Parallax Media Ventures has announced that it is near completion of pre-production on Musical, the definitive version of the classic Grimm’s fairy tale, The Bremen Town Musicians. The team’s first act animatic, featuring 3,200 storyboard images and paintings, will be available for private viewing three weeks following the American Film Market. The feature, with a proposed budget of $60 million, is a four-quadrant title slated for release in 2017.
Founded earlier this year, Parallax Media Ventures is led by Kevin Richardson, a former executive and senior producer at Nickelodeon, Electronic Arts and Mattel, and on feature films for leading firms such as LucasFilm, Disney, and Colossal. He initially became interested in The Bremen Town Musicians while running the German wing of the European studio Grouping with Didier Brunner (The Triplets of Belleville; The Secret of Kells). The story of four animals that form a band to win a big music contest in Bremen, Germany, The Bremen Town Musicians offers rich animated character studies for Musical.
“Tonally, Musical is Shrek meets Frozen meets Lord of the Rings, with danger lurking in the shadows. I've always wanted to see an animated feature that shows characters focused on overcoming seemingly insurmountable obstacles, inflexible cultural beliefs, and self doubt,” said Richardson, executive producer and founder of Parallax Media Ventures. “I think the Grimm Brothers would approve of our story adaptation and the way our animation brings the characters to life, and respects the core themes.”
The Parallax team has collectively worked on 16 animated features, with an aggregate $9.4 billion USD box office.
The Parallax Musical team includes:
Claus Dzalakowski, art direction/look development – based in Australia; recently open a studio in India for animation and FX work. Has worked in more than 10 countries
Jamie Baker – story artist/consultant – has worked at Pixar, ILM, Sony Pictures Animation, and PDI/DreamWorks on features such as Finding Nemo; Cars, and Inside Out
David Fulp – story artist – talented artist with superb story sense, he has worked on six DreamWorks and Pixar features
Jaikumar Balasubramanian – animation pipe and pre-viz – one of India's best animation directors and CG pipeline and FX masters, he has worked for Technicolor, Nickelodeon, Disney, and Sony Imageworks
Jim Beihold – story consultant – more than 16 features in 30 years, including work on Disney’s Tarzan; The Little Mermaid, and The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe
Dermot Walsh – story artist – opened/operated studio in Indonesia; supervised series work in Japan; worked on Mulan and Curious George
Pushparaj G. Sethu – 3D pre-viz - Expert in environment generation, cloth simulation and hair systems; animator on Spiderman; Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and Alice in Wonderland
Aaron Batara – story artist – has worked on Discovery Channel’s Dinosaur Revolution series; story artist for Rooster Teeth’s anime series RWBY
Michael Daley – story art/consulting – has worked at BlueSky and is currently at Paramount. Storyboarded Ice Age 4; Rio 2; Epic, and Peanuts