Sony Pictures Animation has something of a history with A) picking up former Pixar bods (Surf’s Up's Ash Brannon) and finding success with CG movies based on children’s stories (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs). And its latest acquisition ticks both boxes, as Doug Sweetland has signed on to make his first full-length film with Familiars.
The book, written by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson, finds three young magical apprentices who are spirited away by an evil queen. Their only hope for rescue lies with their companion animal familiars – a cat, a blue jay and a tree frog. While we’re still puzzling over the tree frog as a familiar (we’re guessing a toad was too gross or cliché for today’s whippersnappers), the story sounds like a blend of Harry Potter and The Incredible Journey, which Epstein and Jacobson are now turning into a script.
As for the Pixar connection? Sweetland is a veteran of the Emeryville campus, having worked as an animator on films such as Toy Story, Monsters, Inc and Finding Nemo, before graduating to loftier positions on The Incredibles and Cars.
And in 2008, he made his directorial debut with the short Presto, the tale of a magician and his hungry, pesky rabbit, which ran before Wall-E.
Now Sony has poached him to take on the job of bringing Familiars to the screen. If nothing else, we know he can handle a story featuring magic…