Bear, and the aborted A Few Good Ghosts - were made/to be made at the now-defunct Florida unit, while Burbank handled goliath-budget heavies like Tarzan and Treasure Planet. If Everest is not an ODW production, will ODW make something else then? Or will they collaborate on certain movies?

Does DreamWorks still plan to send some movies overseas so that they don't cost anywhere near $125 million to make? Or better yet, to another state? I'm not sure what Chris DeFaria's game plan is here, I've heard many different stories here and there. It's all a bit convoluted, but whatever direction DreamWorks goes, we shall see.

What say you?

Literal Reboot: Disney To Continue 'TRON'?

TRON, TRON, TRON...

Over six years ago, Walt Disney Studios made the belated sequel to their 1982 sci-fi gem TRON. A film that meshed live-action and fully computer-animated sequences to create a world inside the computer, TRON didn't quite catch on back in the day. When released on video, it little by little grew a sizable cult following. It was enough to make Disney consider a sequel for years and years and years, and they even gave it a deluxe two-disc DVD set for its 20th anniversary.

Back when Disney didn't let go of these kinds of things...

The sequel eventually made it into development during the days when Dick Cook was Chairman of the film studio. Titled TRON: Legacy, it really wasn't a good film, but boy was there a lot of passion in it. Director Joseph Kosinski crafted what I like to call a big tribute to the original that still functioned as a sequel. Boasting excellent action sequences and a rock-solid soundtrack by Daft Punk, I love how they re-imagined the world.

TRON, being an early 80s film, worked off of the limitations of the computers of the era. Naturally, the now primitive-looking CGI in the film really works because those were the days of Apple IIs and Commodore 64s. A computer world based on those kinds of machines makes a lot of sense. With Legacy, they took the overall aesthetic of TRON and made it flashier, more detailed, the like. Light Cycles still resembled the old ones, as did various vehicles and architecture. It was a fitting upgrade. All of that, to me, makes up for the inconsistent script. I felt the story itself was fine, it just needed sharper execution in its second half, and a lead who could've been a little more interesting.

The fate of the TRON franchise has always been... Well, seemingly dour.

TRON: Legacy was in post-production when Cook was ousted from the studio, and was replaced with a young executive from the Disney Channel board named Rich Ross. He was highly unprepared for what he had been handed, and the company made the dire mistake of putting all the chips down for this movie... All the while letting Cook leftovers like Prince of Persia die at the box office.

You see, in mid-2010, Hollywood was still hoping to get a slice of Avatar cake. Movies like Clash of the Titans were hastily post-converted to 3D in an attempt to mimic that success, and by then, audiences soured quickly on the gimmick. 3D now meant nothing, and it didn't help that the first smash after Avatar, Disney's own Alice in Wonderland, broke the billion at the worldwide box office. Back in 2010? $1 billion was still a magic number. Nowadays, plenty of films reach that benchmark like it's nothing.

TRON: Legacy boasted good 3D and sequences that were filmed in IMAX (also new and exciting at the time), talk said that Disney was hoping that this movie would be the next Avatar. Yes, a sequel to a 1982 sci-fi cult classic that most people probably only knew through a cutaway-gag reference on Family Guy, was being considered the "next Avatar". Sure, in March 2010 they didn't predict 3D's collapse, but the next Avatar? A once-in-a-blue-moon kind of smash? C'mon! TRON: Legacy cost $170 million, Disney overspent on the marketing, and when the movie collected a good $400 million worldwide, well... It was uncertain whether a third movie would go through or not.

An animated prequel series to TRON: Legacy, TRON: Uprising, started out with strong ratings... But then Disney death-slotted the series, moving it to a time where few could even watch it. It died quickly. Disney effectively derezzed TRON by the time Rich Ross was ousted. Ross had the shortest tenure of Disney movie studio chairman, and that's quite telling. Current Chairman Alan Horn and live-action studio president Sean Bailey seemingly had no interest in revisiting TRON, and the slate is heavy on remakes of the studio's iconic animated classics. Plus, they have their sci-fi/action fix with Marvel and Star Wars.

Then out of nowhere, in early 2015, we heard that TRON 3 was going to be a go. Filming was set to occur in that following October, but then May 2015 came around. Disney's massive-budget sci-fi tentpole Tomorrowland bombed at the box office, and within days, Disney officially pulled the plug on TRON: Ascension.

Recently, Collider held a special IMAX screening for TRON: Legacy. Kosinski was present, gave a 30-minute Q&A session, and talked about the status of the sequel. He essentially that it was waiting for the right time to move forward, a.k.a. waiting for the day the executives say "yes" and green light it. I wasn't holding my breath...

Now, according to The Hollywood Reporter, TRON 3 is back on. Or is it? Kosinski might be out the door, the report says that this "reboot" is not a direct sequel to TRON: Legacy, and it will use elements from the TRON: Ascension script. Only one producer is back, who also produced Kosinski's sci-fi adventure Oblivion. A prominent character in that script was someone named Ares, and Disney apparently wants him to be the main focus of the new movie. Who is set to play this character? Jared Leto.

I have some concerns here. First off, I hope they continue the Flynns' story, even though it's not set to be a "direct sequel". I don't really know how I feel about a third TRON focusing on an all-new character and cast, and to be fair, TRON: Legacy did write a prominent character named Yori out while keeping Kevin Flynn and Alan Bradley/TRON. My other concern? Well, I don't quite want Jared Leto in this, given the things he was apparently accused of doing, his acting skills notwithstanding. Disney can circle many other "hot" stars for this.

My pragmatic side says "Oh quit complaining about the story, at least a new TRON is being made!" But truthfully, I'm not digging the idea of possibly leaving the Flynns behind, or sidelining them for a new character who was never established in the previous movies. No need for a reboot, the story needs to be continued if you ask me. Improve upon what didn't work in numero due, and make for a grand slam that is the best of the sequels, if not the series.

It just seems weird. I thought Disney wanted to have nothing to do with TRON these days, but I guess something is sparking their interest in it. Whether it was the Collider screening or the attraction at Shanghai Disneyland, I don't know. All things considered, $400 million is not bad for a sequel to a cult movie. Compared to what Disney spent on it, yeah, it wasn't quite "successful"... But people did see it. I liken it to movies like Pacific Rim, they may not have made back their money, but they did get a sizable amount of audiences into theaters. Pacific Rim's sequel is filming, thanks in part to how it did in China and probably because they're owned by a massive Chinese conglomerate now. Who says TRON 3 can't and shouldn't happen?

That all being said, I am not going to get my hopes up. The last time I did that, Disney dashed them. Disney's dashed my hopes for these kinds of things several times. The thing is in its infancy, and these days I don't believe many things are actually happening till the day cameras are rolling. I felt this way about Pacific Rim: Uprising (terrible, generic title by the way), because at one point, it seemed like Universal was going to jettison that one. I kept saying "may not happen, may not happen", well after the likes of John Boyega were cast. I kept doubting it until it was confirmed that it was actually in production. I will do the same for TRON: Whatever They Call It as well. Till cameras are rolling, this thing is walking on thin ice. Will it make it? Who knows.

What say you?