Just a day after it was announced that Sony acquired the rights to MANIMAL, we have an update from the producer, Glen A. Larson, who brought the project to fruition in the 80′s and plans to do so again, this time in feature length film form… and probably not quite as cheesy.
RE: Sony: “It was a very deliberate acquisition (by Sony), because they want family entertainment. So it will probably have more of the spirit of Spider-Man in terms of it having its tongue in its cheek and not being too dark and desperate. We’ll try to have some fun with it.”
Sony will be using CGI instead of practical effects for the animal transformations: “Oh yes, and that’s exactly why Sony came to us. It’s the animation arm of Sony that is doing it – not as an animated feature, but because they can do those transitions. [With the TV series] it was the problem of having to get one of those done every week. Now, with this current technology we could do a much better job, so I think it’ll be a number of rungs up the ladder in terms of quality and theatre, and we’ll be able to do more.”
The source of Dr. Jonathan Chase’s power will come into play: ”I think we’ll probably get a little further into it – that was another factor of time, I didn’t have a lot of time to develop that. But we’ll play with that – we have a couple of things in mind.”
MANIMAL was an 8 episode long TV show that starred the immortal Simon MacCorkindale as Dr. Jonathan Chase, a wealthy doctor who transformed into animals to fight crime. And I thought the Animorphs were original.
