Kirk Demicco: Last News

EXCLUSIVE: Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken has a lot going for her.

Carolyn Giardina Three-time Oscar-nominated director Chris Sandlers and Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o previewed unfinished footage of DreamWorks Animation‘s “The Wild Robot” at CinemaCon — what Sandlers says took inspiration from Disney classics and Hayao Miyazaki’s work, resulting in an original virtual style that he described as “a Monet painting in a Miyazaki forest.” Based on Peter Brown’s book, the story follows Roz, a robot voiced by Nyong’o, who is accidentally marooned on an uninhabited island. There, the city robot meets and learns from the animals in her new environment. In this rich world, a fox meets and advises Roz.

Peter Debruge Chief Film Critic If you’re going to make a movie about a kraken — those giant multi-tentacled sea monsters believed to wrestle ships from below — then computer animation is hands down the way to go. The trouble with doing so at a major American studio is that it comes with the imperative to turn these fantastical creatures into cutesy-wootsy kid-movie fodder, which is precisely what DreamWorks Animation does with the reasonably clever myth-twisting toon “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.” The creative team’s high-concept take suggests “Twilight” as a (literal) fish-out-of-water comedy, wherein a family of blue-skinned squid-things attempt to pass as human. Fifteen years ago, Flora (voiced by Toni Collette) and Peter (Colman Domingo) abandoned the ocean to raise their kids on land. Despite the obvious hurdles — their conspicuous cerulean tint, floppy limbs and invertebrate status — they’ve been reasonably successful at blending in. Anytime someone looks suspicious, Ruby (Lana Condor) just says she’s from Canada, and that does the trick. But Ruby’s not nearly as comfortable with her own otherness, which she’s spent her entire life trying to disguise. All of that gets a lot more difficult a few days before prom, when she dives into the sea to save her crush, Connor (Jaboukie Young-White). Contact with water awakens something deep within Ruby and releases her inner kraken.

Marta Balaga DreamWorks Animation is committing to “subverting the hero’s journey,” said president Margie Cohn at Annecy, introducing “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” and “Orion and the Dark.” One of the big U.S. world premieres at Annecy, the world’s biggest animation festival, “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” featured at a DreamWorks Animation studio focus at Annecy, the world’s biggest animation festival. “DreamWorks has a long tradition of taking an unlikely hero, like a chubby panda or an ogre with a heart of gold, and subverting your expectations. We will take what you think might be an evil sea monster and convince you she is actually the hero,” “Ruby Gillman” producer, Kelly Cooney Cilella, added.

Carole Horst DreamWorks Animation brings three features to Annecy, and screens the world premiere of “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,” with director Kirk DeMicco, producer Kelly Cooney Cilella and co-director Faryn Pearl in attendance, on June 15 at the festival. The animated adventure opens June 30 in the U.S. and features an all-star cast of Lana Condor, Toni Collette, Jaboukie Young-White, Jane Fonda, Sam Richardson, Annie Murphy, Colman Domingo and Will Forte. “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken” follows the the shy teenager Ruby, who discovers that she’s part of a legendary royal lineage of mythical sea krakens and that her destiny, in the depths of the oceans, is bigger than she ever dreamed.