I'm currently sitting on the 10th floor of a building that overlooks the great city of Burbank. The recent storms put me in a peaceful mood. The rain washed away the smog and dirt and filth that has accumulated over the summer. I really enjoy this time of year because I feel like the LA area is renewed, it is scrubbed clean and LA magically turns into a beautiful place. The weather put me in a good mood, so I figured this would be a great time to write something about Wild Brain and what was to be their first CG film "Opus". ...continued...
Several years ago, Wild Brain created this rather ugly 17-min short film called "Hubert's Brain". The intent was to make a film that attracted the right people to take a chance on WB and send them into the CG feature stratosphere. The quirky short actually pulled in interest from a few studios and landed them a meeting with Harvey "Miramax" Weinstein (year this happened was 2001 or 2002). The meeting went well and WB got excited about the possibility of turning Hubert's Brain into a feature. Time went by and things were evolving slowly with Miramax. WB was talking to others, pushing the idea of a Hubert feature. Paramount ended up optioning Hubert's Brain, and since Paramount never did anything with it, Hubert died. WB continued to develop other projects including an altered version of Little Red Riding Hood which was also optioned but doesn't seem to be going into production anytime soon.
Things are not going very well for WB and their feature dreams until a couple of years have gone by and Miramax comes back to propose Opus. A deal was struck and now, finally, WB had a CG feature to do. That is what everyone thought until the Weinsteins divorced Disney. Several people (including myself) thought Opus was a casualty of the breakup, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe the Weinsteins just didn't want WB doing the feature after all? The Weinsteins still have control of Opus and now I'm told that not only is it happening, but it is happening somewhere BESIDES WB.
Curiously enough, the studio that is rumored to get the project seems like a huge mistake. It really makes me wonder what exactly happened, and the real reason they pulled from WB and went with these nobodies (if the rumor is true). I'll write more after I can confirm the rumors.
2 comments:
There is pretty interesting article about the history of Wild Brain in the SF Weekly. Check it out here if you're interested..
http://sfweekly.com/Issues/current/news/feature.html
Sounds like they have been trying to get into features for awhile. And to be so close, then have the Weinsteins take the property to another 'start-up' company? Man, that sucks for WB..should be interesting to see what happens
very curious to see if the rumor is true...
Given Wild Brain's talent pool and management, they would have something else brewing by now. It looks like they are a little late to the party.
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