Annecy: Cinesite Sneak Peeks 'The Addams Family 2', Spotlight 5 animated adventures with Aniventure

Powerful international VFX and feature film animation Cinesite took the spotlight in Annecy today in the Studio Focus session 8 best directors reveal 5 new success buses, highlighted by a preview of the upcoming MGM sequel a The Addams family and highlighting eight esteemed directors and five animated blockbusters. Dave Rosenbaum, The studio's Chief Creative Officer and a principal titular director, moderated the discussion and joined in, sharing sequences, trailers, development sneak peeks and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.

Manager Conrad Vernon (Shrek 2, Sausage Festival) - "one of the coolest guys in animation", according to Rosenbaum - offered a first look at The Addams Family 2, which will debut in the United States via United Artists and in select international markets via Universal Pictures on October 1. CG-animated MGM project features returning voices Charlize Theron (Morticia), Oscar Isaac (Gomez), Chloë Grace Moretz (Wednesday), Javon "Wanna" Walton (Pugsley), Nick Kroll (Fester), Bette Midler (grandmother) ) and Snoop Dogg (Itt). Bill Hader joins the villain of this release, the manipulator Cyrus, introduced in a crude sequence of sciences gone awry shared in the session.

In this brand new movie, the Addams get involved in outlandish adventures and find themselves embroiled in hilarious battles with all kinds of unsuspecting characters. Always remaining true to themselves, the Addams family takes their iconic restlessness and extravagance wherever they go.

“We had a lot less time to do this. The former was a hit, so MGM was really trying to get out with the latter as fast as possible; that's why they set a date right away, because they were really excited to have a second one, "Vernon shared." So, we're literally going from script to screen in about two years, which is pretty much unheard of for an animated film - and the Cinesite team is really, really up to the occasion ".

In addition to the slump, the director noted after pausing his recording for a rogue leaf blower, it was the crazy and wacky interruptions during remote recording sessions at home. “We had a guy who ran his Ferrari engine for 25 minutes outside - I think Chloë had to go out and ask him to stop… We've had leaf blowers, we've had chippers, we've had a fight, we've had all sorts of madness - i think there was actually a car accident and a siren, like a whole movie was happening outside while we were recording This film inside, "enumerates Vernon." It sure was hard to do, but the learning curve was pretty quick. "

Inspired by the Mel Brooks classic Fiery saddles, the comedy-adventure of talking animals Fiery samurai is led by R (The Lion King, 1994) e Mark Koetsier (artist of history, Great hero 6). The film, presented by Align and Aniventure in association with HB Wink Animation and GFM Animation, stars Michael Cera, Samuel L. Jackson and Ricky Gervais. Minkoff is also the producer and creative director of the project, which is in production at Cinesite Montreal and is expected to be delivered later this year.

Flaming SamuraI follow the story of Hank, an adorable bastard with big dreams of becoming a samurai. When he finds himself with a new job as a sheriff of Kakamucho, he also discovers that he has bitten more than he can chew as the city is inhabited exclusively by cats. He also plays Samuel L. Jackson as Jimbo, Ricky Gervais, George Takei, Michelle Yeoh, Djimon Hounsou and Brooks.

Koetsier: "One of the unique things that [Cinesite] brought to it, that we didn't have much" look "to it yet, was the flashbacks. We were looking at traditional animation, something different, maybe a completely different color style. What Cinesite brought us was this comic look: very extreme darks, very "pop" colors, just like a Mike Mignola comic style. Really unique, very fun to watch and they did an amazing job on it. " .

Minkoff introduced a clip from the film featuring Hank and Jimbo as the pup begins his samurai training with a dangerous, painful and comical montage. Which, in a sense, reflected the director's long "back and forth, up and down, side to side" journey bringing this story to the screen. But just like his grumpy hero, Minkoff has had his moments of triumph.

“When we were originally picking the film, we wanted to go to Ricky Gervais, and so we were able to get in touch with him through a casting director, and we sent him the script - and we didn't get a response for a couple of weeks. Suddenly the phone rang and it was Ricky Gervais, "recalls Minkoff." He said he had read the script but was just doing things that he controlled, wrote or produced ... but every time he passes on something [because of this], a another actor (whose name we won't mention) would, and [Ricky] would have to "watch him ruin the script." He said he liked our script so much that if anyone was going to ruin it, it would have been Ricky Gervais.

Hamming it up for Hitpigs they were directors Cynthia Angelini (who directed the short film Cinesite mila) to David Feiss (Cow and Chicken), sharing the art of development and early animation. The Berkeley Breathed adaptation of Cinesite and Aniventure is set in a futuristic cyberpunk world and follows a grizzled pig bounty hunter Hitpig (Peter Dinklage) who accepts his next hit: Pickles (Lilly Singh), a naive and feisty elephant who has escaped. in the clutches of an evil billionaire. Though Hitpig initially sets out to capture the lively pachyderm, the unlikely pair find themselves on an unexpected world-spanning adventure that brings out the best in both.

Rainn Wilson will voice the villain. Other cast members include RuPaul and Australian comedian / writer Hannah Gadsby. Adam Nagle (Riverdance: The animated adventure) and Dave Rosenbaum (Secret life of pets) are producing. Hitpigs is currently in production at Cinesite and is scheduled for release in early 2022.

The directors discussed the process of translating Breathed's artwork into animation. "Our goal was actually to create a world that mirrored Berkeley's paintings, but also made it workable in a CG environment," said Angelini. "We were able to solve it by really communicating it within our environments, being very focused on the importance of truly reflecting that gaze into the CG."

As during the Cinesite spotlight (and many panels in Annecy and beyond this year), the filmmakers addressed the impact of COVID. Angelini noted that it was important for them to "cheer up" the team after switching to remote work. Feiss revealed one of these coping strategies: "After every asset meeting, everyone said, 'OK, we're five minutes early, we're almost done, it's time for the joke:' Bad Dad Joke '. Horrible, that's what. there's something fantastic about them! "

Not to be left to die, China Lion Ent. and HB Wink Animation's Extinct was exalted by Simpson Veteran David silverman, who directed the original comedy-adventure. Already familiar to audiences in some countries, the film follows Op (Rachel Bloom) and Ed (Adam Devine), brother and sister flummels - adorable donut-shaped animals - who accidentally travel through time from 1835 to modern day Shanghai. There they discover traffic, trans fats and, even worse, that flummels are now extinct. It's up to this clumsy couple to save themselves and their species… and, perhaps, change the course of history.

Also lending their voices are Zazie Beetz, Ken Jeong, Jim Jeffries, Catherine O'Hara, Reggie Watts and Alex Borstein. The project is loaded with Simpson alumni, including co-director Raymond Persi and writers Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik.

Silverman shared "a short story of flummels" with viewers and a clip of the only musical number of the movie "Killing Time" - which he had to write because father and son composers Micheal Giacchino (Su) and Mick Giacchino were not involved in the project. "I had to do that because it's hard to present an animatic without music and just lyrics and say, 'Do you like the song?'" Joked the director. The melody introduces the "fire extinguishers", a family of strange extinct creatures kept safe by a scientist who bends time.

“One of the biggest challenges in this film was obviously that we had these characters that the writers put into the script, they have a hole in the middle. Well, it was a little tricky to design at first, because every project we did seemed to have a character with a comic gun hole in between them, as opposed to something that looked organically like that. … Character designer Ryan O'Loughlin had a good idea: he built the character around this hole and he became a ring, a kind of donut-like character, "explained Silverman." The designs were great, but when you see this CG character you think, OK, will this work ?, when you see him in that sort of crucifixion pose. The animators at Cinesite really gave him a real personality and a real life. They found ways to fold and move him that seemed natural ".

Already available to audiences in the UK and Ireland via Sky and NOW TV, Riverdance: The animated adventure it was choreographed by the director Dave Rosenbaum (supervisor of history, Minions) and Chief Animation Officer of Cinesite Eamonn Butler. Inspired by the Grammy-winning Irish dance phenomenon, co-pro Aniventure and River Productions follows an Irish boy named Keegan (Sam Hardy) and a Spanish girl named Moya (Hannah Herman Cortes) as they travel to the mythical world of the legendary Megaloceros Giganteus, who teach them to appreciate Riverdance as a celebration of life.

The film also stars Pierce Brosnan, John Kavanagh, Brendan Gleeson, Aisling Bea, Lilly Singh, Jermaine Fowler and Pauline McLynn, and features a new single from the Irish music sensation, Lyra.

When the filmmakers visited Dublin to meet the creators of the play, Butler reveals, they came face to face with the fossilized remains of one of the "impressive and intimidating" giant deer featured in the film at the city's natural history museum. “I thought, how are we going to do it? We need these things to act and speak e do Riverdance. " The filmmakers worked with a talented team of show business dancers, capturing the choreography in a state-of-the-art London mo-cap studio for three to four days. "Once we had that data, we passed it on to the most talented [Cinesite] teams in Montreal, where they used it to create the performances you see in the film. In some cases it's a very small, very direct transfer from [the dancers] directly to our human characters, but it got a lot more complicated when we tried to transfer that data onto giant dancing deer! "

The end result was shared in a clip of an entire herd of Megaloceros dancing in tandem to well-known beats, plus an action-packed and touching trailer.