One of the first casualties of the Fox-Disney studio merger has been revealed. And it is…absolutely gorgeous. [Update: The video has been pulled, but there are additional art materials below.]
Mouse Guard, the movie adaptation of the Eisner-winning comic series by David Petersen has been cancelled, according to Entertainment Weekly.
The cancellation was confirmed yesterday by director Wes Ball in a tweet, with a short walk-through video of many pre-production pieces such as scale models and concept art.
Yes sadly, its true. Our #mouseguard movie is dead.
Seems it’s too big a risk. It’s a damn shame really. We had something special. To my hella talented cast/crew: I’m sorry I couldn’t push this one through. The past year with you all has been a blast. May the Guard prevail! pic.twitter.com/MGRq54uI6O
— Wes Ball (@wesball) June 26, 2019
Mouse Guard is an eight book epic fantasy series that re-imagines the high drama of fantasy kingdoms at the level of mice living in the forest. Set in 1152, the first book follows three Guardsmice—Saxon, Kenzie and Lieam—whose mission is to find a missing merchant. They end up discovering a traitor amongst their ranks and their story balloons from there.
The highly-anticipated movie, which had Idris Elba attached, halted filming back in April. Ball also released a Mouse Guard demo reel on YouTube (now pulled down), stressing that the visuals—already pretty impressive—were meant to represent the feel and visual potential of the movie.
Illustrator David Petersen also offers this walkthrough of the concept art for the movie:
Watch AMA Mouse Guard Movie Cancelation & Footage. from DavidPetersen on www.twitch.tv
Musician John Paesano also shared a bit of the soundtrack in progress:
That looks really fun. To bad.
Good move releasing this stunning demo. Hopefully this gets Deadpooled.
So sad. That looks absolutely incredible. Massive props to a team who’s clearly brimming with talent. Gutted not to be able to see it in full.
The environments look great and the turtle is incredible, but something about the actual mice themselves seems off. They are too tall and lanky, and to me don’t really retain the look of the mice from David Petersen’s book.
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Yeah. It looks more like Mouse Guard as seen through the lens of The Dark Crystal. They look like Gelflings with big ears.
I can see exactly what happened. Somewhere a studio exec is sitting and going: “Sure; it looks nice, but it is about mice…” And you know what, they are right. It is about mice, and it doesn’t matter what warmly thought of property it is based of; it is still a bunch of damn mice!! Mice movies are comedies, wacky comedies, with a song and dance number in it. And even then, it only works if you are Disney’s animation department; and not even always then. If you are gonna do an “epic” project like this, it needs to be about people.
Ah the joy of monopolies. Get used to whatever they want to give, because – good or bad is irrelevant. If the Mouse thinks it will make money you’ll get it and nothing else.
On the one hand it looks like it had potential … on the other hand I’d love for more Mouse Guard stories instead – we have just enough to tantalise and not enough to sate.
I’m not worried about how wrong the mice look since it is clearly a style and rendering demo rather than a production feature.
@7. Well the thing about the movie business, is that it is still a business. How this project ever got this far is the puzzler. Once the rights revert, which they will eventually if no movie is forthcoming, they can shop it around the other studios or even go indie on it. If it is a moneyspinner then its time will come.
I hope this means that the rights to this film can go to company that would treat it with dignity.
Can we start a campaign to have a Laika made Mouse Guard ?
Yeah, this… and a bunch of layoffs, plus the bonus of Disney giving the Murdoch family lots and lots of money, so that’ll keep Fox News going until the sun burns out; while absorbing a large part of popular culture from the last century. But hey ho, Wolverine can trade quips with Spider-Man now!!!
yay…
I’d go see that in a hot second. Take my money please!
Good thing we have Disney to protect the filmgoing public from anything original and visually stunning.
Video is unavailable now.
Also, can’t post or read comments from my iPad.
The overall look was gorgeous, but the mice were kind of in the uncanny valley, at least to my eyes. They didn’t capture the look of the mice in the books.
The video doesn’t work but I agree, it’s a mouse movie, it would have bombed. Also, this has nothing to do with Fox News! Why do people have to put politics into everything?
@16. Because it’s Current Year, I guess.
@6 “Mice movies are comedies, wacky comedies, with a song and dance number in it.”
All that slapstick in The Secret of Nimh. Funniest movie of all time, I think.
@13 “Good thing we have Disney to protect the filmgoing public from anything original and visually stunning.”
Lord. I get that we’re all disappointed with what seems like a pretty bad call, but let’s not say ridiculous nonsense like this about the house that brought us Zootopia, Moana, Inside Out and Doctor Strange. And that trailer for Frozen 2 looks ‘visually stunning’ as hell.
Omg wow looks so cool
For the record, the look of the mice in the sizzle was placeholder; Ball’s studio vid showed some of the motion capture work they were doing for character faces, and you can see the fur and tweaked facial structure there more clearly.
No production company worth its salt would waste valuable resources on rendering CG fur for a demo reel.
@16. Because, like it or not, the decisions of multinational corporations affect society in many ways. They’re the new countries of the world, with a flag planted in every household, every device, every television, every toy, every video game, etc. If you’re a consumer, you’re already involved. It’s all political.
“It’s a mouse movie, it would have bombed”
One word. Ratatouille.
Also, really, come on Disney. Are you just, er, taking the Mickey out of us here? I mean, Disney. The studio which freaking started off with a…mouse.
“Seems it’s too big a risk.” i.e., it’s not a sequel to something else.
@18. I may exaggerate, but not as much as I’d like. After all, next week, yet another MCU movie that looks pretty much like every other MCU movie is opening.
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To be fair, I have heard nothing on what the budget was for the movie. At 50 or 100 mil it might be fine, but at 150 it might not. This is the same studio that was burned by John Carter, that was a decent movie with a an overstuffed budget. Fox also has made several questionable calls on big budget movies, So how many sound good, but really will be meh.
Which movies that are started or in pre/post production are too far along that it is a better bet to finish and release them?
@11. The Disney/Fox deal only included Fox’s entertainment division. The news division remains a separate company.
There can only be one Mouse.
@24 Okay, man. Another one of those pesky MCU movies that are not only giant commercial successes but overwhelmingly critically acclaimed. I get it. Ya mad. It’s cool. Sometimes we say very silly things when we mad.
They should have called it “A Song of Mice and Fire.” Then it wouldn’t have gotten cancelled…
The mice are ugly and creepy-looking. Dirk may be right, but executives don’t have much imagination and can only react to what they’re actually shown. If I had to risk my money on a movie with characters that looked like that… I’d cancel it, too.
I didn’t even know this was a thing and now I’m mad twice. And also extremely disappointed, since my kids were utterly enamored of these books a couple of months ago.