This is pleasant to note:
Phil Lord and Chris Miller, the duo behind Sony Animation's hit "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," are in final negotiations to write and direct the Lego movie, which is set up at Warner Bros ...
One winning component that convinced Lego and Warners that the duo was up to the task was their work on "Cloudy." They took a 32-page children's book, developed a story and characters and used their unique sense of humor to turn it into a family movie that also played to adults.
During Cloudy's production, I ran across Mr. Lord and Mr. Miller during my walk-throughs. I always found them to be engaged, high-spirited guys.
They clearly brought a lot to the party because at the time they rolled onto the scene, Sony Pictures Animation had been wrestling with the property for a long time and the story crew was ... dispirited. (I know this because I used to listen to the complaints whenever I breezed through the Culver City studio.)
I'm heartened that nice guys don't always finish at the rear of the pack. Congratulations on the new gig.
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10 comments:
Congrats! They are amazingly talented and humble and a lot of fun too! If the suits at $ony were smart they would had keep them under their wings.
Phil and Chris are the nicest, most talented people I've had the pleasure of working with. Absolutely agree, Steve -- they deserve all their success.
"They took a 32-page children's book, developed a story and characters"
Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't Cloudy in production for nearly 8 years with a dozen different people taking a pass at it before these guys came on board? Rescuing this project is an admirable feat and I'm sure they are great guys, but I remember that expediency and making a film quickly out of nothing is not what happened with "Cloudy"...
I've heard nothing but great things about those two, and Cloudy was my favorite animated movie last year. I've heard that they were very collaborative with the animators at Sony.
Any idea who's going to actually do the animation for Warners on this one? I heard Blur had done a test for producer Dan Lin awhile back - any chance they'll finally get a feature up and running over in Venice?
SPA didn't seem to have a direction on this b-4 Miller and Lord came along.
Lots of management stumbling: "Go this way! No, that way!" Like a headless chicken.
So there was years of headless chickening, ya know?
"Correct me if I'm wrong here, but wasn't Cloudy in production for nearly 8 years with a dozen different people taking a pass at it... "
Okay, I'm happy to correct you. Before Phil and Chris came on as directors, THEY had written the screenplay (having been hired just for their writing skills at first). So it wasn't like they came on at the last minute and took credit for everyone else's ideas... it was THEIR script. There might have been other versions before theirs, but theirs was the one that got the movie greenlit.
Basically: I agree with everyone else. The dudes are awesome.
They took a 32-page children's book, developed a story and characters and used their unique sense of humor to turn it into a family movie that also played to adults.
Which, with most projects, is standard studio-speak for "Throwing the book's non-plot out the window, and pumping in the sitcom gags, while pursuing every Barnes & Noble title-marketing license possible".
(Sorry, think I'm alone in considering the movie unwatchably Ritalin-hyperactive, and trying to cover up its "hipness" with recycled How To Pixar 101 character-issue huggies...
I don't know, did the theaters put something in the popcorn butter, and I ended up immune?)
^ No, you're just jaded, and no longer capable of simply sitting down and enjoying an entertaining, unpretentious animated movie.
Yeah, but...a Lego movie???
No, you're not alone... I thought cloudy was pretty bizarre, and only enjoyable if I were under 18, or on crystal meth...
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