A new Animated Film will retell the Greek myth of Icarus and the Minotaur. The feature film will come from a veteran former animator from Pixar. Intended to be a family film, “Icarus” will also tell the story of an unusual friendship between the titular Icarus and the Minotaur, characters who are never said to meet each other in the original myth.
What is happening behind the scenes?
Carlo Vogele is a seven-year animation veteran of the California-based Pixar Animation Studios and is known for his work in stop-motion shorts. Now, he is the one to lead the development of a film, called "Icarus," with the Luxembourg-based film studio The Iris Group.
A concept trailer directed by Vogele was shown at the Cartoon Movie, a festival designed to serve as a pitching & co-pro forum, located in Bordeaux, France.
Nicolas Steil, who serves as both an Iris Group CEO and producer of the upcoming film, is reportedly setting up the film as an internation co-pordcution between German and Belgian studios. The film is intended to serve as a family film, with an expected release date of 2019. The film’s budget is also said to be currently undisclosed.
What will the upcoming film be like?
While based on the Greek myth of "Icarus and Daedalus," which itself is connected to the story of "Theseus and the Minotaur," there will be some twists to the classic story.
In the original story, Daedalus was a talented artisan who was commissioned by King Minos to build the Labyrinth, a massive maze intended to house the Minotaur, also known as Asterion, a bull-human hybrid that feeds on human flesh who is also Minos’ stepson.
Intending to use the Labyrinth to imprison human sacrifices, and fearing that Daedalus could release the secrets to the maze, the king imprisons Daedalus and his son, Icarus, in a tower.
Daedalus is able to escape by crafting a pair of wings for him and his son out of feathers and wax, but Icarus flew too close to the sun, causing the wax to melt, and causing him to fall to his death. In popular culture, the story ended up immortalizing “Icarus” as a figure of the vanity of pride, for he was punished for “flying too close to the sun.”
Vogele’s version, however, will portray Icarus as forming a friendship with the outcast Minotaur.
In a released statement with Cartoon Brew, Vogele had said that he wanted to explore the characters at a young age, which often goes unexplored in the original myths. A logline for the film suggests the "cheerful gods of the Olympus" will be the ones to rewrite the story. Reportedly, Zeus, Poseidon and Aphrodite will serve as the narrators of the film, and will function as a parody of modern-day newspaper journalists.
According to the released trailer, the animation appears to be computer-generated, but designed in a way to resemble stop-motion. Focusing on an opening between the three Olympians, the film switches to two-dimensional animation when telling the main story. Interestingly enough, the teaser alludes to the Minotaur’s original origin, being the son of King Minos’ wife, Queen Pasiphaë, after she was cursed by the gods to fall in love with a white bull.
