Written by Harry Cripps Edited by Michael Andrews Production company DreamWorks Animation | Music by Tim Minchin Directors Tim Minchin, Chris Miller Producer Christina Steinberg | |
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Directed by Tim Minchin
Chris Miller Produced by Christina Steinberg
Gregg Taylor Starring Margot Robbie
Hugh Jackman
Naomi Watts
Rose Byrne
Ben Mendelsohn Initial release 14 February 2018 (Belgium) Music director Tim Minchin, Heitor Pereira Cast Margot Robbie, Hugh Jackman, Tim Minchin, Naomi Watts, Rose Byrne Similar Captain Underpants, Madagascar 4, The Croods 2, How to Train Your Dragon 3, First Flight | ||
Larrikins was a cancelled American computer animated musical comedy film directed by Tim Minchin and Chris Miller and starring Margot Robbie and Hugh Jackman, from a script by Harry Cripps. The film was intended to be produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Universal Pictures. It was scheduled for a February 16, 2018 release, before Minchin announced the film's cancellation on March 5, 2017.
Contents
Plot
When an uptight bilby gets kicked out of his sheltered life of his family burrow, he ventures out and finds himself launched on a musical adventure across the mystical Australian outback.
Cast
Production
Larrikins is based on an original idea by the Australian screenplay writer, Harry Cripps. He started working on the script in 2011, after DreamWorks Animation decided to make a film with an Australian story. Announced in 2013, Tim Minchin was initially only set to write the music and lyrics for the film, with possibility to have additional creative role at the film. Minchin, who liked classical Disney animated musicals like Beauty and the Beast and Aladdin, had made a deal with DreamWorks Animation, after he had complained to Will Davies, one of the writers of How to Train Your Dragon, that no one had been doing such animated musical anymore. Waiting for almost four years for the right screenplay, DWA gave him the Cripps' script, which got the Minchin's attention: "...it's a bit Star Wars, a bit Gods Must Be Crazy, a big road journey... It's really funny and cheeky and Australian, without being parochially, nationalistically Australian." Minchin and Cripps then reworked the story with songs, successfully setting the project in motion. By 2014, Minchin's role expanded to directing the film, with Chris Miller joining him by 2016.
Peter de Sève, designer of the Ice Age franchise, was hired as the first designer on the film.
The title itself, Larrikins, is an Australian slang word for maverick or rebel.
In June 2014, 20th Century Fox announced that the film would be released on February 16, 2018. Following NBCUniversal's acquisition of DreamWorks Animation in 2016, Universal Pictures took over the distribution rights for the film.
On March 5, 2017, Minchin announced that the film had been canceled: "...a couple of days ago, the animated film to which I've dedicated the last 4 years of my life was shut down by new studio execs." According to Deadline, the reason for the cancellation was that "creatively it just wasn't working out well."
