As we noted recently, 20th Century Fox is once again taking us to the Planet of the Apes — this time, in what is essentially a re-make of the 1972 film Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Once again, it tells the story of Caesar, a chimpanzee who comes to lead a rebellion of apes against humans in a battle for supremacy. In the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes, however, he is not the child of apes from the future, but the result of a brain-enhancing drug experiment “gone wrong”. The new film is directed by Rupert Wyatt. It stars Andy Serkis (Lord of the Rings, King Kong) as Caesar (via motion-capture technology), and James Franco (127 Hours) as the scientist who brings about Caesar’s advance. Fox Studios seem to have a little bit of trouble settling on a release date though: IMDB.com still lists it as August 5th, but other sites have mentioned release dates as late as Thanksgiving. Meanwhile as you figure that out you can look for the official trailer, currently making the rounds on YouTube.
Movie News
Rio Takes On The World
In an unusual move, 20th Century Fox has released the next Blue Sky Studios move Rio in 72 countries outside of North America, a full week before releasing it in the U.S. on April 15th. According to reports the film is already doing quite well in Russia, and a few other countries as well. Like the Ice Age films from Blue Sky, this new film is directed by Carlos Saldanha. It tells the story of a blue macaw named (appropriately) Blu. Domesticated, it seems that Blu has never learned to fly. It also seems that he is the last mail blue macaw — and so begins his journey to the title city, where folks hope he will mate with the one remaining female blue (named Jewel) to save the species. Fox has released the first two minutes of the film as a video, and (in an only-these-days bit of tie-in) there is also a video advertising the Angry Birds/Rio game app for your I-Phone.
image c. 2011 Blue Sky Studios
The Ballad of Nessie
And yet more interesting news on Cartoon Brew: The Ballad of Nessie is a brand new, 2-D animated short from Walt Disney Pictures. It’s scheduled to be released in front of the upcoming Winnie the Pooh movie this summer, which you may recall is also in 2-D. The film is directed by Stevie Wermers-Skelton and Kevin Deters, who both worked on How to Hook Up Your Home Theater and Prep and Landing. Several well-known animators worked on Nessie, including Andreas Deja, Mark Henn, Randy Haycock, Dale Baer, and Rubin Aquino. No video sneaks yet, but Cartoon Brew has pictures from the film, including the one you see below.
image c. 2011 Walt Disney Pictures
Song of the Sea
A Happy St. Patrick’s Day to you all. And speaking of Irish things…
Thanks to Cartoon Brew we’ve seen a new teaser trailer for Song of the Sea, the next project coming to us from Tomm Moore, creator of The Secret of Kells. That film, you may recall, was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Feature of 2009, as well as a slew of other awards around town. Now Mr. Moore’s new feature looks at another well-known Irish legend, that of the Selkies: Folk who look like human beings, but who can put on seal skins and magically transform into real live seals. Cartoon Saloon is currently animating the film, which is not due out until 2013.
Big Changes at ASIFA-Hollywood
For those of us cartoon fans (and would-be animators) who’ve been following the controversy between ASIFA Hollywood (the largest chapter of the International Animated Film Society, and home of the Annie Awards for animation) and Disney/Pixar, this is some big news: A shake-up in the leadership of the Hollywood Chapter, and news of some big changes planned for how the organization works. Cartoon Brew has the story, quoted here from the ASIFA-Hollywood Press release: “ASIFA-Hollywood has announced the selection of its new President, Frank Gladstone, at its February board meeting. Gladstone replaces Antran Manoogian who held the position for over 20 years. Longtime ASIFA-Hollywood VP [and TAG President Emeritus] Tom Sito chose not to run for re-election; taking his place is Jerry Beck [one of the head-honchos at Cartoon Brew — ye ed-otter]. ‘First and foremost, we owe Antran Manoogian an enormous amount of respect and admiration for his many years of selfless devotion to ASIFA-Hollywood,’ says Gladstone. ‘Antran has seen the organization through a period of unparalleled growth and success, going from a small club to an organization of over 4000 members. During his stewardship, Antran established, among many achievements, a digital archive, and built the Annie Award into the most important honor in animation. Though I’ve been part of ASIFA and the animation community for a long time, I am looking forward to being the ‘new face’ of the organization and to making some significant changes to the status quo. For starters, this includes updating our membership qualifications, establishing a representative voice for every animation studio and creative technique, building an advisory board of animation luminaries and revising the voting structure of the annual Annie Awards. In the next few weeks ASIFA-Hollywood will be holding meetings with executives from all the major studios to get their input on how we can improve our infrastructure. ASIFA-Hollywood will take this time to ask its members, both individual and corporate, to come together and advise them on how best to chart the course for decades to come. In addition they will invite many of its members to join the executive board.’ Frank Gladstone has been a professional animator, producer, director, writer and teacher, first managing his own studio, and then working in management positions for Disney, Warner Bros. and DreamWorks, among others. He is currently the CEO of the animation consulting firm, Gladstone Film, teaches worldwide and is the ‘artist-in-residence’ for the ACME Network.”
Go Back to the Planet of the Apes — Again
It seems like we just can’t get away from those damned dirty apes — not that a lot of us actually want to! Now BOOM Studios is premiering a brand-new Planet of the Apes full-color comic book series this April, written by Daryl Gregory (an award-winning novelist) and illustrated by Carlos Magno. The story this time takes place prior to the original 1968 Planet of the Apes movie, a time when humans and apes have formed an unsteady truce — very unsteady, it seems. Ape Central.net (a division of ComicBookMovie.com) has the story, as well as links to the brand new Planet of the Apes movie Ceasar: Rise of the Apes, starring James Franco and directed by Rupert Wyatt. Recently the film’s premier was moved back from this summer to this coming Thanksgiving.
image c. 2011 BOOM Studios
Hood vs. Evil
One of the box-office surprises of 2005 was a little film called Hoodwinked — the first independently produced CGI film, which went on to make a rather tidy little profit. Talk began almost immediately about sequel for the film — and now, that sequel is coming to theaters on April 29th. Hoodwinked introduced us to Little Red Riding Hood, her rather resourceful (and butt-kicking) Granny, and a big-but-not-so-bad Wolf. All three of them return in the new film, Hoodwinked Too: Hood vs. Evil. They’re joining up with an outfit known as the Happily Ever-after Agency (HEA) on a mission to save Hansel and Gretel from a wicked witch. Some things have changed — Hayden Panettiere (Alpha and Omega) replaces Anne Hathaway as the voice of Red, and the director this time is Mike Disa, previously known as a director of video short films. But once again we have Patrick Warburton as the Wolf, Glenn Close as Granny, and David Ogden Stiers as the frog Nicky Flippers, head of HEA. You can view the current trailer for the film on YouTube here.
WE3 Return. Run!
WE3 was a well-known and well-received 3-issue comic book miniseries written by Grant Morrison (Animal Man) and illustrated by Frank Quitely (New X-Men). This full-color comic was first published by DC Comics’ Vertigo imprint in 2004, and was first gathered together as a trade paperback graphic novel in 2005. Now, the graphic novel version returns, again published by Vertigo. This time it’s a brand-new hardcover edition, featuring new story pages by the creators. It’s scheduled for release this coming June 15th. The story of WE3 follows three stray animals — a dog, a cat, and a rabbit — who are captured by a secret military organization and transformed into cybernetic weapon-animals. Now they have limited speech, they are covered in body-armor, and they are armed to the teeth with deadly weapons. When they learn they are to be decommissioned, they make a break for freedom — pursued not only by the military, but by other cybernetic animals. Interestingly, the WE3 entry on Wikipedia mentions that in 2006 WE3 was optioned for development as a CGI film by New Line Cinema. Then came the word (in late 2008) that New Line was no longer involved in the project, but that John Stevenson (co-director of Kung Fu Panda) was now attached to the film as director.
And Speaking of Awards…
Saturday the 5th of February it was time once again for the annual Annie Awards, presented by the International Animated Film Society (ASIFA) for the best in animation. This year, of course, was the year of controversy for the Annies, now that Disney/Pixar have pulled their sponsorship and official participation in the awards due to what they feel are flawed and lop-sided voting practices. Specifically, they’ve accused the Annies of being overly weighted toward Dreamworks Animation productions. Probably because there is a very large percentage of ASIFA that includes Dreamworks employees as members. Probably because at one point Dreamworks was offering to subsidize its employees’ membership in ASIFA, while Disney and Pixar were not. So, it probably didn’t sit well at all with Disney and Pixar that Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon swept the Annie Awards this year, much like Kung Fu Panda did a couple of years ago. In fact, this year, the Kung Fu Panda Holiday TV special also swept the Annie Awards in the television categories. Here’s a recap from Variety: “DreamWorks Animation ended up with 15 Annie Awards, 10 for How to Train Your Dragon and five for its television production Kung Fu Panda Holiday. In addition to best picture, Dragon picked up nods for helmers Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois, animated effects, character animation, character design, music, production design, storyboarding, voice acting for Jay Baruchel [Hiccup], and writing. Kung Fu Panda Holiday was named the top TV production and racked up trophies for character animation, direction, production design, and voice acting for James Hong [Mr. Ping].” Other awards from the evening (ones that Furry Fans might notice) included T.U.F.F. Puppy winning two awards for storyboards and character design (in a TV production). Ryan Page won the first ever Annie Award for “Character Animation in a Live Action Production” for his work on Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. The evening also featured lifetime achievement awards (the Windsor McCay Award) for director Brad Bird (who joked in a video clip about his move from directing animation to live action), veteran animator Eric Goldberg, and creator Matt Groening (who joked live about the fact he’s spent 23 years in animation and only done two things: The Simpsons and Futurama). You can read more about the Annie Awards — and soon, see pictures from the show — on their web site.
