Animal Crackers which premiered at Annecy Festival in 2017 is directed by Scott Christian Sava and Tony Bancroft (Mulan). The film had an all-star voice cast, including Emily Blunt and John Krasinski in the lead roles.
The film had been stuck in distribution for three years as the production went over budget, leading to financial struggles for Sava. It complicated the task of finding a distributor thus leading to him losing control of the film to an investor who sold the rights to Netflix.
In a statement, Bancroft said, “We struggled for three years wanting to go with a theatrical model. Going online with Netflix, especially now with covid-19 and theaters closed, has been the best possible solution for our film.”
The film started as a graphic novel by Sava, which he had written for his sons. Over time he received offers from Warner Bros., Disney, DreamWorks, Sony and Harvey Weinstein but none of them worked out. The film secured $19.5 million from investors in Seattle, South Korea, and China over time and Sava produced the film through his Blue Dream Studios with animation done at a subsidiary of the studio in Spain.
It was important for Sava to incorporate the “never say die” spirit in the film because that was what kept the project working even while going through hard times personally. “Looking at what my wife went through to make this happen, made me really think that this needs to be a story about both of them and how a whole family comes together,” he said.
Animal Crackers is getting a global platform through Netflix, which has worked out for the best, as the movie has been taken as is, without any further changes.