Good grief! Snoopy 'leaks' first official 'Peanuts' movie trailer, This is why you don't invite dogs, even the comic-strip kind, to planning meetings.
Charlie Brown's lovable beagle, who has an inner life most of us would envy, just revealed the first official Peanuts Movie trailer on social media 10 days ahead of schedule.
While all the film's characters appear to be involved in an investigation, it's unlikely Snoopy will face anything more than a late meal. He is, after all, a member of the Peanuts family and, as you can see from the video embedded above, a star of the movie.
As for the rest of us, well, we're thanking Snoopy for this early glimpse of what's sure to be one of the more eagerly anticipated releases of 2015.
The film marks the Peanuts franchise's first foray into computer-generated imagery. For devoted Peanuts fans, there's been some concern that the characters would look too real or even grotesque. Based on a short teaser released earlier this year, some of those fears were assuaged.
The [film] doctor is in
Now, with a good look at the full trailer, it's clear that the characters and familiar Peanuts set-ups, and not CGI, will be the star of the film, written in part by Schulz's son, Craig and grandson Bryan. It's scheduled for release in the U.S. on November 6, 2015.
With months to wait until we see the actual movie, Peanuts fans will surely pour over every second of this antic 1:46 minute clip to see how well the film honors the Peanuts creator Charles Schulz legacy. Schulz died in 2000 on the same day his last Peanuts comic strip ran in national newspapers.
It has been many years since Charlie Brown, Snoopy, Lucy, Linus and the rest of Schulz' distinctive comic strip characters have graced the big screen. On TV, they live on in yearly reruns of the holiday classics, including A Charlie Brown Christmas, which marks its 50th airing next month and will enjoy an official a half century celebration next year.
In other words, a lot is riding on this film for fans, the franchise and Peanuts, LLC, which owns the brand (its owned by Iconix and the Schulz family).
The trailer does not reveal much, certainly not the plot of the film, which is being produced by 20th Century fox and Blue Sky Animation. In it, an almost touchable Snoopy is lying on his red dog house as Woodstock and his friends decorate for the holidays — yes, it would seem, this is a holiday film. The birds overload the the house and snow-covered yard with lights and everything burns out.
Snoopy, however awakens, sits up on top of the dog house and assumes a very familiar pose. Soon he's on his sopwith camel propeller airplane as the World War I flying ace, chasing the Red Baron over an expertly-rendered and almost realistic-looking Paris, France.
Throughout the action, there is a dimension and realism that we've never seen before on a Peanuts film. And yet, for as far as the animators take it, it still looks exactly like the comic and cartoons you know and love. Part of this has to do with Blue Sky's spot on rendering of every character (they managed a similar feat with 2008's Horton Hears a Who). Eyes did not transform into realistic eyes — they still have the "c" lines around them — and though Snoopy and Woodstock move in three dimensions, Blue Sky animation has somehow managed to make the characters move as they did in both the comic strip — from frame -to-frame — and in the cartoons of the 1960's and early 1970s. Visually, there simply isn't a false note and, if the Academy is paying attention, this could end up being an Oscar contender in the animated feature category next year.
Now, I know, we don't want to get ahead of ourselves. There is no story here yet. In the trailer, Snoopy ends up comically losing is plane and falling back to earth (or out of his day dream) right next to his dog house. There's a bit of business between him and Woodstock, where they get the lights working but also manage to throttle each other. What's notable about this scene, though, is that we hear both Woodstock and Snoopy's distinctive voices. The latter is provided by the late animator Bill Melendez. The producers actually licensed Melendez's recorded voice for use in the film.
There is one more surprise in the short clip. At the end, we see the film as if in a theater, but a certain distinctive shadow is blocking our view. It's Charlie Brown's round head and in the next scene, we see the entire cast of Peanuts characters watching the trailer. It's a great opportunity to see exactly how Blue Sky renders all the key characters including the Pig Pen, Linus, Sally, Lucy and Violet.
From the moment the classic Vince Guaraldi Peanuts music opens the clip until it bookmarks it at the end, the trailer is just want fans ordered, while leaving them wanting so much more.
