Open Road Films Acquires ‘Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad’ For 2018 Release
Open Road Films has acquired all U.S. rights to the 3D CGI animated film Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad which is voiced by an impressive ensemble of talent: Jeremy Renner, Alec Baldwin, Heidi Klum, John Cleese, James Franco, Anjelica Huston and Omar Sy. Directed by Aaron Woodley, the family film hails from Andrea Iervolino and Monika Bacardi’s AMBI Media Group. The film will be released in 2018. Open Road has released animated films previously, most notably The Nut Job in Jan. of 2014 which grossed $64.2M domestically and launched a sequel which will be released in late summer of this year.
Animation work for Arctic Justice is currently being done out of AMBI’s Toronto based studio, AIC Studios. The movie is fully financed and being produced by AMBI.
The storyline for the film? “When the sinister Doc Walrus (voiced by John Cleese) hatches a secret plot to accelerate global warming and melt the arctic circle, a rag-tag group of inexperienced heroes (voiced by Renner, Franco, Baldwin, Huston, Klum and Sy) must come together to foil his evil plans and save the arctic.
Renner plays Swifty an arctic fox, who dreams of becoming one the famous Top Dogs, a team of huskies that deliver packages for the Arctic Blast Delivery Service. In the Arctic, every day trips can quickly turn into epic journeys, which make the Top Dogs the Arctic’s every day heroes.
In an effort to prove himself, Swifty secretly commandeers a delivery sled to takes a mysterious package to a secret, icy, fortress where he comes face to face with Doc Walrus (Cleese), a blubbery evil genius who walks around on robotic legs, and commands a loyal army of oddly polite puffins. Swifty stumbles upon Doc Walrus’ evil plan to drill to the center of the Earth to unleash enough lava to melt the polar ice caps in order to flood the planet and become be king of the world.
Now, Swifty has to enlist the help of his friends: PB (ABaldwin), an introverted polar bear, Lemmy (Franco), a scatter-brained rock and roll albatross, Sal (Sy) and Weez (Klum), two conspiracy theorist otters, and Jade, a red fox, who’s a tough as nails mechanic that Swifty has a secret crush on. This ragtag team has to band together and overcome their differences if they’re going to stop Doc Walrus and his army of Puffins from destroying the world.
The deal was negotiated on behalf of Open Road Films by CEO Tom Ortenberg, Chief Operating Officer and General Counsel, Elliott Kleinberg and SVP Acquisitions, Lejo Pet and by Iervolino on behalf of AMBI Media Group.
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