Spellbound | |
---|---|
Directed by | Vicky Jenson |
Screenplay by |
|
Produced by |
|
Starring | |
Music by | Alan Menken [1] |
Production company | |
Distributed by | Netflix |
Release date |
|
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Spellbound is an upcoming American animated musical fantasy film directed by Vicky Jenson from a screenplay by Linda Woolverton, Julia Miranda, and the writing team of Lauren Hynek and Elizabeth Martin. [2] It features music composed by Alan Menken, who also wrote the songs with longtime collaborator and lyricist Glenn Slater. [1] Produced by Skydance Animation, the film features the voices of Rachel Zegler, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, Tituss Burgess, John Lithgow, Jenifer Lewis, and Nathan Lane. Set in the world of magic known as Lumbria, the story follows Princess Ellian (Zegler), a young girl who must break the spell that has split her kingdom in two.
The project, initially titled Split, was announced in July 2017, shortly after Skydance Animation was formed in March 2017, with Paramount Pictures scheduling distribution for 2019. The film subsequently underwent changes, such as release dates, with Jenson later announced as the director, and the film's title changed to The Unbreakable Spell, [3] before eventually getting to its current title. The film was acquired by Apple TV+ in December 2020, before Netflix took over the rights in October 2023. Much of the main voice cast signed on in June 2022, following Zegler's casting in April 2022. Production was done remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Spellbound is scheduled for release in 2024 on Netflix.
The story is set in a world of magic known as Lumbria where a young girl, Ellian, must break the spell that has split her kingdom in two. [4]
Additionally, Tituss Burgess has been cast in an undisclosed role. [5] [6]
In March 2017, Skydance Media formed a multi-year partnership with Madrid-based animation studio Ilion Animation Studios, forming an animation division called Skydance Animation. [7] In July, it announced Split, and it was revealed by Skydance Media CEO David Ellison that Linda Woolverton was writing the film. [8] [9] It would be distributed by Paramount Pictures as part of their deal with Skydance Media and was given a release date for sometime in 2019. Following John Lasseter's hiring as CCO of Skydance Animation, then-chief of Paramount Animation Mireille Soria announced that Paramount Animation would end its informal work with Skydance. [10]
In April 2020, composer Alan Menken announced that he was working on the project with Lasseter, [11] which was renamed to The Unbreakable Spell before it became Spellbound. [1] The film would be directed by Vicky Jenson, from a screenplay by Lauren Hynek, Elizabeth Martin and Woolverton, with songs by Menken and longtime collaborator Glenn Slater. [4] In July 2020, it was announced that Spellbound was still going to be released by Paramount Pictures without Paramount Animation [12] until Apple TV+ acquired the distribution rights to it in December 2020 as part of a larger pact with Skydance Animation. [13] Apple Original Films would replace Paramount as a production company. However, in October 2023, Skydance Animation ended its deal with Apple, and later signed a multi-year deal with Netflix, which would take over distribution of the studio's future films in production, including Spellbound. [14]
In April 2022, Rachel Zegler was cast as the lead character. [15] In June, Nicole Kidman, Javier Bardem, John Lithgow, Nathan Lane, Jenifer Lewis, André De Shields, and Jordan Fisher were added to the cast. [16] In June 2023, Tituss Burgess joined the cast. [5] [6]
Animation has been provided by Skydance Animation Madrid with portions of production done remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic. [17]
In March 2017, it was reported that the original release was intended to be in 2019. [8] On July 20, 2020, Paramount Pictures dated the film for November 11, 2022. [12] On December 16, 2020, Apple TV+ entered talks to take over the distribution rights to the film, retaining its November 11 date. [18] [19] In June 2023, after missing the planned release date, the film was announced for a 2024 release. [5] [6] That October, Netflix took over the film's distribution rights from Apple, as part of a new multi-year deal with Skydance Animation, while retaining its 2024 release. [14]
A work-in-progress presentation of the film was shown at the 2023 Annecy International Animation Film Festival in June by Jenson and head of story Brian Pimental. [20]
In March 2022, it was reported that Skydance Animation made a multi-year deal with Spin Master Entertainment to make toys based on the film. [21]
Javier Ángel Encinas Bardem is a Spanish actor. He has received various accolades, including an Academy Award and a Golden Globe Award.
Alan Irwin Menken is an American composer, best known for his scores and songs for films produced by Walt Disney Animation Studios and Skydance Animation. Menken's music for The Little Mermaid (1989), Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and Pocahontas (1995) has each won him two Academy Awards. He also composed the scores and songs for Little Shop of Horrors (1986), Newsies (1992), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996), Hercules (1997), Home on the Range (2004), Enchanted (2007), Tangled (2010), and Disenchanted (2022), among others. His accolades include winning eight Academy Awards — becoming the second most prolific Oscar winner in the music categories after Alfred Newman, a Tony Award, eleven Grammy Awards, seven Golden Globe Awards, and a Daytime Emmy Award. Menken is one of nineteen people to have won an Emmy, a Grammy, an Oscar and a Tony.
John Alan Lasseter is an American film director, producer, and animator. He has served as the Head of Animation at Skydance Animation since 2019. Previously, he acted as the chief creative officer of Pixar Animation Studios, Walt Disney Animation Studios, and Disneytoon Studios, as well as the Principal Creative Advisor for Walt Disney Imagineering.
Richard L. Moore is an American film and television animation director, screenwriter and voice actor. He is best known for serving as a director on primetime animated television series such as The Simpsons, The Critic and Futurama as well as directing the films Wreck-It Ralph (2012), Zootopia (2016) and Ralph Breaks the Internet (2018) for Walt Disney Animation Studios. He is a two-time Emmy Award winner, a three-time Annie Award winner and an Academy Award winner.
John Arthur Lithgow is an American actor. He studied at Harvard University and the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before becoming known for his diverse work on stage and screen. He has received numerous accolades including six Emmy Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, and two Tony Awards as well as nominations for two Academy Awards, a BAFTA Award, and four Grammy Awards. Lithgow has received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2001 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2005.
Skydance Animation Madrid is a Spanish animation studio based in Madrid, Spain. It is a subsidiary of Skydance Media via Skydance Animation to create computer-animated films for theatrical release. After working with Skydance since 2017, they were acquired by the company in 2020, and rebranded as Skydance Animation Madrid.
Skydance Media, LLC is an American production company based in Santa Monica, California. Founded by David Ellison in 2006, the company entered a five-year partnership to co-produce and co-finance films with Paramount Pictures starting in 2009, and renewed the agreement twice extending to 2021. The company specializes in films, animation, television, video games, and sports.
Paramount Animation is an American animation studio, serving as the animation division and label of Paramount Pictures, a subsidiary of Paramount Global. The division was founded on July 6, 2011, following the box office success of Paramount's own Rango and the end of their distribution deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2012.
American-born Australian actress and producer Nicole Kidman has appeared in numerous film and television projects, as well as in theatre productions. She made her film debut in the Australian drama Bush Christmas in 1983. Four years later, she starred in the television miniseries Bangkok Hilton, for which she received the AACTA Award for Best Lead Actress in a Television Drama. Her breakthrough role was as a married woman trapped on a yacht with a murderer in the 1989 thriller Dead Calm. She followed this with her Hollywood debut opposite Tom Cruise in Tony Scott's auto-racing film Days of Thunder (1990). Her role as a homicidal weather forecaster in Gus Van Sant's crime comedy-drama To Die For garnered Kidman a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical in 1996. She worked with Cruise again on Ron Howard's Far and Away (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.
Nathan Greno is an American film director, story artist, and writer best known as one of the directors of the Walt Disney Animation Studios film Tangled (2010).
Apple TV+ is an American subscription streaming service owned and operated by Apple Inc. Launched on November 1, 2019, it offers a selection of original production film and television series called Apple Originals. The service was announced during the Apple Special Event of March 2019, where entertainers from Apple TV+ projects appeared onstage, including Jennifer Aniston, Oprah Winfrey, and Steven Spielberg.
Rachel Zegler is an American actress and singer. She came to prominence with her film debut playing María in Steven Spielberg's musical adaptation West Side Story (2021), for which she won the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress – Motion Picture Comedy or Musical. In 2023, she played Anthea in Shazam! Fury of the Gods and Lucy Gray Baird in The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes.
Luck is a 2022 animated fantasy comedy film directed by Peggy Holmes and co-directed by Javier Abad, from a screenplay written by Kiel Murray, and a story by Murray and the writing team of Jonathan Aibel and Glenn Berger, based on an original concept created by Rebeca Carrasco, Juan De Dios, and Julián Romero. Produced by Skydance Animation, the film features the voices of Eva Noblezada, Simon Pegg, Jane Fonda, Whoopi Goldberg, Flula Borg, Lil Rel Howery, Colin O'Donoghue, and John Ratzenberger. Set in the Land of Luck, the story follows the unluckiest person, Sam Greenfield (Noblezada), as she must unite with a talking black cat named Bob (Pegg) to turn her luck around.
Javier Bardem is a Spanish actor and producer who made his acting debut as a child in an episode of the Spanish television series El Pícaro (1974). Bardem made his feature film debut with a minor role in the 1990 Spanish erotic film Las edades de Lulú. The film's director Bigas Luna was impressed by Bardem, giving him his first leading role in the romantic-comedy Jamón Jamón (1992), alongside future wife Penélope Cruz. In 1993, Bardem starred in another Luna film, Huevos de Oro, and in the Vicente Aranda-directed El Amante Bilingüe. The following year he appeared in Días contados (1994) and El detective y la muerte (1994). For both films he was nominated for the San Sebastián International Film Festival Award for Best Actor.
Skydance Animation, LLC is an American animation studio that is a division of Skydance Media, founded on March 16, 2017. The studio is based in Los Angeles, with offices in East Hartford, Connecticut and Madrid, Spain; the Madrid branch was originally Ilion Animation Studios.
Joy Ngiaw is a Malaysian composer for film and TV. Her score for Apple TV+ and Skydance's debut animation Blush has won Best Music Award from Hollywood Music in Media and was nominated for an Annie. She also scored Skydance Animation's inaugural studio logo. Other recent projects include Skydance Animation's TV series WondLa, Netflix and CBS's TV show Glamorous, Walt Disney Animation Studio's Short Circuit: Jing Hua, and Netflix's Rescued by Ruby.
WondLa is an upcoming animated sci-fi fantasy television series based on the books The Search for WondLa, A Hero for WondLa, and The Battle for WondLa by Tony DiTerlizzi, produced by Skydance Animation and developed by Bobs Gannaway, who also serves as the showrunner and executive producer with DiTerlizzi, John Lasseter, David Ellison and Dana Goldberg. The cast includes the voices of Jeanine Mason, Teri Hatcher, Brad Garrett, Gary Anthony Williams, Chiké Okonkwo, D. C. Douglas, and Alan Tudyk.