The trailer for the upcoming 2022 martial arts animated film 'Paws of Fury : the Legend
of Hank' is officially out!
Formerly the film was known as Blazing Samurai.
It's also loosely based on the 1974 Mel Brooks film, Blazing Saddles.
Veteran star and voice actor in the movie, Samuel L. Jackson reveals the first trailer
for the animated samurai movie.
Unveiled by Paramount Pictures, the movie will be a revisiting of Mel Brooks’ sharp
comedy Blazing Saddle, except a Little less raunchy this time.
Who are the voice actors?
The movie stars Micheal Cera as our hero, a bad luck dog named Hank, who somehow manages
to find himself in a town populated solely by cats who are facing an evil villain named
Ika Chu, who is going to be voiced by Ricky Gervais.
He has a diabolical plan to completely destroy their village and remove it from the face
of the earth.
Samuel L. Jackson voices a hesitant teacher who trains Hank.
Hank takes on the role of hero and joins forces with the Villagers to defeat this evil threat.
The only thing stopping them is, cats are the natural sworn enemies of dogs!
But it looks like they're going to have to put their differences aside to defeat a much
worse enemy than each other.
That's not all!
The film boasts a pretty star studded cast.
It also stars standup comedian Gabriel Iglesias as Chuck, a very clumsy cat, and George Takei
as Ohga, the head of Ika Chu's army.
There's also Djimon Honsou as Sumo, a big tabby cat, and Michelle Yeoh as Yuki, a Persian
cat.
Behind the Scenes
Rob Minkoff, who worked on The Lion King, and Mark Koetsier, who was one of the story
artists for Big productions including Big Hero 6 and Rumble both co-directed the film
with the help of a screenplay done by Ed Stone and Nate Hopper, which was edited by Robert
Ben Garant and Minkoff.
Minkoff, Adam Nagle, and Guy Collins produced the movie along with Alex Schwartz, Adrian
Politowki, and Martin Metz working in the team as executive producers.
Paws of Fury is distributed and presented by Paramount Pictures, Nickelodeon Movies,
Align, and Aniventure altogether working with HB Wink Animation and GFM Animation.
Which is a Flying Tigers Entertainment production closely linked with Cinesite.
The film has undergone an extensive and unpredictable production and release history.
It was originally revealed in 2015 under the title Blazing Samurai, produced at Toronto’s
Arc Productions prior to the studios unexpected shuttering in 2016, a year before the film
was originally scheduled to hit theaters.
In January 2022, Paramount took the movie off GFM Animation's hands for North America
and other crucial areas.
When can we see it?
There's still just a little bit of a wait though.
The theatrical release of the movie has been scheduled for July 15, 2022, by their distributor,
Paramount Films.
In November 2019 it was revealed in Screen Daily that the film was making progress and
was currently "at first animatic stage" in the animation studio Cinesite.
The same article said that the production had a somewhat definite 2021 release date,
though the year passed without theaters seeing any trace of the movie.
In early 2022, it was revealed that Paramount Pictures had taken the film from GFM Animation
and scheduled its release in theaters under the Paramount Animation banner on the official
date of July 22, 2022, snatching the release date of another Paramount Animation.
Just a few days ago, we were told that the release date was moved even closer to July
15, 2022, and that the film would be distributed by Paramount under the name Nickelodeon Movies
rather than Paramount Animation, which was the original plan.
Some Back and Forth
Paws of Fury has been in the works for quite a while now.
The movie was first revealed back in 2015, and the release was scheduled initially for
2017.
After studio closings, crew quitting, being handed back and forth between companies, and
a decent amount of writer and director switching, the project was eventually taken up by Align
in 2020 with Paramount Pictures credited as the distributors.
Clearly, somewhere along the way, what was formerly known as Blazing Samurai went through
a complete title change, with Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank sounding more exciting
and drawing more obvious inspiration from Bruce Lee than Mel Brook.
All of it being family friendly, ofcourse.
Paws of Fury: The Legend of Hank is directed by Rob Minkoff and Mark Koetsier, whilst the
screenplay was written by Ed Stone and Nate Hopper.
Minkoff is best known for also being the co director of the Academy Award-winning Disney
animated classic The Lion King, and has also directed the classics Stuart Little and its
sequel, as well as other hit Movies such as Mr. Peabody & Sherman.
How well will the satire we saw in Blazing Saddles hold up when shifted over to a family-friendly
movie featuring a cast of dogs and cats?
We'll have to wait and see.
Sea Beast
Another animated film that's projected to release very close to the date of Paws of
Fury is Sea Beast.
It's a Netflix animated movie and is scheduled for theatrical release this summer.
Here’s a quick run through of everything we know until now about the animated flick
straight from Disney alum, Chris Williams.
Similar to Paws of Fury, this movie has also been in the works for much longer than it
had any right to be.
Sea Beast was first announced in 2018, it has now been four years.
The movie was originally called Jacob and the Sea Beast and at that time was dubbed
as “A charming seafarer sails into uncharted waters and discovers an unlikely ally in a
sea monster.”
Chris Williams took on many roles for this project, working as the writer, director,
and producer.
He has been active since the late 90s mostly working at Disney.
His very first project was Mulan where he worked on the team as a story artist.
Since then, he’s been credited with many roles on Disney’s biggest hits.
His recent work includes being co-director on Moana and also directing 2014’s Big Hero
6.
He also won an Oscar for his directorial work on “Big Hero 6.”
He also received a nomination for best animated feature for “Bolt.”
While being very grateful for the many work opportunities offered by Disney, he chose
to partner with Netflix.
The reason he gave was that he felt a very nice energy at Netflix's studios, as many
artists have gathered from all around the world to come together and make something
totally new.
Back in 2018 when the movie was initially revealed, he gave a statement saying “Jacob
and the Sea Beast’ is the sort of story I’ve always wanted to take on,” going
on to say “It’s a tale of high adventure where our hero leaves the known world and
ventures out into uncharted waters.
As it turns out, I’m doing the same thing.”
Who’s in the voice cast?
Zaris-Angel Hator voices Maisie as well as Karl Urban, and Dan Stevens.
Chris Williams is the director of the movie with the story being done by WIlliams and
Nell Benjamin.
The movie stars voice actor Karl Urban as the voice of our hero, Jacob Holland, who
has the unfortunate fate of handling the runaway Maisie Brumble, who is voiced by Zaris-Angel
Hator, aboard his ship while his team tries to locate a legendary whale.
Together, the unconventional duo join together to cross into unfamiliar waters and make their
mark on history.
Meanwhile, the cast behind the characters have a whole lineup of other unrelated projects
in the making.
Urban will be making a comeback on Amazon Prime Video’s “The Boys” Season 3, which'll
be here on June 3, and co-star Hator has been cast in upcoming drama series “The Power",
which is about a group of teenage girls who for reasons unknown unexpectedly get the ability
to electrocute people at will.
Leslie Mann, Alice Eve, and John Leguizamo also star.
When speaking during an interview with Variety, Williams drew upon illustrations of sea creatures
from 16th and 17th-century maps for the basis of the show.
“The Sea Beast” was announced in 2018, and has been produced by Jed Schlanger.
When will it hit theaters?
For now we've been told that the movie will.be available for streaming on Netflix on July
8th, 2022.
A broad release will be difficult.
We have seen some of the biggest animated high end productions be added to Netflix recently.
Just in December there was Back to the Outback.
Netflix is taking over all genres and we can't wait to see where this goes.
Animation has really come a long way and 2022 seems to be a very promising year.
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