Down at the SPA

I spent a large part of my morning (after a lovely, loong drive) at Sony Pictures Animation, where I'm told they will be staffing up for new productions next month ...

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs II is still in story, even as it's in production. (Nothing new there.)

But staffers tell me that there are going to be a lot of animators put on it so that Sony's big Fall sequel makes its release date. (There's lots of animation still in the hopper, and a September release date staring the production in the face. Nobody I talked to is sure where the animators will be. India? Canada? Culver City? Our guess there will be Sony Merry Workers in all thos places.)

Kazorn and the Unicorn (a.k.a. Kazorn) is in early story development, with more story artists slated to climb aboard the project as the feature ramps up.

(There are posters for Popeye up on the wall, and there was a lot of activity in the editing bays, but Kazorn and Cloudy were the pictures I observed in the immediate foreground.)