The biggest, and most pleasant surprise of the year so far came when the unpromising-looking “How To Train Your Dragon,” from the reliably disappointing Dreamworks Animation, actually turned out to be kind of brilliant — funny, heartwarming, exciting, and using 3D in a way that almost (almost…) justifies the hype. A sequel to that film is in the works, but co-director Chris Sanders (“Lilo and Stitch”) is already working on a new film for the studio, “The Croods.”
The project, which Sanders is directing with Kirk DeMicco (“Space Chimps”), follows a family of cavemen who are forced from their homes by an earthquake, and encounter a nomad with a more modern approach to the world. Nicolas Cage and Ryan Reynolds were already on board as, respectively, the family’s conservative patriarch Grug, and the wanderer, Gy, and Catherine Keener and Emma Stone have now joined the project as Cage’s wife, Ugga, and daughter, Eep, who falls for Gy.
It’s shaping up to be a pretty great cast; Reynolds and Keener are reliably excellent, while Stone’s star is rising fast and Cage suddenly seems to have rediscovered his long-absent mojo with “Kick-Ass” and “Bad Lieutenant.” The script was originally developed at Aardman, and was co-written by John Cleese, so the behind-the-scenes credentials are pretty strong, and there’s good reason to hope that this’ll be closer in spirit to “How To Train Your Dragon” than to “Shark Tale.”
