Here's a recording session we'd like to sit in on: animated family adventure Animal Crackers has just announced its voice cast, and top of the pile is an unlikely team comprising Sir Ian McKellen, Sylvester Stallone and Danny DeVito. Animators Scott Christian Sava and Tony Bancroft will direct the madness, from a screenplay by Sava and Dean Lorey (Arrested Development).
Harvey Fierstein, Patrick Warburton, Tara Strong, Lydia Taylor, Gilbert Gottfried and Arnold Taylor make up much of the rest of the vocal roster. The story involves a family who inherit a rundown circus and are transformed into animals when they tuck into a magic box of the titular biscuits.
Stallone working alongside McKellen sounds as good as, if not better than, when he co-starred with Woody Allen in Antz back in 1998.
“When I was writing Animal Crackers I had specific voices in my head," says Sava. "Certain characters I wrote with actors in mind. Horatio [a lion?] was always Sir Ian McKellen... and Bullet-Man [a strong-man / human cannonball?] could be no one else but Stallone. To find out that these actors have agreed to come on board this film and bring these characters to life… I'm flipping out!”
Work on the film is already underway as a co-production between Sava's Blue Dream Studios and the China Film Group. It's expected to be completed by the summer of 2016, so expect Animal Crackers either later that year or sometime in 2017.