Sola Media Posts First Deals For Annecy Title ‘Captain Sabertooth And The Countess Of Grel'
EXCLUSIVE: Sola Media has unveiled a first round of sales for Norwegian animated feature Captain Sabertooth And The Countess Of Grel as it makes its international festival debut at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival.
The film has sold to Greece (Tanweer) Baltics (Garsu Pasaulio Irasai), Italy (Imago), Portugal (Films4You), Spain (Paycom), Turkey (Siyah Beyaz Film), Bulgaria (Pro Films), Hungary & Romania (ADS), Poland (Vivarto), China (Beijing Yuaho). North America (CosmoBlue) and Ukraine (Svoe Kino).
More from Deadline
'My Grandfather Is A Nihonjin': Director Behind Brazilian-Japanese Animation Details Why She Didn't Want To Make An Anime
Protests Against Artificial Intelligence Planned For Annecy Animation Fest
'Animal Farm' Review: Andy Serkis Directs Seth Rogen And All-Star Voice Cast In Clever And Chilling Take On Orwell's Classic Novella - Annecy Animation Festival
Produced by Qvisten Animation, the film is based on Scandinavia's biggest children's entertainment brand about a colorful pirate and his crew, and is a follow-up to the international hit Captain Sabertooth and the Magic Diamond, which played in 160 territories worldwide.
The new film continues the saga with a fresh high-stakes adventure, in which the fearsome Countess of Gral ambushes Captain Sabertooth's ship, stealing a sacred figurehead and kidnapping young crewmate Pinky.
Crewmate and best friend Raven, Captain Sabertooth, his dragon, and the eccentric ship's cook mount a plan to rescue Pinky and protect the pirates' homeland from total domination.
'We are thrilled by the strong demand for Captain Sabertooth and the Countess of Grel across so many territories this early in the rollout,' said Solveig Langeland, Managing Director of Sola Media.
'The excitement from buyers reflects not only the strength of the Captain Sabertooth franchise, but also the film's fresh storytelling, rich animation, and emotional core. Just like its predecessor, this film is set to capture the imagination of audiences around the world.'
Directed by animation veteran Rasmus A. Sivertsen (Just Super, Captain Sabertooth and the Magic Diamond), the film also benefits from the creative vision of co-directors and screenwriters Yaprak Morali and Are Austnes — the award-winning team behind The Tomten and the Fox, which won the Young Audience Award at Annecy in 2020. Writers Karsten Fullu, Mina Stenbråten, and Rune Spaans round out the experienced script team.
The film is produced by Cecilie Tidemann and Ove Heiborg at Qvisten Animation — Norway's largest and most prolific animation studio.
Captain Sabertooth And The Countess Of Grel screens on Tuesday in the Annecy Presents section.
Best of Deadline
Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds
A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media
Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
3 hours ago
- Yahoo
Genndy Tartakovsky Knows ‘Fixed' Is a ‘Unicorn' of an Animated Movie
Having worked on the project for 15 years, Genndy Tartakovsky is fully aware that his latest film, 'Fixed,' is an anomaly. Here is a raunchy, capital R-rated 2D animated comedy about a dog having one last wild night out on the town before getting neutered in the morning and losing his precious family jewels. Despite having several acclaimed shows and a highly successful animated film trilogy in his resume, Tartakovsky's 'Fixed' could have easily not made it to the screen — and it almost didn't several times. 'I've always said this movie is a unicorn,' Tartakovsky told IndieWire ahead of the film's release at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. 'It's a dream come true to have a 2D animated, hand-drawn, R-rated movie that doesn't rely on pop culture humor. It's very rare.' More from IndieWire The Beautiful, Brutal Action of 'Predator: Killer of Killers' David Harbour Admits He's Ready for 'Stranger Things' to End: 'How Much More Story Is There?' He is not wrong. Though on the surface, it'd be easy to dismiss 'Fixed' as this year's 'Sausage Party,' another animated movie that used the medium's endless visual possibilities to give audiences extremely graphic imagery. For Tartakovsky, who has worked primarily in the all-ages space for the past 30 years, even when he's moved to R-rated animation, he's never written this kind of humor before. Sure, 'Samurai Jack' has humor, but it's never raunchy, and 'Primal' has plenty of graphic imagery, but it's kind of lacking in the buttholes and testicles department compared to this movie. For the director, it was a challenge to have to change his sensibilities and make sure exactly where he wanted the movie to go. 'It can't be just straight dialogue all the way through,' Tartakovsky explained. 'It's my sensibility, it has to have some physicality.' That physicality comes in the form of striking, exaggerated, and caricatured animation straight out of the golden age of Chuck Jones and Tex Avery cartoons. For Tartakovsky, who fell in love with that style of animation growing up, it was a dream. 'I've been studying it for so long,' he said. 'It's part of me and it's informed my style.' Whether it's the slapstick humor of 'Dexter's Laboratory,' or the use of silence in storytelling in 'Samurai Jack' or even the way he uses Bugs Bunny-type physicality in non-comedy projects like 'Clone Wars,' Tartakovsky has brought an old-school sensibility to every project he's worked on, but 'Fixed' feels like the culmination of it. Though there is no squash and stretch, exactly, there is a shared sense of physical humor and slapstick in Golden Age cartoons and a sight gag of a pack of dogs chasing a squirrel and cutting to them tearing the poor creature to bloody bits. Having worked with French studio La Cachette for his last two projects, 'Fixed' was also new territory for Tartakovsky in the form of a new team of animators working to bring that Avery and Jones vibe to 'Fixed.' Despite working in the industry for decades, the caliber of his collaborators intimidated the creator. 'I don't get to animate as much, so when all of a sudden I'm working with great animators, I get in my head and think they'll see that I'm a fake because I've only done my own stuff for so long,' Tartakovsky said. 'I had Disney animators on my team — one of our guys worked on 'Roger Rabbit,' and he's incredible, so am I really going to give him direction? He can out-animate me at any time.' According to Tartakovsky, it ended up not being an issue. 'It was the most minimal amount of notes we've ever done on a film. It was never about the technical side of animation, I'd just talk to them about the joke and they got it right away.' Behind the sex jokes lies a rather heartfelt story of a group of friends trying to cheer up one of their own, and even a sweet romantic story. Possibly the most surprisingly tender, yet still very funny, subplot in the film involves Lucky, a neurotic dog obsessed with weird smells and tastes, learning to love himself after an encounter with Frankie, an intersex dog voiced by River Gallo. 'Everyone was holding their breath, asking if I was sure I wanted to include that,' Tartakovsky said. 'I thought, why not? It's funny and we're not making fun of it. We want to be sincere about it and not mean.' Indeed, there's a sincerity in the way Gallo voices Frankie that makes the humor of their big scene also become a moment of personal triumph, of acceptance, and also funny dog sex. 'Hiring a voice actor who is part of that community added a lot to it. Sometimes I'd do something and they'd explain why it could be misinterpreted because I don't have that perspective, so they'd explain it to me, and then I'd change it up. We worked our way through the whole movie like that.' Preventing the raunchiness from drowning the heart, and the heart from mellowing out the humor, was a balance critical to crafting the film. 'We're trying to build characters that we really like and that are funny,' Tartakovsky said. 'That's really hard to do from scratch in an original story.' It doesn't help that it's a feature, as, unlike TV, you can't just build on happy accidents from one episode to the next. Cracking the right balance took years and several variations of the script. Part of the beauty, but also the problem, of writing for animation is that something that works well on the page, or even with a specific art style, doesn't necessarily translate to another visual style. At one point, Tartakovsky was pressured into trying out 3D animation to sell the film more easily, but that had an unexpected effect on the film. 'Animated balls look better in 2D.' Best of IndieWire The Best Thrillers Streaming on Netflix in June, from 'Vertigo' and 'Rear Window' to 'Emily the Criminal' All 12 Wes Anderson Movies, Ranked, from 'Bottle Rocket' to 'The Phoenician Scheme' Nightmare Film Shoots: The 38 Most Grueling Films Ever Made, from 'Deliverance' to 'The Wages of Fear'
Engadget
6 hours ago
- Engadget
There's a Steven Universe sequel series in the works at Prime Video
It's been five years since the Steven Universe saga ended, via a final season and movie that took the story into the future. Now, it's coming back, according to a report by Deadline . Prime Video is working on a sequel series, with franchise creator Rebecca Sugar in tow as an executive producer (and hopefully as a songwriter.) This doesn't look to be a straight sequel series, in that the focus is shifting away from Steven, the Crystal Gems and Beach City. Instead, the tentatively-titled Steven Universe: Lars of the Stars will follow punk rock slacker Lars Barriga and his ragtag band of space pirates. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. Spoiler time: Just about every character got a cool arc in the main series, but Lars was one of the standouts. He started as a selfish jerk stuck at a dead-end job, but finished the show as the captain of an actual starship trying to make a difference in the universe. Deadline says the new episodes will follow the "space outlaw as he and his pirate crew smuggle contraband, evade the authorities and uncover the darkest secrets of the fallen Gem Empire." So this looks to be a series that will largely take place in space, exploring the fallout of the final episodes of the main show. We don't know which, if any, of Steven Universe's main characters will show up or in what capacity. To view this content, you'll need to update your privacy settings. Please click here and view the "Content and social-media partners" setting to do so. The news was revealed by Sugar at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. She went on to say that she misses "my world and my characters" and that she "can't wait to share [the sequel] with you and can't thank you enough for all your support." Sugar's long-time production partner, Ian Jones-Quartey, is also involved. We don't have a release date for this, which gives you plenty of time to catch up on the OG show and the movie. There are 160 episodes, so buckle up. Once that's done, there are several affiliated video games to dig into .
UPI
7 hours ago
- UPI
'Steven Universe' sequel coming to Prime Video
June 11 (UPI) -- Steven Universe: Lars of the Stars, a sequel to the Cartoon Network animated show Steven Universe, is set to stream on Prime Video. Franchise creator Rebecca Sugar announced the news during the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. "I miss my world and my characters. I can't wait to share (the sequel) with you and can't thank you enough for all your support," she said, per Deadline. Steven Universe premiered on Cartoon Network in 2013, spanning five seasons, until 2020. The upcoming show features teen Lars Barriga, who travels across space with pirates. The series will see him on the run from authorities, unraveling mysteries, and stealing. According to a synopsis shared by Variety, Lars of the Stars will offer viewers glimpses of the "past, present and future of the Steven Universe universe." An official release date has not yet been shared.
