Crumbled Cracker: 'Animal Crackers' Delayed, Facing Issues

It looks like Animal Crackers is having some trouble getting to the big screen.

The film, the passion project of fx/animation veteran Scott Christian Sava, was mostly done up at Blue Dream Studios in Spain with help from several other units/investors. For a long time, we kept hearing that the CG picture - a fun-sounding story looking to emulate the feel of some 80s family films - was aiming for a late Q1/Q2 release this year. However, the film didn't seem to lock an American distributor, thus no concrete release date ever showed up.

From what I've heard, the filmmakers looked to Relativity Media, but we all know what Relativity has been going through since the summer of 2015. Despite getting out of bankruptcy not too long ago, Relativity pulled a couple movies from their slate this past November, one of which was a long-delayed Halle Berry action flick called Kidnap. Prior to its abrupt disappearance, it was set to open in December, and a trailer for the thing was rolling in theaters. The studio was also sold to Singaporean company called Yuuzoo.

Relativity never inked a date for Animal Crackers, but it was on their slate for a little while, something that flew right past my radar over the last few months. The crew had wanted this thing out by the middle of this coming April. April 21st, in fact. Believe it or not, but National Animal Crackers Day is a thing... It's April 18th. You learn something new everyday!

Anyways, Animal Crackers' animation work is all done. What's left? Sound and music, of course. All post-production stuff. Unfortunately, it won't be making that date. Sava himself spilled some beans on the movie's Facebook page...

This is nothing surprising, but rarely do you hear the filmmakers themselves say something like this early on. Sava further explained the problem in a later comment...

So now the desired date is the out-of-the-way Labor Day weekend slot. Animated films typically don't land around there, only the smaller ones. (Such as Lionsgate's US dub of Robinson Crusoe.) It's smart, though, because a lot of the good slots have been taken up this year. August is booked with The Emoji Movie and The Nut Job 2, and late September has The Lego Ninjago Movie.

Is he referring to Relativity themselves? Or another group of people? Cartoon Brew notes that Odin's Eye Entertainment was supposed to sell the film to potential buyers, but they no longer list it on their website. I had a feeling something was up, given the quietness, the lack of a firm release date, and a few other things.

Hopefully that "bad stuff" is settled, and that Sava's film eventually gets a wide US release. What say you?

More and More Animals: See an 'Animal Crackers' Animation Test

Animal Crackers has been in the making for quite a while.

Apparently the personal pet project of longtime VFX man/animator Scott Christian Sava, this film is set to come out some time this year. It's being done up at Blue Dream in Spain, and it has yet to lock an American distributor, but it seems like the film is in the final laps of production.

It's this neat-sounding story about magical animal crackers. A person eats a certain animal-shaped snack, they turn into that animal. Below is a test, a sort of showing off of the concept, probably made some time during pre-production as the movements aren't quite sharp. In terms of the look, it overall is nice on the eyes.


Animal Crackers Concept Test by CGMeetup
It doesn't look too bad. It looks like they'll have fun with this idea, and the dialogue here is solid.

I have a feeling it won't be ready for March, the end of the first quarter. We've heard little to nothing about it for a while, even from the film's UK and Canadian distributors. This leads me to believe that it won't be out until summer at the earliest. This isn't uncommon for non-mainstreamers like this, that often get picked up long after they've been completed. Here's a fine example: ToonBox's Spark waited and waited to get distribution, it's coming out in April... The movie was completed way back, like before April of last year!

Anyways, to recap, Animal Crackers is not only a Sava film, but also a Tony Bancroft film. Yes, that Tony Bancroft, who directed Mulan and is a Disney animation veteran. It also features an all-star cast consists of the likes of John Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Danny DeVito, and even folks like Sylvester Stallone! Harvey Fierstein, who voiced Yao in Mulan, will be in this as well just to make things even cooler.

Animal Crackers has been on my radar for a while. It sounds like it's aiming to be a fun film based on a cool premise. I'm also looking forward to seeing this studio's debut feature. Scott and Blue Dream have another feature that's deep into production, Pet Robot. I've seen some footage from that one on the studio's reel on Vimeo, it also looks like it could be decent.

What say you?