The Jim Henson Co. and Screen Novelties are joining forces to turn the latter’s short film Monster Safari into a feature-length film. Like the short, this will be stop-motion animated. Screen Novelties’ founders Mark Caballero, Chris Finnegan and Seamus Walsh will be directing while Homestar Runner creators Craig Zobel and Matt Chapman are writing. The film is about a pair of bumbling and inept crypto-zoologists scouring the globe for mythical creatures while contending with a big game hunter after them for less academic reasons. The short began its life as a Nickelodeon pilot, but that obviously didn’t go through. The Jim Henson Co. got to see it and decided it’d make a good feature, bringing us to this news.
Some footage of the short can be found in Screen Novelties’ reel while stills and production photos are here. The company obviously specializes in stop-motion work. They appear to have an involvement in Robot Chicken and Moral Orel. The actual relationship eludes me, as I think it’s ShadowMachine credited for the animation, but it seems the aforementioned directors supervised animation for those shows.
Here’s hoping this actually gets made and doesn’t get stuck in development hell like The Power of the Dark Crystal and the Fraggle Rock film.*
*Note, supposedly both remain in development but that’s been the story for a long time, and Genndy Tartakovsky was supposed to be directing The Power of the Dark Crystal but suddenly has a new show coming to Cartoon Network, Sym-Bionic Titan. I still have my fingers crossed.
