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?

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?

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?

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?

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?

Everything is Awesome-er...: 'Lego Movie Sequel' Will Be a Space Action Musical

The team behind the Lego Movie franchise is sure going to pull out all the stops for the sequel...

On the heels of The Lego Batman Movie's success, director Chris McKay said in an interview that The Lego Movie Sequel is going to be two things: A space action movie, and a big musical.

“LEGO 2 is going to be this big musical and space action movie. They need a lot of the writing, a lot of development, not only with script development, but development with songwriters. So it was very ambitious to get that movie out.”

Well then...

Warner Animation Group and this team really want to top themselves. With The Lego Batman Movie being as a great as it was, I have a feeling that they're going to put their absolute all into the sequel. There were concerns early on about the picture because it lost its director Rob Schrab, and folk also worry because Phil Lord and Christopher Miller aren't writing the script. They penned a draft before getting a gig in a galaxy far, far away, and BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg is sharpening it. Mike Mitchell will direct the film.

Honestly, now I can see why. Mitchell has already directed a pretty successful animated musical, last autumn's lite-psychedelic DreamWorks romp Trolls. It looked awful from the trailers, but ended up being pretty decent. Some point to Mitchell's not-so-great movies, and clickbait leads you to believe he's a hack, but no... He has some decent stuff under his belt.

So, big time songs. A perfect send-up of the recent resurgence in animated musicals, I'd say. I expect it to hit all the biggies, from Frozen to Sing, and maybe even hit some classics - animated or not. Whatever it ends up being, I like this mix of genres! A little less than two years away, my excitement grows.

What say you?

Rebuilding: 'Lego Movie Sequel' Switches Directors

The Lego Movie Sequel had one of its big pieces replaced...

The film, originally slated for a summer 2018 release, had been pushed to February 2019 a while ago. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the genius writing-directing duo behind the first film, weren't going to direct the sequel, but they were going to write it. Their script is currently being rewritten by BoJack Horseman creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg.

Up until now, the picture was set to be directed by Rob Schrab. He was one of the writers of Monster House, the creator of the comic Scud: The Disposable Assassin, and a worked on quite a few comedy shows here and there. He is now off the picture, due to... You guessed it! Creative differences.

His replacement is Mike Mitchell, who has a history with family films. Mitchell recently directed DreamWorks' Trolls with Walt Dohrn, and had also directed the studio's Shrek Forever After. He had even animated on a couple of their films, while directing some live-action films in the mid-to-late 2000s. He is also known for... Alvin and the Chipmunks 3, but he directed the live-action portion of Sponge out of Water. With Trolls, I think he showed some potential, so maybe he could make The Lego Movie Sequel work.

Again, the current draft of the script is being done by the BoJack Horseman creator, BoJack Horseman is a successful adult-oriented animated Netflix show that's actually smart and "adult". Now of course Lego Movie Sequel won't be just that, but I'm confident that Bob-Waksberg will breathe something fresh into the sequel, and knock it out of the park, despite the director change.

What say you?

(via The Hollywood Reporter)

Despicable Sequels: Illumination Announces Sequel-Heavy Slate

Illumination Entertainment... What a well-oiled hit-making machine...

As Sing continues to hang on at the box office, the studio has rolled out a revised slate that adds two sequels to the mix.

Remember how The Secret Life of Pets 2 was set to open in July of 2018, just two years after the release of the first one? That's no more, the film has now taken the July 3, 2019 slot.

Another sequel fills their summer 2020 slot: Minions 2. That is opening July 3, 2020. When will enough be enough?

Finally, and this was totally inevitable, Sing 2 has been penciled in for Christmas Day 2020. Four years after numero uno.

No word on what will take the July 2018 slot Pets 2 left vacant, but... Yeah, sequels sequels sequels.

Forget your old complaints about DreamWorks being sequel-heavy, forget the "Pixar is a sequel factory now!" schlop. Illumination has gleefully taken the cake. Outside of an already-adapted Dr. Seuss story, their slate is sequels and franchise entries. So far, they've already released two sequels... All within the span of five years. Unless an original miraculously finds its way into July 2018, this is what we're stuck with. What the heck's going on with Johnny Express and Flanimals? So much for a push for more original stuff. PR-friendly words...

Now, nothing is ever concrete. It's very possible that Illumination will slate an original (read: something that isn't a sequel, before someone chimes in) in-between two of the three sequels. They have nothing else slated for 2019, so maybe Johnny Express can worm its way into a fall slot and give us something cool. Something to off-set the barrage of sequels. I don't dislike sequels, but three in a row? C'mon.

You could bring up the fact that DreamWorks did a three-in-a-row once... Kung Fu Panda 2, Puss in Boots (yeah yeah, spin-off! Still a franchise entry, though), and Madagascar 3. All released back-to-back, all were pretty well-received. I found all three to be strong pictures. It's a good point! To be fair, many an animation fan in 2011 looked at Puss in Boots - coming off the heels of the relatively unwanted and safe-as-vanilla Shrek Forever After - and deemed it unnecessary. Kung Fu Panda 2 was highly anticipated because of how good the first one was, whereas I think we kind of treated Madagascar 3 as an "oh well, they had to make it" kind of movie.

That being said, we got the three-in-a-row because of scheduling issues. In 2009, DreamWorks' 2010-2012 slate was a whole lot different. The same is true of Sony Pictures Animation. The Smurfs 2, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2, and Hotel Transylvania 2 all opened back-to-back as well. Leave out Goosebumps, and you actually get four in a row, with Smurfs: The Lost Village. The streak is ironically going to be broken by The Emoji Movie. In Sony's case, it was two things... At one point, 2014 was supposed to house a feature called The Familiars, which would've put it between Cloudy 2 and Hotel Transylvania 2. At another time, Sony Animation's 2014 film was going to be Genndy Tartakovsky's Popeye. Second... There was a complete management overhaul not too long ago. Their slate looked a whole lot different before the late 2014 hack and subsequent switcheroos.

I think it's a me problem as well, because Illumination kind of frustrates me to be honest. I think their movies show potential and have some charm, but end up feeling very plastic and corporate. Plus their only Dr. Seuss adaptation (for now) is another issue. I like that they put out two original, half-decent movies this year, but they can do better. For a studio run by one guy that keeps its budgets down, they really play it safe. Despicable Me, as far as I'm concerned, is their only genuinely good film. But like all overhyped things, it took on a form of its own that can be somewhat annoying when crammed down your throat during a period of time. Minions, Minions, Minions... Screaming yellow tictacs, their designs so generic, yet people love them so much. So much for their "animation is for kids" attitudes, they find joy in the simplest of animated characters.

I don't hate the Minions, I think they're a lot of fun in the first Despicable Me, because they didn't overuse them in that film. In part deux, yeah, they're more prominent and the film's could've-been-great story about the kids wanting a mother takes a backseat. Despicable Me 3's teaser intrigues me because the Minions only appear for like a few seconds, the trailer's all Gru and the new villain.

I'll put aside my bias for a few seconds. Minions 2 could work if it's still set before the events of Despicable Me. The first spin-off ends with them ending up with Gru, so the sequel could be about them and their relationship with Gru throughout his childhood. I'm not saying that Gru is some hyper-compelling character who needs all this backstory (the stuff with his mother rejecting him was enough), but in this world of "everything needs a sequel", might as well salvage it in some way.

Sing 2's existence doesn't bother me, but where do they go from there? Same thing with The Secret Life of Pets 2. They could use the sequels to explore new avenues and experiment, but they didn't do that with Despicable Me 2, which leads me to believe that they'll just be business-as-usual entries that gross a billion dollars each and Universal/Comcast/Illumination goes home happy. Hey, it's business, I get it... But I still think they should even things out a little bit.

Despite the fact that these things reel in money, maybe I wouldn't be as ornery if they only announced Sing 2 and pushed Pets 2 - already a known thing - back. Minions 2 in-between both, instead of an original, kind of irks me a bit.

What say you?

Animated Future: Paramount Animation's Plans, 'Monster Trucks' Debacle Explained

Well, Paramount Animation's second film is out, and it is set to trip out of the gate.

We all know the story of Monster Trucks now. Former Paramount executive Adam Goodman, who was instrumental in the early building of Paramount's animation division, got the idea from his 3-year-old son. Originally conceived as a four-quadrant blockbuster meant to reel in Transformers crowds and spawn follow-ups, the Chris Wedge-directed (or did he really direct the finished product?) hybrid movie was delayed several times, reshoots occurred, the tone was changed to make it more kid-friendly, and it had fallen off the charts after Goodman was ousted in mid-2015. The LA Times' sources said the movie became an "orphan" after Goodman's departure.

Now the article also says that the constant delays had to do with the executives turning their attention to other projects, but if we are to believe an anonymous fellow...

Either way, it was supposed to come out as far back as May 29, 2015. The first delay pushed it to Christmas Day, but Paramount pushed it not too long after Star Wars: The Force Awakens officially got a near-holiday release date. Then it was pushed out of March 18, 2016, to today. The Little Prince briefly took the March 2016 slot until Paramount - at the very last second - dropped the film, Netflix swooped in and took it.

Yes, Paramount Animation has had a rocky start. Not much is expected of the movie now, as it looks to open with $10 million tops. Paramount took the write-down way back in August, an unprecedented move to say the least. You could tell from that point onward that this movie was going to be a "rip the band-aid" moment for them.

The studio's president, Marc Evans, didn't say much about Monster Trucks but did express enthusiasm for the next two announced projects: Sherlock Gnomes (the belated sequel to Gnomeo & Juliet) and Amusement Park. Of course, future Paramount Animation productions will be done by other studios, similar to Warner Animation Group. Rocket Pictures, Mikros, and MGM are doing Gnomes, and Spanish studio Ilion is handling Amusement Park.

He also mentioned that upcoming films will mostly be "conventional" animated movies, basically animated movies that know they are animated. Not live-action movies with hyper-real CGI elements in them, not movies like Monster Trucks. That's good, because I want to see what Paramount has up their sleeves in this field. It's been too long of a wait, and it's good to see some projects finally getting off the ground that aren't Nickelodeon-based.

Currently, Paramount Animation has three projects dated: The aforementioned Sherlock Gnomes and Amusement Park hit in January 2018 and March 2019 respectively, a third SpongeBob movie is penciled in for February 8, 2019, but that's likely going to move since WAG has The Lego Movie Sequel in that slot now. The budgets for these films should be reasonable, as the first Gnomeo cost only $36 million, Ilion's Planet 51 cost $70 million. Sponge out of Water, a mixed-media kinda picture, cost $74 million to make. Certainly much better than Monster Trucks and its unnecessarily gargantuan $125 million budget.

With that said, what's going on with previously-announced projects of theirs? What's going on with John Kahrs' Shedd? Or Beastlies? Or The New Kid? Or Trey Parker/Matt Stone's Giant Monsters Attack Japan?

What say you?

ChangeWorks: New Universal/DreamWorks Slate Unveiled

Well, it has finally happened...

DreamWorks' slate has been reconfigured. It was only a matter weeks, after we heard about layoffs and Universal's desire to restructure the studio. The shuttering of The Croods 2 came first, then the reports about DreamWorks cutting ties with the Indian unit (DDI), and then the talk of the slate being changed up...

Exhibitor Relations broke the news...

DreamWorks Animation's HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON 3 has been pushed back--March 1, 2019 instead of May 18, 2018.

— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) December 5, 2016

Oriental DreamWorks' animated film, EVEREST, climbs into theaters September 27, 2019. Tim Johnson (HOME, OVER THE HEDGE) directs.

— Exhibitor Relations (@ERCboxoffice) December 5, 2016

How To Train Your Dragon 3 has been delayed yet again...

At this point, I say "Whatever it takes, that's all that matters." Better that than cancellation, because one could argue that it could've been on the chopping block following the acquisition. The same goes for Larrikins, which curiously hasn't gotten a new date...

Yet? Is it keeping the current February 16, 2018 slot? Or is that going somewhere else?

Now we know what Oriental DreamWorks' mystery feature is, the "young girl and a yeti" story that Jill Culton (formerly of Pixar, director of Sony Animation's Open Season) pitched a while back. It will be that very Oriental DreamWorks project that was teased back at the beginning of 2015, that very mystery project. It now has a concrete release date: September 27, 2019. Culton, shockingly, isn't directing. Tim Johnson - director of DreamWorks' own Antz, Over the Hedge, and Home - will direct instead.

Some takeaways...

What's going on with Larrikins? Does that stay in 2018? Why the hush-hush? I thought that film was being "pulled back into story".

Everest was a project that I suspected would be the ODW mystery film, given the setting and the fact that it was announced rather close to all the ODW news. I assume ODW will make significantly smaller films, films that won't require $100 million+ budgets, so I can only imagine how this will look and feel.

Nothing on Shadows and Shrek 5, films that were eying 2019.

It looks like Universal will keep it down. One new Glendale-made movie will be released every calendar year. Oriental DreamWorks will probably make one every other year, so DreamWorks can still have their cake and eat it too, similar to how they outsourced Captain Underpants to Mikros. I wonder if they'll outsource to them again if that movie does well next summer.

So now from the looks of it...

Larrikins - February 16, 2018?
How To Train Your Dragon 3 - March 1, 2019
Everest - September 27, 2019
Shrek 5 - 2020?
Shadows - ??

Perhaps we'll get some more concrete info soon...

Add-on: Focus Features, being part of Comcast, moved the untitled LAIKA film previously set for 4/4/2018 to Dragon 3's old date. Good move on their part, the older date would've pitted it against Disney's A Wrinkle in Time...

Rough Transitioning: DreamWorks To Lay Off 170 Staff Members, More Delays?

It looks like the moon boy studio is being hit again...

More layoffs.

This was inevitable after strong rumors surfaced, ones that said DreamWorks would significantly downsize following the Comcast acquisition. It is official now, the Glendale studio will lay off roughly 170 people next month. According to the reports, some of this has to do with the recent cancellation of The Croods 2. The TAG Blog reveals more reasons...

Namely the release dates for two particular pictures in the pipeline. Mr. Hulett says that the timetables for these films - I'm guessing 2018's Larrikins and How To Train Your Dragon 3, previously rumored to be on the move - have changed, and that the films have no "hard and fast" release dates. So, to be determined? There was talk of the dragon threequel being moving back a bit, to probably the third or fourth quarter of 2018. Larrikins apparently was being "pulled back into story", indicating that we would have to wait until 2019 for that one. Other rumors suggested that DreamWorks is aiming to do just one picture every calendar year, as opposed to two.

It's a shame, but if it needs to be done, so be it. As long as we get these films, and in the best shape too, the waits will be worth it. I understand the possibility of How To Train Your Dragon 3 being pushed back *yet* again is a sore spot for some, I'm particularly miffed, but the reason I'm not as upset is because I'm more worried about possible cancellation than a delay. I'd rather wait than not have it at all, you know? How To Train Your Dragon 2 did very well at the overseas box office, but it wasn't quite the domestic champion, and DreamWorks let some of their staff go when the movie opened to underwhelming numbers.

As long as these two films still happen, that's all I care about at this point. As long as Universal heads allow DreamWorks to do what they please and take some risks, I'll be fine... But we don't know what Universal wants out of DreamWorks. While Illumination is headed up by a CEO with a clear vision of where to go (whether we like that particular vision or not), DreamWorks is currently headed up by these guys. Will they beg for more mindless, kid-friendly things and franchise stuff? Or will they back off and let them do their thing?

Who knows, but it appears that these heads want DreamWorks to really scale down. It makes sense, because unlike Illumination, DreamWorks mostly operates out of California and overspends on their films. While Trolls is doing quite well here in the states, it seems to be slogging overseas, which isn't good for a film that cost $125 million to make. What they need to do, to me, is find a way to keep those budgets under control because not every PG-rated family-friendly CGI film is going to make serious coin at the box office. You can't just expect things like Trolls and Boss Baby to be locked for $400 million worldwide grosses. You can't just pull $400 million out of a hat, magically.

The plot continues to thicken...

Aliens and Mutants: Fox Updates Tentpole Slate, 'Avatar 2' Dated?

20th Century Fox has re-shuffled their line-up of tentpoles...

The biggest gasp here is the inclusion of an Untitled Fox/Lightstorm Film...

Lightstorm is James Cameron's studio. What has Mr. Cameron been working on all these years? No, not Alita: Battle Angel. He's producing that, while Robert Rodriguez directs. That's also already set for July 2018. If the answer wasn't obvious... Avatar 2...

Word on the street is that James Cameron is playing nice with Disney, and the reason makes sense... Pandora - The World of Avatar in Disney's Animal Kingdom. Some rumors from earlier in the week suggested that Disney was going to move the untitled Han Solo Anthology film to the mid-December slot, but it looks like the smuggler will remain in the traditional mid-May station. It adds up, since the first Avatar was a big December release back in 2009.

I mean, what else could it be? A long-awaited sequel to The Abyss?

Several other Fox biggies moved around.

Alien: Covenant has sort-of traded places with Kingsman: The Golden Circle. Alien: Covenant is now set to open on May 19, 2017, Kingsman: The Golden Circle is set for October 6, 2017. Slight bummer on the latter.

The Marvel side of things saw big updates. The 10/6/2017 Fox/Marvel film is now off the slate. Their slate now...

03/02/2018 *previously scheduled*
06/29/2018 *previously scheduled*
11/02/2018 *new addition*
02/14/2019 *new addition*

The Fox/Marvel slate has been something of a jumble these days. Deadpool 2 lost director Tim Miller, Fox hastily got his replacement. New Mutants has been on the table, X-Force has been teased, and Gambit has been on-and-off. I'm thinking Deadpool 2 nabs the Valentine's Day 2019 slot, much like its predecessor. Not sure about the other dates.

Interestingly, Paramount scheduled an untitled "event" film for 11/2/2018. So it'll be duking it out with an untitled Fox/Marvel film and Disney's live-action Mulan. I have a feeling it's going to be hauling its way out of that slot.

Anyways...

Alien: Covenant? Could be good, but I kinda want Alien 5 more. Kingsman: The Golden Circle? I adored the first one, I'm there day one. Avatar 2? I don't dislike the first film, if two has more of a story and fleshes out characters, I'll check it out. All the upcoming Fox/Marvels? I'm interested to see what direction they go in, because Deadpool was like a turbo shot, Logan looks great, and we'll see a new beginning after we bid the old X-Men crew adieu.

What say you?

Dashing to the Front: 'The Incredibles 2' Moves Up!

Talk about a big switcheroo, Pixar has played musical chairs with two of their upcoming sequels.

The Incredibles 2 and Toy Story 4 have swapped spots. The Incredibles 2 is now set to open on June 15, 2018, while Toy Story 4 - being pushed back for the second time - will open on June 21, 2019...

Honestly, I'm not surprised that The Incredibles 2 has surged ahead in development. Director/writer Brad Bird is a lightning-fast problem solver, a skill that he probably got from his days on The Simpsons. Exhibit A is the first Incredibles, which he worked on for four years, most Pixar films take longer journeys to the big screen. Exhibit B is Ratatouille. In early 2005, the Pixar brass removed Jan Pinkava from the 5-year-old project, and that was around 2 1/2 years before the picture's summer 2007 debut. Bird turned it around so fast, and the resulting movie... You wouldn't even think for a second that it had all those troubles!

The Hollywood Reporter implied that Bird's Walt-like method was indeed the reason why these two sequels were swapped. An "accelerated production schedule", the insiders say.

Toy Story 4, with its new summer 2019 date, will nearly coincide with the 20th anniversary of Toy Story 2. Some are reading the delay as a bad sign, thinking that Toy Story 4 is having multiple story troubles and might be beyond saving. I get that a lot of us don't want Toy Story 4 (I wouldn't flinch if it were cancelled tomorrow), but I think it's simple: Incredibles 2 surged ahead, Bird knows what he's doing, and there's a huge demand for a sequel. Toy Story already got two sequels and spin-offs, this is the first Pixar-made Incredibles anything in years. They probably figure that we can wait for another Toy Story, and that a lot of folk have been waiting a long, long, long time for an Incredibles follow-up.

The old D23 poster, I know.

Toy Story 4, should it keep its current release date, will have taken 7 years to make. That's not unusual for a Pixar film. Let's keep in mind that WALL-E, counting all its early iterations, took fourteen years to get to the big screen. Some projects come together faster than others, and if Pixar needs more time to really make what is actually one of their riskiest film, that's fine. Toy Story 4 has a tall order to fill, and that's living up to one of the rare perfect trilogies, and being the follow-up to what was such a perfect ending. Maybe a whole story change is in order right now (I'll be brutally honest, I don't really dig the whole idea of Bo Peep being pushed back into the story), or they're trying their damnedest to make something impossible work.

Or maybe, as a friend of mine suggested, it's because of director John Lasseter. Lasseter, ever since the acquisition ten years ago, has been a super-busy man. Not only is he running Pixar, but also Walt Disney Animation Studios, DisneyToon Studios, and he's also a key person in the theme parks and elsewhere. I was shocked when he said he was directing the film, because he really doesn't have all the time for that... Or does he? I know he directed Cars 2 from his iPad in less than a year, and that movie was a mess. To be hands-on, he'd either have to put some duties aside, or really multi-task like a pro.

Before anyone brings it up, I'm aware that Josh Cooley is a co-director on the picture. At Pixar, however, a co-director is not necessarily a second director. It's more like the director who handles things on the lower deck of the ship. Lasseter's Walt Disney Animation Studios uses this model, but often times, more than one person is a main director. Take Zootopia for example: Main directors were Byron Howard and Rich Moore, and there was one co-director: Jared Bush. Perhaps Toy Story 4 needs a second "main" director, so why not move Cooley to the position?

Who knows.

What say you?

Sequel Powers: Michael McCullers Writing 'Shrek 5' and 'Hotel Transylvania 3'

As Shrek 5 gets closer and closer to release, whenever that may be, we hear a little bit more about it...

Michael McCullers, confirmed in an interview with Trolls and Shrek Forever After directors Mike Mitchell and Walt Dohrn, is writing the script. From this, we can assume that those directors aren't tackling the ogre's fifth entry. Apparently McCullers came up with the story's idea, too. Who is McCullers? He wrote the two Austin Powers sequels, and has also written DreamWorks' forthcoming The Boss Baby.

This is good news to me. A little fresh blood, and someone who worked on another successful comedy series spearheaded by Mike Myers, is a good fit for Shrek. McCullers could perhaps weave some of that Austin Powers sense of humor into Shrek, which I think has been a tired series for a loooong, loooong while. (Yes folks, I'm the odd duck that doesn't think Shrek 2 is anything more than just decent.)

Getting his feet wet with animation, McCullers is also set to write Hotel Transylvania 3 for Sony Animation, which does have a concrete release date. That's also good news I think, because I wasn't fond of the first one, and apparently numero due suffered from the same problems: Great direction by Genndy Tartakovsky at odds with the Adam Sandler brigade's writing. Hopefully the third one is a step in the right direction and is a good animated comedy, not 90 minutes of noise with a mostly insincere, box-checking story slapped onto it.

It's interesting to see McCullers transition into animation at this stage in his career. He had previously contributed additional script material to DreamWorks' own Mr. Peabody & Sherman. Now tapped to write some real biggies, I can only imagine what he lands from there.

What say you?

Frogs and Pigeons: Blue Sky and Fox Animation Announce 'Frogkisser', New-ish Info on 'Pigeon: Impossible'

A new Blue Sky project has been revealed... And I found out some things about another one...

Let's start with the new one.

It's called Frogkisser. It's based on an upcoming book by Garth Nix, a different take on the Frog Prince fairy tale. It is set to be, according to The Hollywood Reporter, a hybrid of live-action and animation. A first for the studio, but it will also be a co-production with Fox Animation, who have announced several projects before but haven't gotten around to doing them yet, such as Nimona, Welcome to the Jungle, and a few others. Apparently Anubis will also be a Blue Sky/Fox Animation co-production.

This frog prince story involves a woman named Anya, who has the "unfortunate ability to break curses with a magic-assisted kiss". She flees after her stepmother's new husband takes over her kingdom, joining forces with a talking dog and a boy thief trapped in the body of a newt.

As reported earlier in the month, this is part of Fox Animation's new plan. A long-time animation executive named Nate Hopper (previously from Sony Animation, and used to be part of Fox's live-action side in the 90s/early 00s) was named the spearheading force of a live-action/CG hybrid plan... So that makes me wonder what's going to happen to the previous Fox Animation projects.

If they plan to make every film a hybrid, it would differentiate them from Blue Sky... But apparently Blue Sky is involved in this frog picture, and apparently Fox Animation will have a hand in making Anubis. We'll get there in a second!

Either way, it sounds like an interesting take on the story, but it'll kind of hurt if this takes off because... Well, we all know... The Princess and the Frog, Disney Animation's great return to traditional animation, didn't quite make a mark at the box office. All of that aside, it sounds like it could be decent.

Now... The one that sort of fell off my radar: Pigeon: Impossible...

I was aware of this project's existence for a while, and I know it's also a 2009 short film. I also know that Box Office Mojo had it listed as a Fox-distributed, 1/18/2019 animated release. (The same day as the Playmobil movie.) That being said, I didn't see anything else on the movie in question. Looked all around, didn't see any report of a Pigeon: Impossible movie.

Now I came across this... A 20th Century Fox consumer products statement that a friend of mine found, it states that the film is indeed a Blue Sky production and will open in 2019. Also note that the thing mentions both this and Ferdinand, but not Anubis.

Anubis is a conundrum.

The earliest reports on that feature - based on the Bruce Zick novel The Anubis Tapestry: Between Twilights - date from April 2008, some reports said that it was just a Fox Animation production, no Blue Sky, others said it was going to be a Blue Sky film. The picture got a release date back in 2013, it was once thought to be ready for this past summer! Later in the year, Fox pushed it to March 2018, and it has remained there ever since.

Blue Sky's website doesn't have a page for upcoming films, so I couldn't find any information there. IMDb has nothing, and anyone can edit that site, ditto Wikipedia. But reports over the years have indicated that Blue Sky is/was involved, but what about Fox Animation? At this rate I doubt it hits in 2018, especially on the same day as Sony/Animal Logic's Peter Rabbit.


Other than that, the short Pigeon: Impossible is a cute, fun little send-up of Mission: Impossible and spy movies. Not sure how they'll stretch that out to 90 minutes or so, but if done right, it could be a very clever comedy. That's in Blue Sky's wheelhouse, as the first Ice Age and the first Rio exceed at what they set out to do. If Pigeon: Impossible is similar, it should be a fun cartoony comedy.

Also, what will it mean for Left Tern? That's a Blue Sky picture that was first announced in 2012, described as "Home Alone with birds". Still a go? Even with Pigeon: Impossible moving forward?

So, this appears to be the studio's slate...

12/22/2017 - Ferdinand
03/23/2018 - Anubis (likely moving)
01/18/2019 - Pigeon: Impossible
TBA - Left Tern
TBA - Mutts
TBA - Alienology

What say you? 

Ogre the Horizon: 'Shrek 5' Script Is Finished, Says Eddie Murphy

Of course, many know that the green ogre is on his way back to theaters in a few years...

As we've heard for a little while, DreamWorks' plan is to release Shrek 5 some time in 2019 alongside an original film of theirs called Shadows, the re-heat of the ill-fated Me and My Shadow. Eddie Murphy was interviewed by CinemaBlend recently, and he said that the script for the fifth installment is already done.

"They took a nice long break [after 2010's Shrek Forever After]. The next Shrek... I think Jeffrey [Katzenberg, producer] told me 2019? 2019 or 2020, it will be ready. But they've got a good script, they wrote a nice, good script."

That is a nice boulder.

2019 it shall be. When Universal inks the date, I have no idea. They're probably looking at the playing field. All of the Shrek films were mostly mid-to-late May releases, so in May 2019 they'll have to look out for the currently-untitled Avengers film that's sure to be humongous, alongside other competitors like Warner Bros.' Minecraft movie.

Shrek 5 was as inevitable as the turning of the earth. Shrek Forever After may have gotten the lowest attendance here in the states, but it was the biggest one overseas. Perhaps the wait will work in DreamWorks' favor, because 90s/early 00s nostalgia is currently a force to be reckoned with. The original Shrek turned 15 this year, so yeah, the "move out of the way kids, I've been XX years for this!" crowd will probably rush out to see Shrek's fifth adventure. Worldwide, I expect it to do very well. Shrek 5 was also well in place before the Comcast acquisition, it was a particularly smart business move in a time where DreamWorks was getting hit with costly flops left and right.

Like I've said before, I'm not fazed. It'll pocket the studio some cash, they can use that to fund cool originals. That's all neat and such. Really, I think the first Shrek is the only good one, but that has its faults. The sequels are either middling or bland. I think you can make an exceptional Shrek movie out of different parts of the series: The heart of the first film, the loose feel of the second film, and the adventure of the fourth film. Keep it witty, instead of relying on humor that only middle-schoolers find funny. I also wish it will be an actually good satire, because one of the weaker elements of the first Shrek - to me - was its attempts at lampooning Disney. It mostly doesn't work as a Disney send-up because a lot of that film was Katzenberg low-key venting his frustrations about working for the Mouse and Mr. Eisner. Consequently, it seems more bitter than funny.

Also, make me want to root for these characters again... Because if there's one thing that's always been good about these films, it's the characters. Though I get the sense that it'll go the safe route and halfheartedly poke at what's hot now... Like Frozen! A film that, ironically, felt kind of Shrek-like! I don't know, maybe I am asking for too much, but I think you can still do something with a property like Shrek. Will it be fresh again in 3 years? Or as dry as ever?

What say you?