If you were to tell us that someone would one day attempt to remake Charlie Chaplin's classic 1921 comedy The Kid as an animated science fiction adventure, we'd have thrown you out on your ear and called the authorities. But anything is possible these days, and so we have Jacob Tremblay cast as the lead voice in The Kid: An Animated Adventure.
While the original film saw Chaplin's tramp character take in an abandoned child, the new movie will... well, radically divert from that idea for the most part. It's set in a futuristic New York City which has been flooded and split vertically into two distinct regions. Tremblay’s eponymous character is a young boy living with his mother in Uptown, a boring, artless place of overprotective safety. When he runs away seeking adventure, he winds up in the mysterious and dangerous Downtown and encounters Chaplin, a robot with a human soul. Together, the two embark on adventures to discover the secret mystery behind Chaplin, while pursued by police, the Kid’s mother, and a colorful cast of modern circus performers. It might surprise you to learn that the Chaplin estate has given this their stamp of support.
Christian Volckman is directing, working from a script he wrote with Rupert Wyatt and Boris Starling. There's no word on when the movie will arrive on screens, though the rights will be on sale at the Cannes Film Market.
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