Oogieloves?!?

About two months ago my wife and I went to see the Disney/Pixar movie Brave. Since its a "family" film, it seems obvious they would play trailers before the movie for other family movies. There was the Ice Age 4 trailer, Hotel Transylvania, Frankenweenie, Wreck-It Ralph, and of course OogieLoves.... Wait? What? OogieLoves? I had two initial thoughts: first, it must be based off of a popular children's show I never heard of. So popular that they could get somewhat recognizable stars to be in it. I mean c'mon it's got Chazz Palminteri and Christopher Lloyd in it! My second thought was that they have to be the ugliest live-action animatronic characters since Garbage Pail Kids the movie. Like a combination of Teletubbies and the Garbage Pail Kids:

I kind of wrote it off that I just wasn't aware of kids shows as much as I thought I was.

Over these past two months, I kept seeing more and more of these ugly characters on tv advertisements, posters, and on large city buses. I had to find out where they came from. I finally googled it and lo and behold I find out that it isn't a series at all! The OogieLoves aren't even a toy property or a series of children's books!

According to Wikipedia (I know not the best reference source) :
The film was produced and written by Kenn Viselman, who was behind the American localization of the British children's series Teletubbies and Thomas & Friends. Viselman claims that he and Teletubbies creator Anne Wood had multiple disputes with each other, because Wood refused to let Viselman pursue a film adaptation of the show, but when he went to a showing of the Tyler Perry film Madea Goes to Jail, he saw how people in the audience would shout out advice to the characters on screen. This lead him to the idea of creating a children's film in the vein of Teletubbies with the interactive aspect, allowing the children to sing, dance, and respond to the characters on screen.

So I was somewhat right about the Teletubbies look, but in my opinion it looks like a three year old's interpretation of what the Teletubbies look like. And who would ever think that a Tyler Perry movie would inspire someone to make an interactive children's film?! Also the film is budgeted at $12 million. That's not a large amount for a feature film, but even Wes Anderson, an established feature film director, was only given $16 million for his latest film, Moonrise Kingdom, a film starring major box office stars Bruce Willis, Bill Murray and Edward Norton. And based on how much advertising I've seen for the OogieLoves, I'm sure the studio is spending many more millions just on promoting the movie.

As I continued researching The OogieLoves movie, I come to find out that there is no major studio behind the movie. Kenn Viselman created a studio to make the film and he (or a team of people he hired) are distributing it as well. It's rare that you see that with movies today, but considering most major studios only bank on recognizable properties for "family" movies to put into theaters. We have already seen The Smurfs, Yogi Bear, Marvel and DC superheroes, Dr. Seuss characters and coming soon Alf, Popeye and Woody Woodpecker. There is only one studio that comes to mind who produces original family films and that is Pixar, and even they are making sequels to their own properties. So I do have to give Mr. Viselman credit, he had a dream to make an interactive family film and probably pitched it to every studio in town, only to be told "no". He thought he had a great idea though, so he made it happen. I guess we'll find out next weekend if he did have a great idea or not.

And if he is right, I'm going to be coming to him with plenty of ideas and what I think to be more competent character designs, to get my own children's movie made. Sure I may not be able to get Cloris Leachman and Toni Braxton, but maybe I could get Charlotte Rae and Brandy to star.