Note: Please do not add "Donna Summer died on May 17, 2012", "R. Lee Ermey died on April 15, 2018", "Rip Torn died on July 9, 2019", "Fred Willard died on May 15, 2020", "Val Bettin died on January 7, 2021", or "Gilbert Gottfried died on April 12, 2022". This was before their deaths.
Cat Tale is a Hong Kong-American computer-animated comedy film directed by Felix Ip, written by Aaron Mendelson and Kevin Munroe and produced by Imagi Animation Studios. The film was originally scheduled for a 2007 release, but then pushed to a 2010 release before Imagi Animation Studios´shutdown at that year. It was going to be distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Plot[]
"Cat Tale" is a classic tale of self-discovery. A fun, heart-warming romp, "Cat Tale" delivers one of the great messages of all time, "When the world keeps you down, just be yourself." Rover is your average rescue dog living in rural Dogtown and raised by good-natured canine parents. There's only one problem. He's a cat. An orphaned cat adopted by dogs, Rover must journey to find his origins against all odds. Dogs and cats are separated by the great mountain lake. When the oddball cat inventor Newton crash lands in Rover's neighborhood, Rover discovers he’s a cat and does the unthinkable: he flies back to find his family. He crosses over from rural Dogtown to the urban jungle Catopolis, where the wonders of big lights and catscrapers mesmerize him.
Yet even among his fellow cats, Rover’s doggedness keeps him from fitting in, and he’s unlucky in love with a teacher cat, Cleo. But he has bigger things to worry about. A power coup is brewing through the mighty kitty litter corporation Sampson Industries, where the ambitious cat Rufus is planning a takeover of the company. But even more nefarious is his goal of dominating Dogtown for profit. With anti-dog sentiment running high in Catopolis, only Rover can defeat Rufus and bridge the two species together in peace. And he uncovers the shocking truth about his past...
Production[]
In 2005 when the movie was announced, Imagi had delivered all of the final scripts and the entire movie story-boarded at the time they shut down their facilities in Los Angeles which was created especifically for the production of the movie, leaving the rest of the production at Imagi's main studio in Hong Kong. The script was written again with Digger now being called K-9 and is a Jack Russell Terrier instead of a Shiba Inu, Rover being called Dusty and Simon being called Rufus. The animation now was made by the Paris and Woodland Hills-based studio Moonscoop.
Just like most productions at Imagi, the film was animated in Autodesk Maya and rendered in RenderMan.
Cast[]
- Sean Astin as Rover/Dusty McKibble, a British Shorthair who acts like a dog, the main protagonist.
- Elisha Cuthbert as Cleo, a beautiful Turkish angora with a pink scarf, she works as a school teacher in Catopolis.
- Alan Cumming as Newton, a Havana Brown who guides Rover in Catopolis in his airplane Kitty Hawk.
- Stanley Tucci as Simon/Rufus, a villainous Korat who is Cleo ex-boyfriend and CEO of Sampson Industries.
- Billy Idol as Digger/K-9 McKibble, a clumsy Shiba Inu who is Rover's younger brother.
- Fred Willard as Blue McKibble, a German Shephard who is Digger and Rover's adopted father.
- Catherine O'Hara as Bessie McKibble, a German Shephard who is Blue's wife who is Digger and Rover's adopted mother.
Why It Was Cancelled[]
- Imagi Animation Studios went bankrupt and shut down in 2010 after the box office failure of the 2009 film Astro Boy, leaving remaining films that were in production to be abandoned and unfinished.
- One year before Imagi shut down, the overall animation and art style had been redesigned as a result of production moved to MoonScoop. With the art style having a more cartoonish look reminiscent of the Looney Tunes, with this new style found to be way to fall into the uncanny valley by executive producers due to the designs not fitting well into 3D space.
- As a result of Imagi's American facility shutting down in 2005, the studio lacked funding for financing, which lost the interest of Metro-Goldyn Mayer to distribute the film internationally.
- The only main reason right now is that MoonScoop Group bankruptcy in 2014 following the fact that this and Tituef Le Film 2 were cancelled due to bankruptcy.
Results[]
- The film was permanently cancelled.
- Despite the film's cancellation, the trailer is still up.
- No other animation studios have picked up this film.
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