This week in Bordeaux, France, Cartoon Movie showcases over 50 animated feature films, all in different stages of production. Like no other, the three-day pitching event offers a glimpse into the exciting future of European feature-length animation.
At the Anima Festival in Belgium, Cartoon Brew sat down with three creators presenting at this year’s Cartoon Movie — the French directors Arthur de Pins (Zombillenium) and Benjamin Renner (Ernest & Celestine, The Big Bad Fox), and Ivan Cappiello and Carlo Stella of Italian studio MAD Entertainment (The Art of Happiness, Cinderella the Cat, A Skeleton Story) — to talk about the joys and difficulties of directing feature-length animation in Europe.
Zombillenium is based on a graphic novel, also by de Pins, for which the work took place in three different places across France, as well as Belgium. With a budget around €13.4 million (US$14.1 million), the film was produced using computer animation, but has a 2D look that looks more like its graphic novel origins. It stars zombies, vampires, and a tattooed heroine, and includes elements of social commentary in a family-friendly package.
The younger-skewing, 2D hand-drawn kids’ film The Big Bad Fox, which also started out as a graphic novel, was intitially conceived as a 26-minute television special before finally turning into a full-length film. While Ernest & Celestine had €9.6 million to spend, The Big Bad Fox had to make do with €2.5 million, because of its original conception as a television special.
If the above budgets already seem small compared to American productions, you’ll be even more surprised to learn that the computer-animated Cinderella the Cat, scheduled for release this year, has a minuscule budget of €1.3 million. In the film, Italian studio MAD Entertainment manages to create an intense, dark sci-fi adventure based on the classic fairytale.