Movies
‘Corpse Bride’ Director, ‘Nightmare Before Christmas’ Animator Begins ‘Oz Wars’
Vanguard Films has tapped Mike Johnson, co-director of Corpse Bride, to helm its CG/stop-motion feature Oz Wars. Script, written by Rob Moreland and Athena Gam, is a transformation of the Oz narrative, with Dorothy caught up in a whirlwind of warrior witches, black magic, martial arts and monsters against a contemporary backdrop. Vanguard topper John Williams said new stop-motion software will enable Oz Wars to be made at “an unprecedentedly economical cost point.” Hopefully they don’t “clean up” the stop-motion like they ignorantly did in Corpse Bride. Oz Wars is an “animated action-adventure story, but unlike most animated films, it’s not just for kids,” Johnson said. “The Land of Oz will be reimagined using stop-motion to create a world that’s dark, slick, sexy and dangerous.” Johnson co-directed Corpse Bride with Tim Burton. As an animator his credits include The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach.
Described as “Ted meets ET,” David Mikalson’s raunchy comedy Goblin is being brought to life over at A24, and Will Forte (“The Four Seasons”) is now in talks to star.
Deadline first reported the news this afternoon.
Kenneth Branagh has been cast to voice the titular Goblin in the upcoming A24 movie, with the character said to be “green-colored” as well as “anatomically correct.”
Skyler Gisondo (Superman) is reportedly playing the Goblin’s human best friend.
The mysterious project sounds a bit like films including A Gnome Named Gnorm and more recently, Frankie Freako, though it’s important to note that it’s not billed as a horror movie.
Deadline details, “After [Mikalson] hatched the idea to make an outrageous buddy comedy about a goblin, using a practical puppet and operating outside the Hollywood system, his script quickly got him a rep team. While others might have eyed the raunchy comedy as a writing sample or planned to wait to see the micro-budget version Mikalson has been directing in Kentucky, A24 jumped all over it. The hot indie essentially has agreed to finance a full feature.”
“There was a lot of interest, but A24 came with what Mikalson really wanted, after spending all his money crafting the puppet title character: they acquired the movie and agreed to let him make it with a significantly increased budget than what he had left after creating the anatomically correct title character,” Deadline’s report goes on to explain.
What does the titular Goblin actually look like? Well, a cake that Mikalson had whipped up for his reps might give us our first look at what to expect. Deadline explains the photo you’ll see down below, “Take a look at the cake he commissioned with Marc Gravelle at Cake Art in West Hollywood, to present to his reps as thanks for making his dream come true.”
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