Kirk Demicco: Celebs Rumors

EXCLUSIVE: Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken has a lot going for her.

Carolyn Giardina Three-time Oscar-nominated director Chris Sandlers and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o previewed unfinished footage of DreamWorks Animation‘s “The Wild Robot” at CinemaCon — what Sandlers says took inspiration from Disney classics and Hayao Miyazaki’s work, resulting in an original virtual style that he described as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest.” Based on Peter Brown’s book, the story follows Roz, a robot voiced by Nyong’o, who is accidentally marooned on an uninhabited island. There, the city robot meets and learns from the animals in her new environment. In this rich world, a fox meets and advises Roz.

release the kraken.And she’ll need it, as she’s got to do battle with a cute, popular girl who is also an evil mermaid. (Like Disney’s fabled mermaid, she also has red hair.) This leads to an unexpectedly epic kaiju battle between mermaid and kraken that is pretty amazing.TheWrap spoke to director Kirk DeMicco, who helmed “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken” (with co-director Faryn Pearl), shortly before the movie’s splashy (get it?) premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. DeMicco previously directed (with Chris Sanders) “The Croods” for DreamWorks and last directed “Vivo,” which began life as a DreamWorks project before moving to Sony Pictures Animation.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If you’re going to make a movie about a kraken — those giant multi-tentacled sea monsters believed to wrestle ships from below — then computer animation is hands down the way to go. The trouble with doing so at a major American studio is that it comes with the imperative to turn these fantastical creatures into cutesy-wootsy kid-movie fodder, which is precisely what DreamWorks Animation does with the reasonably clever myth-twisting toon “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.” The creative team’s high-concept take suggests “Twilight” as a (literal) fish-out-of-water comedy, wherein a family of blue-skinned squid-things attempt to pass as human. Fifteen years ago, Flora (voiced by Toni Collette) and Peter (Colman Domingo) abandoned the ocean to raise their kids on land. Despite the obvious hurdles — their conspicuous cerulean tint, floppy limbs and invertebrate status — they’ve been reasonably successful at blending in. Anytime someone looks suspicious, Ruby (Lana Condor) just says she’s from Canada, and that does the trick. But Ruby’s not nearly as comfortable with her own otherness, which she’s spent her entire life trying to disguise. All of that gets a lot more difficult a few days before prom, when she dives into the sea to save her crush, Connor (Jaboukie Young-White). Contact with water awakens something deep within Ruby and releases her inner kraken.

Marta Balaga DreamWorks Animation is committing to “subverting the hero’s journey,” said president Margie Cohn at Annecy, introducing “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” and “Orion and the Dark.” One of the big U.S. world premieres at Annecy, the world’s biggest animation festival, “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” featured at a DreamWorks Animation studio focus at Annecy, the world’s biggest animation festival. “DreamWorks has a long tradition of taking an unlikely hero, like a chubby panda or an ogre with a heart of gold, and subverting your expectations. We will take what you think might be an evil sea monster and convince you she is actually the hero,” “Ruby Gillman” producer, Kelly Cooney Cilella, added.

Carole Horst DreamWorks Animation brings three features to Annecy, and screens the world premiere of “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” with director Kirk DeMicco, producer Kelly Cooney Cilella and co-director Faryn Pearl in attendance, on June 15 at the festival. The animated adventure opens June 30 in the U.S. and features an all-star cast of Lana Condor, Toni Collette, Jaboukie Young-White, Jane Fonda, Sam Richardson, Annie Murphy, Colman Domingo and Will Forte. “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” follows the the shy teenager Ruby, who discovers that she’s part of a legendary royal lineage of mythical sea krakens and that her destiny, in the depths of the oceans, is bigger than she ever dreamed.

the premiere of “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” an early glimpse at “Trolls Band Together” and the first look at new, yet-unannounced projects.On Tuesday, June 13, at 4 p.m., at the L’Impérial Palace, DreamWorks Animation will present a Studio Focus session on two upcoming film projects. “The Croods” director Kirk DeMicco will lead a discussion on the visual design and making of his new film “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.” The press release also mentions that the presentation will also “offer attendees an exclusive first look at an unannounced film from the studio” and if it’s the film we think it is … get ready.Two days later, DeMicco will be back for the world premiere of “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” at La Grande Salle de Bonlieu.

DreamWorks Animation had a big hit to close out 2022 with “Puss In Boots: The Last Wish.” Will the studio’s next feature fare as well with critics? Audiences find out this summer when “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” surfs into theaters everywhere in June. The upcoming film follows a teenage girl desperate to fit into her high school who discovers, against her mom’s wishes, that she’s the heir to the throne of the warrior Kraken queens who rule the seven seas.

“Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” has arrived. And we’ve got your first look (you can watch above).The latest original feature from DreamWorks Animation, which is coming off the one-two punch of 2022’s “The Bad Guys” and the Oscar-nominated “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish,” “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” concerns the title character (voiced by Lana Condor), who is masquerading as a human and attending Oceanside High on land.

A version of this story about “Vivo” first appeared in the special animation section of Awards Preview issue of TheWrap’s awards magazine.There is so much vying for your attention these days, especially in terms of animation, that it’s important to grip the attention and imagination of the audience as quickly as possible. For “Vivo,” the animated musical conceived by Lin-Manuel Miranda and co-written by his “In the Heights” collaborator Quiara Alegría Hudes, the approach was simple: envelop the viewer in the world of a singing kinkajou named Vivo (Miranda) who travels from Cuba to America to fulfill his master Andrés’ (Juan de Marcos González) last wish, with a big, brassy, cannot-look-away musical number.Easy enough, right? But what if the same number covered a huge amount of storytelling ground and emotional real estate? Oh, and it was captured in a single fluid take?As director and co-writer Kirk DeMicco tells it, the sequence wasn’t initially staged as a showstopping single take.

Terry Flores The creative teams behind Netflix and Sony Pictures Animation’s animated films “Vivo” and “The Mitchells vs. the Machines” are among the latest crop of speakers lined up for October’s VIEW Conference in Turin, Italy.“Vivo” director and co-writer Kirk DeMicco, production designer Carlos Zaragoza, visual effects supervisor Karl Herbst and head of character animation Kevin Webb will be on hand to discuss the musical adventure, featuring the voices of Lin-Manuel Miranda and Zoe Saldana, that follows a kinkajou on a lyrical quest.“The Mitchells vs.

Lin-Manuel Miranda has a new movie musical on the way and it will be released on Netflix next weekend!

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic“What difference can one song make?” asks “Vivo,” a super-saturated, instant-classic musical cartoon from Kirk DeMicco, director of “The Croods,” featuring a whole bunch of catchy new songs from Lin-Manuel Miranda — a man who’s spent his career proving just how impactful clever music can be. In fact, it was Miranda who made Disney’s “Moana” so memorable a few years back (marking his maiden voyage into animation).

Lin-Manuel Miranda is everywhere these days. Following “In The Heights” this summer based on one of his plays and the “Tick, Tick Boom” musical starring Andrew Garfield arriving later this year, Miranda is practically ubiquitous.

EXCLUSIVE: Netflix has licensed all global rights, sans China, to Sony Pictures Animation’s Vivo.

While directing The Croods: A New Age, Joel Crawford often found himself chasing that ‘Wow’ factor, which all great films (and sequels) have in common.