There are few corners of culture more mystifying, more complex and baffling that the Spongebob Squarepants phenomenon. Here is a man - a spongeman - whose adventures make the subsea elements of Bedknobs And Broomsticks look like The Blue Planet. What creature, on god's good Earth, can be friends with a starfish *and *a squirrel? And live blissfully in an underwater pineapple, presumably a joint development by Dr. No and the Man From Del Monte?
But Spongebob is that creature and he's back with another CG adventure in the second movie spin-off of the massive Nickelodeon show, The Spongebob SquarePants Movie: Sponge Out Of Water. Here's the first poster showing Bob in action. With a crab. Little is known of the mesohyled one's journey in this one, but judging by the title and the tagline, he'll be emerging from the sea like Venus or, say, the Kraken, and destroying the seaboard going on adventures. In fairness, the previous Spongebob films were surrealist fun, so we hope this will also prove entertaining as well as weird. Will David Hasselhoff cameo once more{
There's a new director on board in Paul Tibbitt, with the show's creator and the director of the first Spongebob Movie, Stephen Hillenburg, on writing and exec-producing duties. With a voicecast boasting Antonio Banderas, Tom Kenny and Clancy Brown, Sponge Out Of Water will be in cinemas in February 2015.