Handmade and Ilion team up to fight “aliens”
Animated UK production company Handmade Films International is teaming up – on a financial, production and international sales basis – with Madrid-based Ilion Animation Studios for production of their first CGI animated feature, the impressively budgeted $50m Planet One.
Written by the Oscar-nominated Joe Stillman (Shrek, Shrek 2), the film will be directed by Jorge Blanco, creator of the multi-million selling console-game series Commandos.
Planet One tells the story of the colourful, antennaed, eight-fingered inhabitants of Planet One (similar to 1950s American suburbia), who have a persistent fear of alien invasion, reinforced by sci-fi flicks and paranoid army generals barking about monsters from outer space. The world of one of these aliens, Lem, is turned upside down when human astronaut Chuck Baker crash lands into his backyard.
Producers will be Ilion’s Ignacio Perez Dolset and co-producers Guy Collins and Michael Ryan for Handmade, alongside former president of Nickelodeon Pay-TV channel Albie Hecht (whose credits include the Oscar-nominated Lemony Snicket’s Series of Unfortunate Events) and Lola Films President Andres Vicente Gomez.
Ilion was started by the founders of Pyro Studios (creators of Commandos) who, along with mobile phone content development and distribution leader LaNetro, are already developing a video game and cross-promoting the film on cellular networks.
Collins is excited about Handmade’s move into animation and their partnership with Ilion in particular and says: “Their production and creative team is as experienced, dynamic and cutting edge as anything you’d find at the major Hollywood studios and we believe they are set to be a major producer of CGI animation films”.
Production will start in May 2007 with a theatrical release set for Christmas 2008 or Easter 2009.
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