If it worked for Lego, it can work for us. So goes the thinking for the execs behind The Little Prince who are setting up shop to make a movie based on Germany’s Playmobil toy line of miniature figures and playsets.
At $75 million, the price point for Playmobil: Robbers, Thieves & Rebels, currently scheduled to arrive in 2018 from Dimitri Rassam and Aton Soumache’s ON Animation Studios, is similar to their CGI/stop motion adaptation of author Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s classic novella, The Little Prince. The two movies share something else in common: Bob Persichetti. Animation vet Persichetti, who was the head of story for The Little Prince (and earlier, DreamWorks’s Puss in Boots), will write the Playmobil movie as well as make his directorial debut on the film.
Rassam and Soumache’s Parisian studio is launching production on Playmobil: Robbers, Thieves & Rebels with the backing of Pathe, which will co-produce the film and handle French distribution, and Wild Bunch, which will handle international sales. American distribution rights were acquired by Cross Creek Pictures (Everest, Black Mass), marking the distributor’s first animated feature.
