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?

Fox, The Bullfighter: Fox Pits 'Ferdinand' Against 'Star Wars'

Confidence? Or lack of faith that I find disturbing?

Fox has moved Blue Sky's Ferdinand, a new adaptation of the classic children's book about a bull who would rather smell flowers than participate in a bullfight, up a week. It is now set to open the same day as Star Wars: The Last Jedi.

Literally, Fox is the bullfighter here... Star Wars will either charge this thing right out of the ring, or Ferdinand will somehow hold up. But here's the thing. This new Blue Sky film, to me, is more than just blockbuster counter-programming. I get it in a way. Star Wars is a PG-13 spectacle for everyone, while families who aren't willing to take their young'uns to it - or if it's sold out at their local multiplexes - can turn to Ferdinand. Worked for Fox's own Alvin and the Hipmunks 4, so why not this?

But I think it's more than that. As we all know now, not every animated family film is destined to magically pull big numbers out of a hat. Blue Sky's films, on average, cost about $90-100 million to make. The ideal situation? The film in question pulls about $250-300 million at the worldwide box office. Some of Blue Sky's recent films have barely topped $100 million domestically, and in one case, completely missed it.

That very film was last summer's Ice Age 5, the franchise is fortunately something of a hot commodity in other parts of the world. It was pretty much saved there, but something like Epic or Peanuts or Ferdinand? Well, those are arguably untested with worldwide audiences. Epic didn't soar overseas, nor did the film based on the iconic comic strip. So Ferdinand's foreign gross is totally up in the air as well, though I can see it doing well in Spain and parts of Europe given the setting.

In short, I don't want it to flop, because things happen when most animated movies flop. Artists may get laid off, or certain films aren't tried again. Blue Sky has yet to see a big flop. So I don't know about the slight date change. I think they should've kept it for the week after Star Wars, so that after Star Wars blasts everything to smithereens, it can then quietly have a nice start up.

Let's look at holiday legs...

Holiday family films tend to have very strong legs, like most holiday releases. The third Chipmunks movie opened much lower than its predecessors, but legs got it past $100 million stateside. The fourth one opened embarrassingly low, but had the legs to make it up to $85 million stateside. Paramount dumped The Adventures of Tintin faster than a moldy sandwich, but after such a terrible opening, it heave-ho'ed to $77 million. Yogi Bear? Same thing. Small-as-heck opening, climbed to $100 million. The Emperor's New Groove is perhaps one of the best examples of this. Disney left that one to die in mid-December of 2000, and lo and behold... After an abysmal opening, it climbed with its might, all the way up to $89 million. (Adjusted, that's: $15 OW / $139m DOM)

Some of those had reasonable budgets, some of them didn't, others had to rely on worldwide grosses. Tintin was thankfully saved by very strong overseas grosses, given the legacy of the comic series it's based on. Emperor's New Groove on the other hand was born out of cancelled movie that had already cost Disney greatly, thus it was pretty expensive, and worldwide grosses did not - unfortunately - come to the rescue. Let's hope Ferdinand isn't expected to make too much.

So, what's Fox's game here? Do you think Ferdinand could do well? Sound off below.

Blue Sky's Bull: First Image from 'Ferdinand' and Some Cast Details

Blue Sky's next feature is not out until till Christmas time, but some information on the somewhat-cryptic picture has finally surfaced...

Ferdinand, as expected, is based on the classic 1936 children's book The Story of Ferdinand. Walt Disney adapted it into an animated short in 1938, which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Animated Short of that year. The book itself, back in the day, was actually pretty controversial despite being a simple little story about a peaceful bull refusing to be a part of bullfights. Was it pacifist? Fascist? It made a real impact, that's for sure.

How they can successfully stretch that to 90 minutes is beyond me, but we shall see... Now we know what the titular character will look like in Blue Sky CG form, thanks to an image posted by brand agency Merchantwise...

Nothing too amazing, the image looks like most DVD/Blu-ray covers for animated films these days, you know which ones I'm talking about? The ones that just have a close-up of a character against a plain, colored background. Anyways, the design's appealing and I'm not sure I like the new logo for the film, but a logo is a logo. The full package matters most.

The site also reveals that Adam Devine will be voicing Ferdinand, and Kate McKinnon will play Lupe, a friend and "trusted advisor". Gabriel Iglesias was announced as part of the cast back in November, as a character named Cuatro. I wonder if they'll set the story in 1936 Spain, or modern day Spain.

Anyways, I'm curious to see how Blue Sky pulls this one off. What say you?

Beyond the Sky: Fox Animation Stacks Up on Animation

I normally don't talk much about 20th Century Fox Animation as a whole...

Blue Sky is pretty much their main animation house, who makes all of their releases. Before that, things were different.

20th Century Fox really got into the animation game in the mid-1990s, establishing a house of their own - Fox Animation Studios - to compete with Disney. Their main weapon at the time was Don Bluth and his partner Gary Goldman. Don Bluth had struggled after he and Steven Spielberg split up in 1989, the films he put out afterwards were heavily compromised by the powers-that-be. His studio, Sullivan-Bluth, went out of business in 1995, the year their final picture came out: The Pebble and the Penguin. Bluth and Goldman Alan Smithee'd themselves out of it.

Instead of challenging Disney by coming up with something unique that could stack up against the mouse giant, Fox Animation Studios simply made a Disney-esque film with two guys who used to work for Disney... The result was Anastasia, a film that some of the general public mistake for a Disney film. That film did fine, so what did Fox, Bluth, and Goldman fire up next? Titan A.E. It was a bomb, and should be a cautionary tale. A film aimed squarely at the preteen boy crowd, who unsurprisingly rejected it. Bluth knew it would happen, but the heads did not listen. Fox Animation Studios was shut down shortly after the sci-fi adventure opened nationwide.

That's where Blue Sky stepped in, who actually animated a sequence for Titan A.E. Blue Sky's first feature was all-CG, and it came out at the right time. 2002 when was computer animation was super-hot, so audiences ate up Ice Age. Thankfully for them, Ice Age was a pretty good comedy that kept people coming back. The following Blue Sky features did good to some degree. While the Ice Age sequels always tore up the overseas box office, non-sequels like Rio did quite well, others like Epic did decently enough.

20th Century Fox Animation, for a long while, has tried to firestart more projects - some that will be done at Blue Sky, others? Elsewhere. Technically, the likes of The Simpsons Movie, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and The Book of Life fall under the 20th Century Fox Animation umbrella. Movie one was done by Gracie Films/Rough Draft (obviously), film two was done by Wes Anderson and various studios, film three was a Reel FX production.

Recently, it was announced that Frogkisser! - an upcoming Frog Prince-inspired book - was picked up and will be done at Blue Sky. It'll be a live-action/CG hybrid, I'm assuming the CG part will be caricature animation and not the hyper-real Jungle Book kind of CG. Nate Hopper, longtime exec, was put in charge of future hybrid flicks.

Now, it looks like Fox Animation has locked up some more things...

Recent pick-ups include...

Momotaro: Xander and the Lost Island of Monsters - Based on a novel series that draws from the stories of Japanese folk hero Momotaro, it's described as a sort of Percy Jackson-esque story. I think this one has potential, being about magic and monsters and such, doesn't sound dissimilar to Blue Sky's Anubis. That one works off of Ancient Egyptian stuff.

The Girl Who Drank The Moon - This will be a hybrid, according to The Hollywood Reporter. This one - based on the book by Kelly Barnhill - pretty interesting, it's about a town that sacrifices newborns to a forest witch who is actually friendly. She raises them and feeds them starlight, but one is accidentally given moonlight and as a result she gains magical powers.

Zita the Spacegirl - Based on a more child-friendly comic book series about a girl taking on weirdo creatures on another planet in order to save her friend from being sacrificed (wow, two in a row about sacrifice!), this one could be fun. This one appears to be an all-animated pic, so I think they could match the books' colorful style with stylized CG.

The Littlest Bigfoot - Yet another bigfoot story in animation, this one sounds like it could be pretty resonant. It's about a lonely girl whose ignored by her parents and is sent to boarding school, and befriends a bigfoot who is part of a whole clan of bigfoots.

Lastly, is a big one...

The Dam Keeper.

Yes, a full-length feature based on ex-Pixarians Dice Tsutsumi and Robert Kondo's short of the same name, one they produced through that Pixar co-op program that made Borrowed Time happen. Tonko House will be doing it, Tsutsumi and Kondo will direct, but it'll be in CG. That being said, they could probably get the CG to resemble 2D or the moving painting-like feel of the short. If Disney Animation could do it with Feast, I can think Tonko could as well.

20th Century Fox is going to bunker down on animation. Two months ago, Fox's chairman Stacey Snider moved up to CEO position, and she's going to be instrumental in really re-launching Fox Animation as a real competitor. Some of these pictures in development will be Blue Sky works, others won't, so it's good to see Fox reaching out to other animation houses rather than just one mainline studio.

Now, what does this mean for several other projects that Fox Animation announced in the past? You know, things like Nimona, Welcome to the Jungle, Fortunately, the Milk, Cardboard, A Hero's Guide to Saving Your Kingdom, and Confessions of an Imaginary Friend... Studios these days typically announce a boatload of projects, only to announce another boatload that seem like they'll move ahead.

That all being said, it makes sense... Fox is losing DreamWorks after the summer 2017 release of Captain Underpants, so they want to expand. While part of me is skeptical about the whole hybrid thing (again, will these be Jungle Book-esque? Or not?), I am interested to see what direction they'll go in. The Dam Keeper news is certainly super-exciting, and if it is to take off, I can only imagine what Fox could scoop up after that. Will they ever team up with Reel FX again? So many questions...

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?