Back in September ’03 the announcement came from Universal that Will Ferrell would be playing the role of the Man in the Yellow Hat in Universal Pictures’ upcoming animated feature film production of the children’s classic, Curious George, well Daily Variety has some more information on what all this means for Universal.
In film the trend has officially become the creation of CGI animated projects such as Shrek and Toy Story, pushing hand-drawn “2-D” animation on the shelf, or so it would seem.
Universal has announced that Curious George will rely on traditional animation to bring the mischievous monkey to life on a budget said to be around $40 million.
Not only will they be going to hand-drawn animation Jean-Marie Messier, Vivendi Universal’s reflexively blue-skying former chairman, envisioned the precocious monkey as the company’s Mickey Mouse, adorning everything from water bottles to the studio’s letterhead.
Curious George first hit book shelves 60 years ago written by H.A. and Margret Rey, Brian Grazer secured the film rights to George almost a decade ago he told Variety and Universal acquired additional rights to “Curious George” from Houghton Mifflin, a one-time publishing affiliate of the studio under Vivendi Universal.
Universal’s decision to go with traditional animation was not the first choice but Bonne Radford told Variety that George in CGI, “looked kinda creepy.”
So we can look forward to Curious George getting into trouble on the big screen next year with a release date of November 4 currently scheduled.
