News
Rintaro, Madhouse to Animate 2008 Penguin CG Movie
posted on by Egan Loo
Variety and Screen Daily report from France's Cannes Film Festival that director Rintarō (Space Pirate Captain Harlock, Metropolis) and the animation company he co-founded, Madhouse Studios (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, Highlander: Vengeance), are working with Paris-based Denis Friedman Productions (DFP) on a computer-animated feature film called Yona Yona Penguin. Shochiku plans to release the movie in Japan in December 2008, and it will work with Madhouse on the North American release. Hong Kong's Golden Network Asia will release the movie in Asia, while France's Wild Bunch will release it in the remaining other regions.
The movie is budgeted at US$12 million, not including dubbing costs in Japanese, French, and English. Japan's Dynamo Pictures will produce the beginning and ending of the movie, DFP will produce the middle segments, and France's Mikros Image will be in charge of post-production. According to Screen Daily, the story is about "a little girl who gets sucked into a fantasy world populated by goblins who believe that their saviour will be a penguin." The project is the latest in the history of Japanese-French animated collaborations that dates from 1981's Ulysses 31 to 2006's Ōban Star Racers.
Source: animeanime.jp
