IDT Ent. has announced that its West Coast headquarters in Burbank, Calif. has begun production on a new CG-animated feature film titled Sheepish. Putting a comic twist on the old ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ concept, the movie will be animated at IDT Ent.’s toon studio in Toronto and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The news follows this week’s announcement that IDT Ent. is being acquired by Liberty Media, which will use the company to produce animated content for its Starz Entertainment Group.
Sheepish will revolve around a wolf named Logan, who pays the ultimate price when he violates an age-old covenant that protects a particular flock of sheep. Logan is himself transformed into a sheep and has to learn to get along with his natural prey, who in turn teach him to be a better wolf.
The team of Saul Blinkoff and Elliott Bour (Disney’s Kronk’s New Groove, Winnie the Pooh in Springtime With Roo) are directing the film from an original idea and script by Bart Coughlin, a character technical director whose credits include the DreamWorks toon features Antz, Shrek, Shark Tale and the upcoming Flushed Away and Bee Movie. In addition to directing the animated MTV series Spy Groove, Blinkoff and Bour worked as animators on the Disney classics Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mulan and Tarzan. IDT Ent.’s Morris Berger, Stephen R. Brown, Janet Healy and Jerry Davis are exec producers.
IDT Ent. has several animated films in production at their animation facilities in Burbank, Toronto, and Vancouver. The Toronto crew is finishing Everyone’s Hero, the film that actor Christopher Reeve was directing at the time of his death. Dan St. Pierre and Colin Brady have taken over directing duties on the tale of an ordinary boy who takes a chance and decides to take heroic actions, despite overwhelming odds. He is accompanied by a feisty little girl and an eclectic group of sidekicks in his cross-county journey to restore his family’s honor and discover the hero within. Rob Reiner, Whoopi Goldberg, Brian Dennehy, Raven Symone, William H. Macy, Mandy Patinkin, Robert Wagner, Richard Kind, New York Yankees Manager Joe Torre, Jake T. Austin and the late Dana Reeve lend their voices to the pic, which is produced by Ron Tippe and Igor Khait, and exec produced by Christopher and Dana Reeve, Stephen R. Brown, Morris Berger, Jerry Davis and Janet Healy. Twentieth Century Fox will release the film nationwide on Sept. 15.
Also in the works is the CG-animated feature film Space Chimps. An IDT Ent. presentation of a Vanguard Animation film, the comedy that follows the galactic misadventures of a hapless descendant of the first chimps in space. The family flick is being put together in Vancouver with Vanguard founder and producer John Williams (Shrek, Valiant) producing. Morris Berger, Stephen R. Brown, Janet Healy, Jerry Davis, Eric Bennett and Neil Braun are exec producers.
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