DreamWorks Animation have to be feeling pretty good these days. Coming off their creative highpoint to date with "How To Train Your Dragon," the company picked up two Oscar nominations last week for the solid (if uninspired) "Puss In Boots" and "Kung Fu Panda 2," while arch-rivals Pixar missed out, having dropped the ball for the first time with "Cars 2."
As usual, DreamWorks have plenty coming down the pipeline: two films this year, with "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" and the all-star "Rise of the Guardians." And they've got more for next year: caveman tale "The Croods," with Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds, and "Turbo," also with Reynolds voicing the lead role. But for the first time, 2013 will see them release three movies into theaters; after "The Croods" in March and "Turbo" in July will come "Me And My Shadow," a film that's just found its principle voice cast.
Heat Vision report that Bill Hader, Kate Hudson and Josh Gad, the breakout star of Broadway smash "Book Of Mormon," have all signed on to lend their voices to the project, which marks the directorial debut of Alessandro Carloni, who was head of story on "How To Train Your Dragon." The film tells the tale of a timid man named Stanley Grubb (Gad, whose screen credits include "Love And Other Drugs"), whose shadow (Hader) takes control of him when an evil villain threatens to take over the human world. Hudson will play Stanley's love interest.
Intriguingly, the project will mix CG and traditional 2D animation styles (which will be used to depict the shadow characters and world), which marks the kind of creative experimentation that the studio seem increasingly to be going for. The cast is certainly promising: Hudson's never done animation before, but Hader's work on "Cloudy With Chance Of Meatballs" was superb, while Gad's an old hand with animation, having lent his vocals to "Marmaduke" and the upcoming "Ice Age 4," and it bodes well that the company are shying away from A-listers on the project. Production is underway, and the film is currently set to hit theaters on November 8, 2013.