Malaysia’s Animasia Studio successfully inked a deal with Zero One Animation of China to work together in creating a new CGI animated movie titled Chuck Chicken – The Movie at Hong Kong FILMART 2016 today.
This brand new animated movie is a spinoff from the successful animated TV series Chuck Chicken a.k.a. Kung Fu Chicken, which premiered on Disney China, Disney South East Asia, Nickelodeon India, Middle East and the C.I.S regional TV stations. The successful Chuck Chicken TV series garnered over 300 million views, within six months of its launch, on China’s VOD platform iQIYI.
The signing ceremony that took place at the Malaysia Pavilion, witnessed by a number of delegates, will help further strengthen the relationship between Malaysia and China in the creative industry. Animation production services are among the biggest contributors to export revenues in the Malaysian creative content industry. This can be seen from the growing revenue of exports from creative content, which has increased to more than USD140 million at end of 2014 from approximately USD46 million in 2009.
Animasia Studio, EP and MD, Edmund Chan said, “We are eager to launch one of our most anticipated animated projects in our recent slate of contents, and this co-operate partnership bring us a step closer in jointly producing a blockbuster movie for an important market such as China.”
Chuck Chicken – The Movie is set with a budget of USD 8 million (RMB 50 million), and is targeting for a theatrical release in early 2018. At Hong Kong FILMART, the Executive Producers of the film, Edmund Chan, Raye Lee and Helen Dong took this first step to announce their joint collaboration in gathering creative talents from China, Malaysia and North America to contribute to the production of this 3D CGI film, meanwhile raising funds and securing potential investments from prominent partners in the upcoming months.
An action comedy concept, Chuck Chicken – The Movie targets predominantly family viewers as it brings Chuck together with his friends, Flick and Wing to operate ‘The Golden Egg Securities’ on Rocky Perch Island. Chuck has big ambitions and dreams – he wants to be rich! But yet the business is not generating money and the greed in Chuck changes the philosophy of their services, Chuck is willing to take on any job that pays good money. The change of goodness in Chuck causes the golden egg to start losing its power, and conflicts start to grow among Chuck and his team. Flick decides to leave the company while Chuck is getting into more trouble. Will the golden egg end up as a useless rock? Can Chuck still save the day?
Zero One Animation, GM, Helen Dong commented, “This partnership with Animasia Studio will elevate our experience in China to a different level, and we are thrilled to co- operate in this movie with Animasia Studio. We are very happy with the concept and script for Chuck Chicken – The Movie and I am confident that investors will back us for this mega project.”
The story and script development process has started since November 2015 and it was a collaborative effort headed by China’s Chen Xi, Helen Dong and Malaysian animation director Wong Kuan Loong a.k.a. Ah Loong. The pre-production work will set to commence in early June, while the CGI production targets to start in late 2016.