A few years have passed since we last saw Edgar Wright’s genius on the big screen. The talented writer and director who gave us the Cornetto Trilogy, composed of Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and The World’s End, as well as the adaptation of Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, has been working on his new project, Baby Driver, which is set for a 2017 release.
After dropping out from Marvel’s Ant-Man and going on a social-media break earlier this year, Edgar Wright is coming back with new and interesting projects. In addition to Baby Driver, news broke last month about Edgar Wright and Johnny Depp teaming for an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s Fortunately, the Milk, a children’s novel with aliens, pirates, and time-traveling. Now, a new project has been added to Wright’s list, this time in the field of animation.
Edgar Wright is set to co-write and direct an original animated feature for DreamWorks Animation. The still-untitled project will center on the concept of shadows. Although DreamWorks had been developing a project titled Me & My Shadow for a while now, Wright’s film is separate from it, taking a new approach to the same concept.
Wright will work alongside author and comedian David Walliams (creator of the British sketch show Little Britain) to bring this project to life. Bonnie Arnold and Mireille Soria, DreamWorks Animation’s co-presidents of feature animation, shared the following in a statement:
“Edgar will spearhead a new approach to this fascinating concept and we’re ecstatic to have him onboard as director along with David as co-writer. We’ve always been intrigued by a film concept involving shadows, and now with Edgar’s signature comedic style and abilities as a natural storyteller, audiences will be treated to a truly captivating and energetic tale.”
It can be said that Wright’s career started when he won a competition on the TV program Going Live back in 1991, where he showed his natural talent at filmmaking with a stop-motion short. He is no stranger to digital animation either, although this will be his first animated movie as a director, he served as a co-writer of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson’s The Adventures of Tintin in 2011.
Edgar Wright added to the statement:
“My first endeavours in film-making as a teenager were in animation, so it was hugely intriguing to get a call from DreamWorks Animation about potentially directing. When the Shadows concept was suggested to me, I could see the poster, the title sequence and pretty much the whole movie. It’s a blast writing this and to have one of my oldest friends in comedy, David Walliams, along for the adventure is a thrill”.
Wright knows his ways around a comedy, having not only directed and co-written – along with Simon Pegg – the Cornetto trilogy but also the TV series Spaced. Walliams is an expert in the filed of comedy and children’s fiction. These two talents joining forces for an animated feature will most likely result in a quality product with generous amounts of visual comedy and clever jokes.
Screen Rant will keep you posted on further details on this untitled project as it develops.
