Netflix Drops Surprise Annecy Presentation, Trailer for Glen Keane’s ‘Over the Moon’
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In a previously-unannounced presentation posted on the Annecy Intl. Animation Film Festival’s digital platform on Tuesday morning, Netflix announced key cast, new images, updated plot points and shared an out-of-this-world trailer for the platform’s upcoming musical 3D feature “Over the Moon” from legendary animator and Oscar-winning filmmaker Glen Keane.
Annecy also announced a live Q&A with crew from the film, including Keane, to take place on June 24, at 6 p.m. CET (9 a.m. PT).
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Newcomers Cathy Ang and Robert G. Chiu will join Grammy winner Phillipa Soo (“Hamilton”), Ken Jeong (“Crazy Rich Asians”), John Cho (“Star Trek”), Ruthie Ann Miles (“All Rise”), Emmy nominee Margaret Cho, three time SAG winner Kimiko Glenn (“Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse”), Artt Butler and two-time Golden Globe winner Sandra Oh (“Killing Eve”) in the film’s principle voice cast.
Premiering on the platform worldwide this fall – excluding China where it will be released theatrically by Pearl Studio) – “Over the Moon” will feature original songs from Christopher Curtis, Marjorie Duffield, and Helen Park, and a score by Oscar-winner Steven Price (“Gravity”).
John Kahrs, a 2013 Oscar-winner for best animated short with “Paperman,” joins Keane as co-director. Audrey Wells’ (“The Hate U Give”) wrote the screenplay. Gennie Rim, Keane’s producer on “Dear Basketball,” and Peilin Chou (“Abominable”) will produce. Executive producers include Keane, Janet Yang (“The Joy Luck Club”), Ruigang Li, Frank Zhu and Thomas Hui.
Keane, an Academy Award winner for his work on Kobe Bryant’s animated short “Dear Basketball” and a legendary character animator on Disney classics such as “Aladdin,” “Beaty and the Beast,” “The Little Mermaid” and “Pocahontas” among others, was one of the biggest draws at Annecy 2018, where he participated in a Pearl Animation presentation, introducing “Over the Moon” to the world.
Inspired by one of China’s most beloved myths, the family feature follows Fei Fei, a bright young girl fueled by a love of science and an unflappable belief in the ancient Chinese myth of the legendary Moon Goddess. Intent on restoring her family’s belief in the tale, Fei Fei designs a rocket ship to take her and her adorable pet rabbit to the moon so she can prove the Moon Goddess’ existence.
In the trailer, we get a taste of Feifei’s backstory and the world she has grown up in. To build that world, Keane and some of the “Over the Moon” team visited China in a trip he discussed at the Pearl Animation panel in 2018.
“We explored a bit of the Chinese culture and a tiny little water town,” he remembered, comparing the village to Annecy, another city of canals, while contrasting it with better-known Chinese cities like Shanghai. “It was a China I’d never experienced,” he said.
One dinner in the village made a particularly strong impact on the director, as seen in the photos shared by Netflix. “We all sat around a table with a lazy Susan in the middle, and that is the heart and soul of China, these round tables with Lazy Susans covered in food. There is a scene in our film of Fei Fei’s family dinner which is now the anchor to this movie for us.”
After a bit of backstory and a musical montage of spaceship construction, the trailer heads to a brilliantly colored moon, offering up the first extra-terrestrial images of the film which have been shared publicly.
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