This Weekend In LA: Los Angeles Animation Festival Returns With A Full Slate Of Animated Shorts

When the first trailer for Blue Sky Studios’ Spies in Disguise was released last November, the film was set to be a 20th Century Fox release. Eight months later, following Walt Disney Company’s purchase of Fox, it will be a Disney release.

The film’s release date has also been shuffled around: when the first trailer was released, it was scheduled to launch September 13, 2019; now it’s December 25, 2019.

What remains the same is the film’s story, which is inspired by Lucas Martell’s 2009 short Pigeon: Impossible:

Super spy Lance Sterling (Will Smith) and scientist Walter Beckett (Tom Holland) are almost exact opposites. Lance is smooth, suave and debonair. Walter is … not. But when events take an unexpected turn, this unlikely duo are forced to team up for the ultimate mission that will require an almost impossible disguise – transforming Lance into the brave, fierce, majestic…pigeon. Walter and Lance suddenly have to work as a team, or the whole world is in peril.

Produced by Fox Animation, Blue Sky Studios, and Chernin Entertainment, Spies in Disguise marks the feature directorial debuts of Nick Bruno and Troy Quane. Michael J. Travers (The Peanuts Movie) is producing. Besides Smith and Holland, other voices include Ben Mendelsohn, Karen Gillan, Rashida Jones, DJ Khaled, and Masi Oka.

Following its acquisition by Disney, the future of Blue Sky Studios remains uncertain. Disney has confirmed that it will also finish the feature following Spies in Disguise — Patrick Osborne’s Nimona — but it is not publicly known what will become of the Greenwich, Connecticut, studio after the completion of that film. The studio is best known for its Ice Age and Rio franchises.

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