At last year’s ComicCon, “Superbad,” “Pineapple Express” and now “The Green Hornet” co-writer Evan Goldberg revealed to us for the first time a new “top secret” project that he and his cohorts were developing called, “Sausage Party.”
He swore he wouldn’t tell us many details, but without much prodding the writer/producer told us the project would be a new CGI film voiced by Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, with involvement from Conrad Vernon (voice actor and director of “Monsters Vs. Aliens,” and “Shrek Forever After”) and Mark Osborne director of “Kung Fu Panda.” That’s not too shabby at all.
Details have trickled out since from members of the cast. Jonah Hill described it as an R-Rated 3D animated movie, “Imagine if ‘Shrek’ was R-rated, a very hard and aggressive R,” he told MTV, and according to all the three stars, they’re quickly learning — like David Fincher‘s “Goon” producers are learning — that it’s extremely difficult to get a filthy, R-Rated animated project off the ground as that realm is generally saved for the Disneys and Pixars of the world. Rogen recently revealed that Vernon would actually be producing, though we assume he’ll do some voice work too.
In separate interviews conducted this week from ‘Green Hornet’ press, both Goldberg and Rogen revealed the basic plotline. “It’s a movie about sausages in a supermarket that need to get back to their aisle before the fourth of July,” Rogen told Screenrant. “They’re whole goal is to get purchased. And they get lost and they need to get back to they’re aisle before the Fourth of July starts,” Goldberg added.
However, animation is protracted, arduous and expensive because of all the manpower and hours involved, which is why 99% of these films are G-rated aimed at families and kids — they do stellar business this way.
So it sounds subversive and all, but it is something more suited to Adult Swim? As Fincher recently told AICN, “Animation that isn’t singing furry animals is hard. We kind of went out with [‘Goon’ to studios] at the end of the year and I don’t know that a lot of people were paying attention, but hopefully someone will step in and want to [pick it up]. I gotta hope there are more avenues for animation.”
It remains to be seen whether anyone will green lit “Goon” (or the semi-similar Fincher-led “Heavy Metal” project for that matter), but we suppose we’re always happy when writers are generating original material and not, say, adapting comic-book side-kick character films from heroes that weren’t particularly interesting in the first place. Then again, Goldberg told Cinemablend that “Sausage Party” could receive their funding extremely soon. Fingers crossed.
