Frances Ha and Greenberg director Noah Baumbach may not be the first name one thinks of when it comes to animated films, but he has quite a bit of experience with them. A few years ago he wrote the vastly underrated stop-motion Fantastic Mr. Fox, and also took a pen to Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted. So perhaps it's not a total surprise to learn that he's directing a CG-animated adaptation of Berkeley Brethed's Flawed Dogs. The surprise is that he's managed to keep it secret for quite awhile.
Ever since hooking up with his Frances Ha star Greta Gerwig, Baumbach has taken to shooting his films in complete secrecy and on the cheap, only revealing them when they're near completion. That appears to be the case with Flawed Dogs, and it's all the more impressive since this is a major studio project, not a low-budget indie. Dreamworks has been developing the film for a couple of years without much progress, but that has clearly changed with Baumbach on board. The story will be based on the most recent of Brethed's illustrated novels, The Shocking Raid on Westminster, and follows an exiled show dog who gathers a group of abandoned pups to ransack the Westminster Dog Show to reunite with his owner.
This isn't the first of Brethed's books to be brought to the big screen. Mars Needs Moms was poorly adapted back in 2011, turning out as one of the year's biggest flops and the film that basically ruined Robert Zemeckis' ImageMovers studio. Hopefully Brethed will find better success this time with Baumbach and Dreamworks. [BleedingCool]
