Advertisement

Outsider Pictures Plots Academy Run for Brazilian Claymation Feature Pickup ‘Bob Spit: We Don’t Like People’ (EXCLUSIVE)

Los Angeles-based Outsider Pictures has picked up North American rights to the award-winning Brazilian stop-motion feature “Bob Spit: We Do Not Like People,” this year’s Best Film winner from Annecy’s Contrechamp section for innovative and outside-the-box toon features and the Best Animated Feature at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.

Outsider is currently planning an Academy qualifying run for the film.

More from Variety

São Paulo-based Coala Filmes impressed early on with their claymation adaptation of the works of legendary Brazilian cartoonist Angeli, responsible for many of the country’s best-love, and often loathed, animated characters, when their series “Angeli the Killer” played in the series competition at the Annecy Intl. Film Festival.

One year later, the film’s director Cesar Cabral and producer Ivan Melo participated in the Cannes-Annecy Animation Day, a major cartoon showcase where five animated features in progress pitched to attendees of the Cannes Film Market.

In the film, Bob – one of Angeli’s most timeless creations – finds himself trapped in a post-apocalyptic desert inhabited by glamorous mutant ‘80s pop stars out for blood… Bob’s blood. In actual fact, Bob’s world is a purgatory caused by writer’s block in the mind of his creator, the famous comic artist himself, Angeli. To overcome the block, Angeli decides it’s time to kill off Bob. However, Bob isn’t ready to go down easily and decides to confront his maker and fight for his own survival.

“The proposal of the series was to bring new life to the universe of the magazine ‘Chiclete com Banana,’ a huge success in the ‘80s- ‘90s. The movie shows Bob as an older tough punk guy, like an Iggy Pop, from those comics,” Cabral explained to Variety about the differences between the series and film adaptations.

“Besides Bob, we have The Kowalski Twins – sort of freakish, sensitive religious followers – created by Angeli in 2009. We also have short, but important cameos from the diva Re Bordosa, the guru Rhalah Rikota and the pair of pesky guys, The Skrotinhos, all created for ‘Chiclete com Banana.’ If the series was based on Angeli’s ‘80s, with ‘Bob Spit’ the intention was to use Angeli’s current work.”

Best of Variety

Sign up for Variety’s Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.