Wednesday, September 10, 2008

ILM and Animated Features

Well now. There's a new animation director and animation house jumping into the feature-length 'toon game:

Paramount Pictures has signed Gore Verbinski to direct his first animated feature film "Rango," starring Oscar(R) nominee Johnny Depp, who will voice the title character. Release is set for March 2011.

The screenplay was written by Oscar(R)-nominated screenwriter John Logan ("Gladiator," "The Aviator," "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street"). "Rango" will be produced by Verbinski's Blind Wink Productions, Graham King ("The Departed") and John Carls ("Open Season"). The animation for "Rango" will be provided by the San Francisco-based Industrial Light and Magic.

You know my stance on these things. The more animated features that are baking in the oven, the better it is for employment and jobs.

It's going to be fun how a director who's got a long and successful live-action resume deals with animation. Probably he'll do fine, but we'll see.

My question is, how much will be animated, how much the 21st century rotoscope "performance capture."

12 comments:

Floyd Norman said...

The glacial pace of producing animation will probably drive him nuts.

This should be interesting.

Anonymous said...

Will this be animated in S.F. or in ILM's overseas studio? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?

Unknown said...

Traditional animation or CGI?

Anonymous said...

It will be all CG, and is going to be done in Singapore.

Anonymous said...

Hope the story's good...cause the animation aint gonna be

Anonymous said...

"The more animated features that are baking in the oven, the better it is for employment and jobs."

Not unless you want to move to Singapore I guess... oh well.

Steve Hulett said...

Hmmm. Thought it was to be produced in San Francisco. However, Singapore is far from the lowest wage sector in Asia.

We'll see how this goes. (Hopefully better than "Clone Wars.")

Anonymous said...

There'll be plenty of story and design jobs I suspect.

Sooi Leon Li-Aun said...

In Singapore??? Singapore has a LucasFilm studio, but I didn't know there is a ILM studio too?

Will Finn said...

Irresistible obscure joke coming up:

"Will Tim Conway be involved?"

(He had a very short-lived Western TV sitcom also titled RANGO in the mid-sixties. I think I saw all five and a half episodes. Still a big Conway fan.)

Jean-Denis Haas said...

Just to clarify something, the animation will be all keyframed, there's no mocap involved, regardless of what Variety is posting.

Anonymous said...

Some great massages in Singapore! ;-)

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