Werner Herzog to Make Animation Debut With ‘The Twilight World,’ Teaming With ‘Flee’ Studio (EXCLUSIVE)

variety.com:

Elsa Keslassy International Correspondent Werner Herzog, the celebrated German writer, producer and filmmaker behind “Grizzly Man” and “The Wrath of God,” is making his animation debut with “The Twilight World,” based on his best selling novel of the same name.

Narrated by the filmmaker, “The Twilight World” tells the true story of Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese intelligence officer who refused to believe that World War II was over, and continued to fight a personal, fictitious war in the jungles of the Philippines for thirty years.

The screenplay adaptation of the book, which weaves history, war drama and dream log, was written by Herzog with Michael Arias (“Tekkonkinkreet,” “The Animatrix”) and Luca Vitale.

Sun Creature Studio, the producers of “Flee,” the BAFTA and Oscar-nominated film, has been tapped to create for “The Twilight World” out of their France-based studio and will be working with French animation talent, while Psyop, another renowned animation studio that is based in Germany and the U.S., is co-producing the film. “I always felt that Hiroo Onoda’s story, having spanned almost 30 years of fever dreams in the jungle, was best suited for literature, not cinema—which is why I chose to tell it through a novel,” said Herzog.