May 6, 2015

Ernest & Celestine" Director to Adapt His Comics for TV

Click to enlarge

Benjamin Renner, co-director of "Ernest & Celestine," will direct "The Big Bad Fox," a half-hour TV special based on the comic book he wrote and illustrated. [The project is a new French production company founded by Didier Brunner, producer of "Ernest & Celestine," "Secret of Kells" and "Triplets of Belleville," who retired last year as president of the Paris-based animation company Les Armateurs It will be produced by Folivari for Canal+ and Studiocanal. It will be distributed by French Super Rights.

Here is a test of the project's animation:

Renner told "Salt Lake" magazine that "Big Bad Fox" is about a fox who is not strong enough to catch and eat a chicken. Instead, the chickens get him. So he steals eggs and has the bizarre idea of raising little chickens under the pretense that he is their mother.

Renner will write and design two spin-offs, "A Baby to Deliver" and "A Perfect Christmas," but it is unclear whether he will direct these films. In the former, a "stupid rabbit, a stupid duck, and a grumpy pig" must deliver a human baby to its parents after the baby-delivering stork breaks its wing; in the latter, a rabbit and duck attempt to play Santa Claus after they are convinced they have accidentally killed him.

Renner, who was nominated for an Academy Award as director of Ernest & Celestine, is also the designer of the feature film Yellow Bird. Ernest & Celestine itself is based on a series of children's books by Belgian author and illustrator Gabriel Vincent.