Miyu Productions (France) is joining forces with Modern Magic — the new Los Angeles animation studio set up by Oscar-winning writer-director-producer Rodney Rothman (Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse) and Adam Rosenberg, MGM’s former co-President of Production — on original fantasy feature The Long Night. Currently in development, the project is based on an original idea from French graphic novelist Cyril Pedrosa (Three Shadows, Portugal).
Pedrosa describes the story as “both very personal and political, where the fantastic allows us to embody our fearsa nd our anger, but also the best of ourselves.” The Long Night is due to begin production in 2024.
“Working on Into the Spider-Verse showed us how ready the worldwide audience is for popular animation to tell new stories in new ways, using the best tools available to express how we feel now,” Rothman told Variety. “That’s the focus of our company and everyone we want to work with, and we’re especially proud to work with Miyu Productions and Cyril Pedrosa, a singular artist, writer and animator whose wild imagination and thoughtful control of his craft has already spoken to so many fans all over the world.”
Pedrosa studied animation at the famous Gobelins school and worked at Walt Disney Animation France in the mid-1990s as an inbetweener (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) and assistant animator (Hercules).
Rothman and Rosenberg launched Modern Magic in 2021 with an ambitious slate of 20 episodic and long-form titles, including a feature adaptation of SXSW award-winning short Nuevo Rico, a movie based on the music of late rapper Juice WRLD and a live-action/animation hybrid comedy written by A Black Lady Sketch Show‘s Quinta Brunson.
Miyu Productions and its distribution branch are well known around the world for promoting artistic and unique animated films around the world. The studio has nine films screening at the Annecy Festival this week, incuding the features Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, directed by Pierre Foldes, and Dozens of Norths, the latest piece from Oscar nominee Koji Yamamura.
[Source: Variety]
