Robert Zemeckis is getting hooked on performance capture animation. The director, who is helming this holiday season’s The Polar Express is also looking at the three-book series Measle and the Wrathmonk by actor/writer Ian Ogilvy, as another chance to use the cutting-edge animation technology.
Warner Bros. and ImageMovers recently bought the rights to the Measle series, Daily Variety reports. Measle is about a young boy who is shrunk and banished to live on a toy set after he is sent to live with an eccentric uncle with magical powers. The first book is set to be out in the U.K. this July by Oxford Press, with HarperCollins following suit in the U.S. in August.
According to the article, Zemeckis hopes to create a franchise in performance capture because he believes it gives more life to the human form than previous CGI animation methods. For Polar Express, the filmmakers deployed Imagemotion™, the proprietary motion-capture technology developed by Sony Imageworks, to tell the story of a doubting young boy who takes an extraordinary train ride to the North Pole. Based on the award-winning book by Chris Van Allsburg, The Polar Express will be released by Warner Bros. on Nov. 10. The film features the voices of Tom Hanks and his Bosom Buddies co-star, Peter Scolari.
