More Players: Imagine Ent. to Launch Feature Animation Slate

Imagine Entertainment, the studio founded by director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer, is planning to get in on the animation game...

They will be joining forces with Animal Logic, the studio that did the animation for the Lego films, previous WB animated releases like Happy Feet and The Owls of Ga'Hoole, and Sony's upcoming Peter Rabbit. Their plan? Launch a slate of animated family films.

Now, family filmmaking isn't out of Imagine's wheelhouse, for they did the live-action Grinch film and Curious George. That being said, it's yet again another studio/team getting into the field and making what everyone else is making. They plan to spend less than $85 million on these pictures, which I do think is smart.

Grazer himself said:

“This marriage was a fortuitous situation, an opportunity for a unique chemistry for what we have done. Ron and I have always been narrative storytellers, the goal to reach people emotionally. Many times that has been movies and TV that are thematic family comedies. Ron has been in that space since he was an actor, and movies like Grinch, Liar Liar, Curious George and The Nutty Professor. What Animal Logic brings as the perfect complement is its ability to extend that family sensibility, and to make things look amazing. When we saw The Lego Movie, we, along with most anyone else who saw the movie, found it to be uniquely progressive creatively. The simple things that matter here are, how things look and make you feel. We believe this is a perfect marriage of skill sets.”

CEO/co-founder of Animal Logic, Zareh Nalbandian, said:

“We are both known for wanting to tell great stories, looking for things different and innovative, and not formulaic. Strong characters, world creation but with a universality. We came up with a slate of ideas we want to make as soon as we started talking. The thing is, it sounds like a no-brainer to make family films in animation and hybrid animation. But it all comes down to compelling IPs, great ideas, high concepts that capture audience imaginations and that look different, whether it’s original creations, licensed IP, or great public domain characters that are ripe for reinvention.”

I don't know, folks... It all just sounds like typical stuff to me, and again, there's emphasis on live-action/animation hybrids these days. Fox Animation's slate is full of them, word on the street is that DreamWorks' Shadows might be a hybrid, other movies want to go for the Jungle Book VFX look.

Anyways, Howard is said to be directing at least one of the films, and their first release is aiming for late 2019 (a bit soon for a new house). I wish them the best, and hopefully the films they put out do stand out from the rest. Probably too hopeful of me, but... It's worth a shot. It seems like they're going to try to get some original ideas going, which is nice.

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?

Digging Up the Bones: Warner Animation Revives 'Bone' Movie

It looks like Bone is back on!

A Bone movie has been on the table as far back as the late 1990s. Jeff Smith's lauded blend of the cartoony and the epics of high fantasy got picked up by Warner Bros. in 2008, Animal Logic was set to do the animation for the adaptation. It went through a few writers over the years, even a director was attached at one point, but it never came to fruition.

It seemed like a no-brainer, for the series was family-friendly, and blended humor and adventure. I'll admit that I've barely read Bone, but from what I've seen of it over the years, I can't get enough of its style. In some ways, it has influenced some of my own work. While I'd prefer a traditionally animated film that really works off of the graphic novel's aesthetic, I'm glad it's happening.

Now, Warner Animation Group has tapped Mark Osborne - director of Kung Fu Panda and The Little Prince - to helm the long-gestating adaptation. Holy wow if this isn't a great choice, I don't know what is!

Osborne will be co-writing the script with Adam Kline. Mr. Kline is supposed to write the Artemis Fowl movie, if Disney ever gets around to approving it. I figured Bone would eventually be on Warner Animation Group's docket, and they intend to launch a franchise with it. I'd say one was long overdue, and it would be a nice break from the familiar Hanna-Barbera and Lego franchises that the group is going to expand in the future.

Animal Logic sounds right for this kind of picture, as they did tackle a similarly big, high fantasy story, The Owls of Ga'Hoole. That was based on a series of books, sadly that one came and went. Regardless of whether how good or bad it was, it was at least something that was a wee bit different. Happy Feet, issues notwithstanding, was also a little different and certainly stood out in a basket of mostly generic fluff. 2006, young'uns, was really not a good year in feature animation. It also helps that Happy Feet was a George Miller film, and even though the released film is very much a watered down version of what Miller had in mind, watered down George Miller is still George Miller.

Fun fact, at one point he wanted Mad Max: Fury Road to be a computer animated film. Now that would've been something! I wonder if he'd reconsider that for a future installment, because more are supposed to come.

Anyways, I think this is fantastic news all around. What say you?

Hoppin': Sony Announces 'Peter Rabbit' Cast

For the longest time, I couldn't quite get a clear answer on this picture.

Peter Rabbit, an adaptation of the century-old classic book by Beatrix Potter, is a live-action/CG hybrid that I thought was going to be a Sony Animation film. Some places said that was so, others didn't say anything. It appears that the picture, directed by Will Gluck of Easy A fame, is going to be a collaboration between Animal Logic (The Lego Movie, Happy Feet, fx for several blockbusters), Olive Bridge, and Sony Pictures.

It also now has a bit of a cast... And a pretty impressive one at that. James Corden will voice the titular rabbit, Rose Byrne will portray a live-action character named Bea, an all-new character based on Potter. Daisy Ridley and Elizabeth Debicki are set to provide voices. It's currently set to open on March 23, 2018, though Deadline and Variety say April 2018. Easter occurs on the 1st of that year, but Peter Rabbit isn't an Easter story so a slight push back in the US would not surprise me. Actually, Peter Rabbit's release date is the same day Blue Sky plans to open Anubis, but with their Ferdinand being pushed to Christmas 2017, I'm kind of doubting that Anubis will open in the first quarter of 2018.

Anyways, production's going to fire up soon. I can only imagine how they'll pull this one off. This appears to be the very first theatrical full-length feature based on the book, as previous adaptations were either TV shows or TV movies. Walt Disney had actually thought about adapting the books into an animated feature back in 1938, and asked Potter if he could adapt them, to which she said no. Apparently she did so because she didn't think her own illustrations would work on the big screen! Other accounts say it was a problem with marketing.

Either way, it seems like it'll be going the Paddington route rather than being an all-animated Sony Animation production. It sounds like it could be decent, because under Sony Animation, I would've had no idea where they would take it. Perhaps when it's released, they'll bill it as a Sony Animation film like they did with Goosebumps last year.

What say you?