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...

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...

Nothing's Changed: Universal Gets DreamWorks' 2018 Films, Doesn't Change Dates

It took a while, but it's been confirmed...

Universal Pictures will be releasing the other two DreamWorks films that are set for release in 2018: Larrikins and How To Train Your Dragon 3. They are now officially Universal films, 20th Century Fox's deal ends next year with Captain Underpants. Old news actually, a lot of us knew that a month ago. All these reports here and there implied that the early summer release would be the last DreamWorks film to be distributed by the gold twenty.

The news here is that Universal doesn't plan to change the dates for these two films.

Larrikins will still open on February 16, 2018, exactly one week after Warner Animation Group's Smallfoot, and the same day as Marvel Studios' hotly-anticipated Black Panther.

I thought this date was likely to change... I guess not.

The bright side. Universal knows how to market animated movies, unlike Fox most of the time, as Trolls is - unsurprisingly - tracking pretty badly and will be hit by Marvel's Doctor Strange. It's set to open with $30 million tops, worse than Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and not much higher than Turbo and Penguins of Madagascar. I assume that Fox is just ripping the band-aid at this point, not caring whether the $120 million-costing pictures will make it back or not. They lose DreamWorks in the summer of 2017, so are they thinking "So what?" You would think they'd want to make the most of what they have. Trolls' reception so far doesn't seem half bad, either... You'd think Fox would try harder to make it a little hit.

The Croods 2 still hasn't locked a new date, but it's clear that it'll stay in 2018, breaking the DreamWorks "two-a-year" policy... But then again The Croods 2 is a movie that will probably feel like it belongs in 2017 - even more so if it locks a January date, so I guess it's not a big deal in the end. It needed to be delayed too, not just because of Star Wars, but because of rewrites. Wherever it lands, who knows at the moment.

What say you?