Aton Soumache, producer of Christian Volker’s 2006 Annecy award-winning animated feature Renaissance, is producing another major French CG feature. According to Daily Variety, he and his Onyx Films shingle have joined forces with with French company Fidelite to make Prodigies, a $40 million motion-capture film from director Antoine Charreyron. Victor Antonov, who designed the visuals for the bestselling video game Half-Life 2, is lending his talents as artistic director. He and Charreyron are also developing a game based on the film.
Based on French Author Bernard Lenteric’s 1981 cult novel La Nuit des enfants rois, Prodigies revolves around five young geniuses who must be hunted when they use their collective talents to unleash a crime spree in New York City. Character designs are being created by Marvel comic-book artists Humberto Ramos and Francesco Herriera. The film is being animated in color to attract the teenage audience, which Soumache thinks was turned off by the stark black-and-white visuals of the futuristic noir thriller Renaissance.
Soumache has also optioned Antoine de Saint Exupery’s 1943 children’s book The Little Prince and plans to produce a film and television series through Onyx sister company Method Animation.The entity will also produce a Little Prince video game through MKO Games, a joint venture with MK2 Films.
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