Daily Variety reports that Barbershop scribe Don. D. Scott has been tapped to write an animated sci-fi musical titled Big Nasty for Sony Pictures Animation. The news follows last week’s announcement the studio has begun active development on a CG penguin surfing movie titled Surf’s Up.
In addition to his writing the script, Scott will produce Big Nasty through his production company, The Bridge, along with Live Planet’s Sean Bailey. Overseeing for Sony is Sony Pictures Animation VP Penney Finkelman Cox and exec Nate Hopper.
It is not yet known where Big Nasty will fit in Sony Pictures Animation’s ever-growing production slate. The studio is now busy at work on Open Season, a buddy comedy about a happily domesticated 900 pound grizzly bear named Boog (voiced by Martin Lawrence), who has his comfortable world turned upside down when he meets a fast-talking, wild mule deer named Elliot (Ashton Kutcher). The film is scheduled to arrive in theaters sometime in 2006. Surf’s Up should follow soon after.
Among the other projects in development is an adaptation of Judi Barrett and Ron Barrett’s children’s book, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, with the Brizzi brothers tapped to direct. The Brizzis won critical praise as the directors of the Firebird sequence in Disney’s Fantasia 2000 and as sequence directors on The Hunchback of Notre Dame. There has also talk of a feature-length version of Sony Pictures Imageworks’ Oscar-winning short, The ChubbChubbs.
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