With hundreds of animated features being produced annually around the globe, there will inevitably be some cartoon horror shows that pop up out of nowhere with little fanfare. Take, for instance, Animal Kingdom: Let’s Go Ape, which Signature Entertainment will debut next Friday in Vue Cinemas throughout the UK.
Details are sparse, but it appears to be a French production funded primarily by Pathé. Although some of the animation was set up in France, the motion capture animation was done by India’s Prana Studios, which also animates Disney films like Planes and Tinker Bell:Legend of the Neverbeast.
The film has some known names behind it: French actor Jamel Debbouze (Amélie, Days of Glory) directed the film, and Didier Brunner (Ernest & Celestine, The Secret of Kells, The Triplets of Belleville) lent his name as an associate producer. It appears that the project began with good intentions, adapted from Roy English’s cult 1960 novel Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate My Father, which was also the film’s original French title before the producers realized that you can’t distribute a family film to English-speaking audiences with that title.
