Vancouver-based Mercury Filmworks and Perfect Circle Productions are partnering on a new animated movie, EDISON & NEEMO, produced with a unique blend of stop-motion and 3D animation. The film is an adventurously comic reworking of the mythical and legendary inventor, Thomas Alva Edison. The film will be produced by Perfect Circles Dean English (award-winning producer of the Genie nominated KISSED and the Grammy-nominated GWAR), directed by William Morrison (Much Music Video Awards Best Director 2001 and Juno and Grammy Award nominee) and James Dunnison (STUFF, ORGAN MUSIC, CELLULOID DREAMS). The feature is exec produced by Karen Powell (SOMETHING ELSE, ON THE CORNER) and Mercurys Clint Eland.
From the first draft script Dean brought to us, said Eland, Mercury Filmworks president, it was clearly an engaging story that would appeal to a diverse and international audience. By presenting it in a format such as stop-motion and 3D, we hope to achieve a unique look that does justice to the depth of the story.
This film was born of the desire to marry a wildly imaginative and powerful story with a bold and dream-like visual language, says producer Dean English. Together they would transport the viewer into a unique world at the dawn of electricity a world where electrical current is a metaphor for desire, where cinema itself is being born, and where everything and anything is possible. This is how we will portray the world of Edison and his electrified son Neemo in this film, adds English.
EDISON & NEEMO goes beyond the history of Edisons invention of the light bulb into an electrified universe where Edison faces the challenge of being a father the father of a son who, due to a tragic accident, has been both emotionally and literally electrified.
Budgeted at $7 million (Canadian) production on EDISON & NEEMO starts in spring 2004. It is not fully funded yet and the parties are working to secure a U.S./international distributor.
Delivering more than 250 half hours of television and feature animation to producers and broadcasters in its first five years, Mercury (www.mercuryfilmworks.com), which started as a small, three-person operation, now employs more than 160 people between its Vancouver, Toronto and Ottawa studios and is the second largest USAnimation facility in North America behind Disney. The company services clients worldwide via a carrier-class fiber-optic network and a fresh suite of Web-based client services. Mercury Filmworks was selected by Warner Bros. Feature Animation to provide digital paint services for its live-action/animation feature film, LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION.
Vancouver-based Perfect Circle Prods. was established by producer Dean English. Credits include KISSED, LILITH ON TOP, FLOWER AND GARNET, LOOKING FOR LEONARD, FALLING ANGELS and GWAR. Collectively these films have been programmed in some of the worlds most prominent international festivals (Toronto, Berlin and Cannes) while winning awards and nominations from such bodies as the Genies and the Grammys. The partners involved in the production and or distribution of these films include MGM, Lakeshore Entertainment, Samuel Goldwyn, Wild Bunch/Exception, Alliance Atlantis, Global Entertainment and Seville Pictures.
