October 6th - Kelly Asbury, who directed Rocket Pictures/Disney's Gnomeo and Juliet, has been hired to write the script for Sony Pictures Animation's upcoming CG-animated film Pooch Café.
“Kelly’s wit and cinematic sensibility pairs wonderfully with the irreverent characters and wry comedy in the Pooch Café comic strip,” Michelle Raimo-Kouyate, president of production for Sony Pictures Animation, said in the studio's press release. “We’ve been looking for something to do with Kelly, and this was a perfect match.”
Kelly Asbury Writing Sony Pictures Animation's Pooch Café, From Paul Gilligan's Comic Strip
The film is adapted from Paul Gilligan's comic strip of the same name, which has been continuously in production since 2000. The strip follows the misadventures of "a self-serving, squirrel-fearing, food-obsessed, toilet-drinking mutt named Poncho." Poncho has a hard time forgiving his master Chazz for committing the ultimate sin: getting married to a cat lover named Carmen.
Poncho therefore spends as much time as he can at the Pooch Café, hanging with his pals: hyperactive Boomer who plots to catapult all cats into the Sun, overly-obedient Hudson, Droolia the female Bull Mastiff with a crush on Poncho, Poo Poo the emasculated and insane, Bichon Frise, Gus the scrappy Scotty who speaks with a Scottish accent (even though he's from Detroit), and Beaumont café owner and enforcer of the strict "no collar no service" rule. In 2008, Pooch Café was nominated for the National Cartoonists Society’s Reuben Award for Best Comic Strip.
In addition to his work on Gnomeo and Juliet, Asbury co-directed 2004's Shrek 2 for DreamWorks Animation, which has become the second highest grossing animated film in history. He also voiced various characters in that film and its successor Shrek the Third. Before that, he jumped between studios: co-directing DreamWorks Animation's Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron and story artist on Madagascar 2 and Kung Fu Panda, and worked for Disney on The Nightmare Before Christmas, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, Toy Story and James and the Giant Peach.
Asbury will be answering to Pooch Café's executive producers Gil Netter, Bridget McMeel, and John Glynn. As of this writing, no one has been cast and no director as been hired. Sony Pictures Animation is currently prepping Hotel Transylvania for the Fall of 2012, and working with Aardman Animation on two films: the CGI Arthur Christmas - due in theatres on November 23rd - and the stop-motion The Pirates! Band of Misfits which hits theatres on March 30, 2012.
Pooch Café is still waiting on some kind of release date.
Dominic von Riedemann - Dominic is the Animated Film Feature Writer, and winner of 11 Suite 101 Editors' Choice Awards.
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