Proving that it can do more than simply craft new** I****ce Age** or Rio franchise outings, the team at Blue Sky is now expanding into full-on action-adventure territory with a loose adaptation of William Joyce’s The Leaf Men And The Brave Good Bugs. We’ve seen a couple of trailers for Epic already, and the third has now arrived, which blends older footage with some new material. Head to Apple’s joint to see it.
Ice Age originator Chris Wedge is behind this one, working with Joyce (who departed the project to develop Rise Of The Guardians from one of his other books with DreamWorks) to bring to life the story of a hidden world.
We’re introduced to Mary Katherine (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), who has always heard from her scientist dad Bomba (Jason Sudeikis) that there are tiny warriors called Leaf Men living in the forest that protect both it and us from evil.
Then she gets a chance to meet them, including Nod (Josh Hutcherson) and Ronin (Colin Farrell), some of the heroes who are engaged in fighting off the tyranny of Mandrake (Christoph Waltz) and his evil Boggans. Then there's Mub (Aziz Ansari) and Grub (Chris O’Dowd), two slugs who either want to woo women (Mub) or join the Leaf Men (Grub). Last but not least, we have Queen Tara (Beyoncé Knowles), searching for someone to take over her powers.
Epic looks like it could be fun – and certainly has an eclectic voice cast. It lands in our cinemas on May 24.