New Line lands on 'Planet 51'

Animation feature written by Stillman

By JOHN HOPEWELL

Venturing for the first time into toon pic distribution, New Line Cinema has taken U.S. domestic rights to “Planet 51, one of Europe's most ambitious CGI animation movies, penned by Shrek and Shrek screenwriter Joe Stillman.

Budgeted at $60 million, alien planet spoof Planet One is produced by Madrid's Ilion Animation Studios and London's Handmade Films, and sold by Handmade Films Intl.
It turns on a lantern-jawed U.S. astronaut, Capt. Charles Chuck Baker, whose shuttle touches down on a supposedly uninhabited planet. But he discovers a civilization whose banana-haired denizens live a 1950s lifestyle in a world that looks like Pleasantville meets Cuba's Havana.

And the planets inhabitants live in paranoiac fear of an alien invasion, repped by Baker.

Comedy, which allows Stillman to take swipes at cross-culture paranoia and contempo mores, is directed by Jorge Blanco and produced by Ilion's CEO Ignacio Perez Dolset.
The domestic deal was initially discussed by Handmades Guy Collins and New Line co-chair Bob Shaye this fall, and closed this week by Collins and Dolset and New Line's head of business affairs and co-production Carolyn Blackwood and head of acquisitions Guy Stodel.

The alien planet comedy has already sold to north of 30 territories, including the U.K. (Entertainment) and Spain (DeAPlaneta).

Planet 51 is skedded for completion by March 2009. Its producers are aiming for list Hollywood talent to voice the toon feature.

“The deal has been made with the objective on everybodys part of going out on no fewer than 3,000 screens,” Dolset told Daily Variety.

Pic marks the entry into feature filmmaking of arguably Spain's most successful international entertainment company, vidgame and cell-phone contents specialists, Supreme Ent., which also co-owns mobile contents multinational, the Zed Group.

Perez Dolset and Blanco broke through internationally as the producer and lede artist on cult vidgame franchise Commandos: Behind Enemy Lines, launched in 1998 by vidgame developer Pyro Studios, another Supreme subsid.

Pyro is prepping a Planet 51 video game to roll out over the five leading console platforms.

Pic will be co-helmed by Javier Abad and Marcos Martinez, who worked with Blanco on Commandos.