Cartoon Brew recently pointed us at a new upcoming animated film called Leo, being created for Netflix by Adam Sandler and his production company. “Netflix describes the film as ‘a coming-of-age animated musical comedy about the last year of elementary school – as seen through the eyes of a class pet. Jaded 74-year-old lizard Leo has been stuck in the same Florida classroom for decades with his terrarium-mate turtle. When he learns he only has one year left to live, he plans to escape to experience life on the outside, but instead gets caught up in the problems of his anxious students – including an impossibly mean substitute teacher. It ends up being the strangest but most rewarding bucket list ever…’ Leo’s animation is being produced by Netflix Animation and Animal Logic (The Lego Movie, DC League of Super-Pets)”. Look for it streaming on November 22nd.
CGI
The Annie Award Nominations for 2022
Recently ASIFA-Hollywood announced the nominations for the Annie Awards, celebrating the best in animation for the year 2022. The Annies are recognized world-wide as “the Oscars of animation”, chosen by folks in the animation industry from a host of disciplines. This year Guillermo Del Toro’s Pinocchio leads the pack in nominations: Seven, including Best Animated Feature, Best Character Animation, Best Directing, Best Music, Best Production Design, and Best Editing. That’s followed close behind by Pixar’s Turning Red, Dreamworks’ Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, and The Sea Beast on Netflix, with six nominations each in various categories — including Best Animated Feature. Furry-fan-favorite The Bad Guys is up for four awards… but interestingly, not for Best Animated Feature. Marcel, The Shell With Shoes On and My Father’s Dragon are both nominated for Best Independent Feature and Best Directing, with Marcel also up for Best Writing and Best Voice Acting. (The little shell that could, sheesh!) The House (which is 2/3 furry…) and The Boy, The Mole, The Fox, and The Horse are both nominated for Special Production, for projects longer than a short but shorter than a feature. And that’s just a sampling! We don’t even have room to talk about all the nominations for TV series, games, commercials, and more. Check out the Annie Awards web page for a complete list of nominees. The awards will be handed out on February 25th. (And hey, while you’re at it: Don’t forget that nominations have opened for the 2023 Ursa Major Awards too!)
Lizard Latin Lover
Merry Christmas! Recently we stumbled across a new Internet star known as Tito Lizzardo, an animated lizard singer who pals around with a sexy feline dancer named Catty Baby (aka Catty B). Virtual Humans (a site we also just discovered!) has this to say about them: “Tito is a lizard that likes to dress in his school jacket. Catty Baby is a cat that rocks her sporty looks every day. Their TikTok account is exploding with the couple’s dance moves next to the beach and the palm trees in Miami. Tito and Catty are a couple of artists doing remixes of famous Latin songs like ‘Hips Don’t Lie’ or ‘Hey DJ’. Their gang is completed with Juan Gato, Catty’s brother who is always wearing a Miami Heat shirt. All together they create amazing videos of their song remixes, targeting very young audiences with their cute, animalistic appeal.” Tito and crew first appeared in a series of short, at times rather risque dance videos on TikTok. Since then, they’ve released several much-more-family-friendly music videos on their YouTube channel. Who’s behind all this? We don’t know! But we’d love to meet them!
It’s A Lost Art
There’s no stopping the Transformers movie series, it seems, but now something new has definitely been added — Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, due next year, is based on none other than the 90’s animated series Transformers: Beast Wars, where the whole series went severely furry for a time. Nerdist has the teaser trailer. Good old Optimus Primal is prominently featured (voiced this time by Ron Perlman), but look swiftly and you’ll see Cheetor, Rinox, Dinobot, and Airazor. No sign of Rat Trap yet, but who knows? The film is due in theaters in June of 2023.
Cute and Courageous
And another new furry animated series for young folk, coming next year to Disney Junior. “Disney Junior released a trailer for its new 3DCG animated series, SuperKitties, premiering this coming January. The action-packed show follows four fierce and furry superhero kittens — Ginny, Sparks, Buddy, and Bitsy — on a mission to make Kittydale a more caring and ‘pawesome’ place. The heroic kitties defeat villains while imparting important messages of kindness, empathy, friendship, resilience, and problem-solving.” Animation World Network has more.
Does THIS Cat Dance Maybe?
Turns out there’s there’s another feature film in the works for everyone’s favorite lasagna-loving feline, Garfield. The big orange fellow has appeared in two previous live action/CGI films, both times voiced by Bill Murray. Now Alcon Entertainment is working on the famous feline’s first fully-animated feature film, where this time he’ll be voiced by Chris Pratt. (Is there anything that guy isn’t involved in?) Like many animated films of the past few years, this one features an impressive voice cast of well-known actors, including Samuel L. Jackson, Nicholas Hoult, Hannah Waddingham, Cecily Strong, and Ving Rhames. Interestingly, this new film is directed by Mark Dindal (of Cats Don’t Dance and Emperor’s New Groove fame), whom we have not heard from in a long long time. According to Animation World Network, Garfield should be out in mid-2024.
What UP, Dog?
Animation news out of France, courtesy of Animation World Network: “Kittened is described as revolving around famous rapper Tough Dog, ‘who is challenged to a rap battle by the Kalixte, a rising star with millions of followers. A week before the battle, Tough Dog wakes up in the body of a kitten, with the kitten’s spirit in Tough Dog’s body. To reverse the situation back to normal, he has to ask Kim, a shy young girl, for help. In exchange, Tough Dog will teach her to become popular.'”. Currently the film is scheduled for release in 2025. We have a fairly good record of getting animated films from France released here in North America (Ernest & Celestine, anyone?), so hopefully this will get a chance as well.
THIS Cat Returns
Your ever-loving edotter got a chance to see a preview screening of Puss In Boots: The Last Wish, the upcoming animated feature from Dreamworks Animation, directed by Joel Crawford and Januel Mercado. Here’s the basic plot summary: The unstoppable adventurer Puss in Boots discovers that he has burned up eight of his nine lives through a series of mishaps. He goes on a desperate quest to find a fallen star with magic wishing powers, hoping to restore his invulnerability. Trouble is, the cat has lots of competition for the star — and a malevolent force following right behind him. So here are some Spoiler-Free thoughts about the film: See It, as soon as you can. Not only is this a cracking good adventure film, darker than you expect it to be in places, but it’s also quite easily the furriest film ever in the Shrek universe. In fact, there’s a wolf in this film who could easily give the head Bad Guy a run for his money. This new film is coming to theaters on December 21st.
Ewe Gotta Admit…
It’s MIPCOM season, and that means a host of animation production companies are gearing up to plug new cartoon series they hope to sell in their homelands and (hopefully!) all around the world. Shows like Karate Sheep, from the French animation company Xilam (home of Zig & Sharko and the current Mr. Magoo). “Trico is an enthusiastic sheep who loves to share new objects and ideas with the rest of the flock. This causes ruckus in the mountain pastures, which all inevitably end up at Wanda’s expense. [Wanda is] a tough ewe whose job is to keep the sheep safe. Not a small feat, especially when Wolf is always lurking, waiting to make the most of this newfound chaos.” Xilam have a preview trailer for the show (and many others) at their web site.