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?

Shiftin' Sony: Sony Animation Gets New Head of Production

Change continues to happen at Sony Pictures Animation.

Regardless of what we may think of the pictures they are releasing over the next eight months, this is a big year for Sony Animation. For the first time ever, they are releasing three animated features in the same calendar year. Something DreamWorks tried to do a few years back, but that ultimately backfired. Walt Disney Animation Studios once tried this as well, at the beginning of this century. That plan also backfired for various reasons. Now Sony Animation is stepping up to that plate...

The first of the three features - franchise reboot Smurfs: The Lost Village - is opening in less than a month. Perhaps because she is confident in this slate, Sony Pictures Animation's president Kristine Belson has named Pam Marsden head of production. A key player at the studio for years, Marsden produced both Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs films, and has been in the field for quite some time. The producer of Disney Animation/Secret Lab's Dinosaur (one of the three WDFA features that was wide-released in 2000), she went on to produce the DTV feature Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas and Nickelodeon's Barnyard.

I'm not quite sure about this choice, because out of all those movies, Cloudy uno is the clear home run here. Sony Animation's slate looks like a mixed bag to me, and I feel Marsden's resume is just that as well. I'm not sure what this change will mean for the studio.

Call me a bitter person who can't let go of the past, but... Belson seems to have gutted the place. The more interesting projects that were in development are gone or have been watered down, and they have made way for things like The Emoji Movie. We got some bone-tosses here and there, like Animated Spider-Man and the Lin-Manuel Miranda musical Vivo, but the rest of the slate is rather... Uninteresting. Having seen the latest Smurfs: The Lost Village trailer, I'm not really onboard that flick. The Star could be a decent Nativity retelling, or just another generic talking animals movie. Hotel Transylvania 3 could be uneven likes its predecessors, or maybe it could be a genuinely good comedy romp.

For now, I remain skeptical of Sony Animation, and Sony Pictures in general. That whole division seems to be digging its own grave. I know SPA can be a great studio, and they've shown it before. Have you seen Surf's Up? Have you seen the first Cloudy movie? Both high points, I think. Hopefully once we get past schlock like The Emoji Movie (and I'll eat lots of crow if Emoji somehow turns out to be a good movie), we'll see what this house - under Belson - is really made of.

What say you?

From Stop-Mo to Sony: Shannon Tindle Working on a Sony Animation Film

Shannon Tindle is quite a name in animation.

He conceived the story for LAIKA's excellent Kubo and the Two Strings with Marc Haimes, and he served as a character designer. He had also done character design for LAIKA's debut feature, Coraline. He's also known for his work on the Cartoon Network show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, which he won an Annie and an Emmy for. Other TV animation work of his includes Static Shock, Samurai Jack, The Proud Family, and a few others. Features? The Croods, Mr. Peabody & Sherman, and Curious George.

Quite the resume.

He's now writing and directing a project for Sony Pictures Animation, according to his twitter biography, and this...

Day 1: Crew photo with @Mr_Scribbles on my new film!!! #sonypicturesanimation pic.twitter.com/x47kK1wzuw

— Shannon Tindle (@ShannonTindle_1) February 14, 2017

I've been a sourpuss when it comes to Sony Pictures Animation. I think they're a studio with great potential, and I think they showed just that with two particular features of theirs: Animated mockumentary Surf's Up and the heartfelt, zany, inventive Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs. Their other work has left me rather unimpressed, though some films had some interesting visual choices and such.

They're also headed up by executives who continue to hold Genndy Tartakovsky on a leash, booted Lauren Faust from Medusa, and rushed an emoji movie into production. That being said, some of the projects on their slate do excite me! Animated Spider-Man sounds like a turbo shot in the superhero movie coffee, not to mention it's about Miles Morales. The Star could be a cool take on the Nativity story that's wisely being done on a much smaller budget (it's being outsourced to CineSite). Hotel Transylvania 3 looks to be written by just Michael McCullers, and no one from the Adam Sandler camp, so it has the potential to be what its predecessors weren't. Vivo, a Lin-Manuel Miranda monkey musical, also has my interest.

It's just The Emoji Movie that can disappear (guys, I'll gladly eat crow if the thing is actually good), and I'm really on the fence about Smurfs: The Lost Village. It looks better than the hybrid movies, but not much better.

So, Mr. Tindle has a project in the works. My cynical side would say "How long till he is removed from the movie?" My more optimistic side says "Let's see what happens." Again, I can't be too harsh. Sure, these execs may have possibly diluted Medusa and greenlit Emoji Movie, but maybe they'll prove themselves with films like Tindle's, Vivo, Animated Spider-Man and others. Who knows!

All I can say is, I'm excited to see what Tindle has in store for us.

Singin' Sony: Sony Animation and Lin-Manuel Miranda Launch Monkey Musical 'Vivo'

A little shocker announcement that came out nowhere... Sony Animation's got something interesting cooking.

Vivo is the name of the film.

Lin-Manuel Miranda is doing the songs... All eleven of them. The Croods director Kirk DeMicco will helm the picture, and long-timer Lisa Stewart (Almost Famous, Monsters vs. Aliens) is set to produce. Originally pitched to DreamWorks six years ago by High School Musical creator Peter Barsoccini, the project will also be written by a LMM comrade, the writer of his In the Heights - Quiara Alegría Hudes.

A pretty strong line-up right there. Sony Animation's brass is very confident in this tale, the story of a music-loving capuchin monkey that goes on an epic journey from Havana to Miami to meet his goals. It now has a concrete release date... December 18, 2020.

Sony Animation had originally staked out December 11 of 2020 for an "Untitled Original", the slot is filled, and the movie in question moved back a bit. Yes, they seem super-confident in Vivo. Why wouldn't they? Hot off the success of Moana, not to mention Hamilton and the slew of upcoming LMM projects (Mary Poppins Returns, for starters), it makes sense. What I didn't know was that it was in the works for a long while before Moana entered development, about a year before Ron Clements and John Musker even pitched what eventually became Moana!

Anyways, this is great. I was originally a bit bummed on Sony's line-up, what with Emoji movies and stuff. This, alongside the animated Spider-Man movie and The Star give me a bit of hope. Whatever those untitled 2019 "franchise" entries are, I could kind of care less right now. Vivo sounds cool, it's neat to see Lin-Manuel diving into more animation, since his new Walt Disney Animation Studios project is probably quite a long ways off. I like the idea of a musical set in Havana, alongside some other things. If Emojimovie pays for more cool stuff like this, then that's all good.

What say you?