CinemaCon: Illumination to follow massive Mario success with Mike White’s crapping ducks movie
Migration, written by the White Lotus mastermind, stars Kumail Nanjiani as the head of a family of wayward ducks
Aux News Mike White
There are a lot of potential answers to the question “What does Illumination do next?” After years of trailing at least a bit behind its competitors at Pixar and Dreamworks with its lucrative (but not crazily so) Despicable Me/Minions franchise, the CGI studio finally has a certified hit on its hands: The billion-dollar Super Mario Bros. Movie, which is thoroughly stomping all its rivals at the box office. So what is next for the plucky upstart studio?
Obviously, it’s a an animated family comedy written by The White Lotus’ Mike White, about a family of migrating ducks who are waylaid by their youngest’s desperate need to crap.
This is per coverage today at CinemaCon, where Illumination showed off a tease for Migration, its new animated feature. The film stars Kumail Nanjiani as the father of a family of ducklings, who’s scared about letting his babies out of the pond. The film’s stacked voice cast also includes Elizabeth Banks as Nanjiani’s more adventerous wife, plus Carol Kane, Awkwafina, Certified Toad Keegan-Michael Key, and Prime Should Have Been Mario Candidate Danny DeVito.
Illumination released a teaser trailer for Migration a few weeks back, but deployed a fuller trailer at CinemaCon this afternoon, which, in the swiftly Slack messaged to us words of our own Man On The Ground, Matt Schimkowitz, contains, “a long chunk about the baby bird having to shit,” as well as “a Salt Bae parody” who’s trying to turn the family of ducks into duck a l’Orange.
Written by White, Migration is being directed by Benjamin Renner and produced by all-purpose Illumination mastermind Christopher Meledandri, who was on hand to note that ducks are already pretty much nature’s “own animated characters.” The film will open during the holiday season, 2023.
29 Comments
It’s not too late to rebrand this a “Duck Hunt” movie.
It better fucking end like Old Yeller.
It’d make a great double feature.
The movie!
Salt Bae. In 2023. Huh.
I mean, it was (sorta) relevant when they started working on it.
I had no idea who or what Salt Bae was, so I guess they’re hipper than me at least.
Salt Bae is a buff guy who sprinkled salt in a fun way on food. Then it turns out a few months later he’s just a douchebag who overcharges for everything and his food sucks.
Publishers are interested!
Danny DeVito has the exact opposite of Mario’s high pitched happy-go-lucky voice. He’s the antithesis of Mario. He’s the perfect choice for Wario.
There were rumours that DeVito Wario was the plan for the sequel to the 1993 film.And by “rumours” I mean “what in retrospect were obvious falsehoods I read on the IMDB boards about 20 years ago”. Still it stuck with me.
the CGI studio finally has a certified hit on its hands
Minions aren’t a hit?
And Mario is the studio’s hit and not Nintendo’s?
k
Yeah, took me :20 to see that Minions did $1.2B, Rise of Gru did $939M, and Despicable Me did $543M. Those are huge hits.
I would say every movie they’ve made, except maybe Hop, could be described as a huge hit, especially relative to their budgets. Their biggest disappointment was Secret Life of Pets 2 because it “only” made $430mil as opposed to the near $900mil of the first, but that’s still a pretty decent profit for an $80mil movie. They’ve certainly been doing better (financially) than Dreamworks who have had quite a few flops over the past dozen years.
Hey. Movies don’t count unless there’s recognizable easter eggs from your childhood.
Not to mention Sings 1 + 2, as well as Secret Life of Pets, the only movie American kids under six want to watch.
South Park predicted this..
“The film’s stacked voice cast also includes Elizabeth Banks as Nanjiani’s more adventerous wife, plus Carol Kane, Awkwafina, Certified Toad Keegan-Michael Key, and Prime Should Have Been Mario Candidate Danny DeVito”
HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS HIRE REAL FUCKING VOICE ACTORS
(Also you misspelled ‘adventurous’)
Don’t worry, I’m sure Dee Bradley Baker is doing all the quacking
Those are all actors with voices and voice acting experience.
Sorry they’re not the voices that you’re used to. It’s OK to hear new things.
Do you have any fucking idea how many animated movies Danny Devito has done? Fucking fire up IMDB before you hit the caps lock
All actors are “real voice actors” as they are really using their voices to act.What you mean is:ONLY HIRE THE PEOPLE I WANT YOU TO HIRE
My dog Molly killed a duck when I was a kid. Molly was a German Shepherd/Labrador mix so big girl and she loved chasing the ducks at the park. I thought it was funny then she caught one and it stopped being funny. I still feel horrible about it.
Why? Animals eat animals.
Say the magic word, ducks poop!
Written by The White Lotus’ Chuck & Buck’s Mike White.That sounds more interesting.
“Illumination so disappointed in the quality of their Super Mario Bros. movie, they’ve decided to focus all of their efforts on a film about crapping ducks.”