The Amazing Maurice: The Art of the Film E-Book

Ramin Zahed

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 106

Beschreibung

The official art book for the animated movie The Amazing Maurice, based on the Carnegie Medal-winning Discworld novel by Terry PratchettMaurice is a streetwise talking tomcat who comes up with a money-making scam by befriending a group of talking rats and finding a dumb-looking kid who plays a pipe. When Maurice and company reach the stricken town of Bad Blintz, they meet a bookworm called Malicia and their scheme soon goes down the drain.The Art of the Film is a coffee table hardback celebration of the creative process of bringing The Amazing Maurice to life, including exclusive concept designs, character sketches, storyboards and production art, alongside insight from the artists, filmmakers and directors.

Leseprobe

THE AMAZING MAURICE: THE ART OF THE FILM

ISBN: 9781803361536eISBN: 9781803365107

Published byTitan BooksA division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd144 Southwark StLondonSE1 0UP

First edition: December 202210 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

The Amazing Maurice™ is a trademark owned byDunmanifestin Ltd.Images © 2022 Ulysses Filmproduktion and CantileverMedia.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, storedin a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or byany means without the prior written permission of thepublisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form ofbinding or cover other than that in which it is publishedand without a similar condition being imposed on thesubsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from theBritish Library.

www.titanbooks.com

Did you enjoy this book? We love to hear from our readers.Please e-mail us at: [email protected] write to Reader Feedback at the above address.

To receive advance information, news, competitions,and exclusive offers online, please sign up for the Titannewsletter on our website: www.titanbooks.com

Contents

Foreword

6

Introduction

8

1. You’ve Got Rats!

18

Maurice

20

Keith Candle

24

Main Clan Rats

28

Darktan

30

Dangerous Beans

34

Peaches

38

Nourishing

42

Sardines

44

Rustic Village

46

Rustic Villagers

50

2. Foreshadowing

54

Billy Spears & Ron Blunkett

56

The Mayor

58

Boss Man

60

Bad Blintz Townspeople

62

The Rest of the Rat Pack

66

Malicia’s Room

70

The Mayor’s Office

74

Market & Bakery

76

Sewers & Rat Tunnels

78

3. Smells Like… A Mystery

80

Malicia Grim

82

Mr Clicky

88

Bad Blintz

90

The Town Gate

92

Main Street & Town Square

94

The Mayor’s House & Kitchen

100

Unseen University Rubbish Dump

104

Something Horrible,Yet Interesting!

108

Location Focus: The Ratcatchers’ Guild

110

4. So – What’s Your Plan?

128

Rooftops

130

The Mayor’s Bedroom

132

The Iron Foundry

134

Rat Pit Characters

138

5. There’s Something Terriblein the Dark Wood

142

The Forest

144

The Pied Piper

148

The Pied Piper’s Shack

150

6. Just a Cat

154

Rat King

156

Maurice the Tiger & Spirit Maurice

158

Death

160

The Bone Rat

163

7. The Amazing Maurice andHis Educated Rodents

164

Bad Blintz Prosperous

166

Tourist

170

Mr Clicky’s Family

171

Bad Blintz Rat Town

172

A Framing Device

176

Animating the Storybook World ofMr Bunnsy

178

Mr Bunnsy

180

Mr Bunnsy Characters

182

Mr Bunnsy Locations

184

Mr Bunnsy Has An Adventure Book

186

Color Script

188

Conclusion

190

Acknowledgments

191

Foreword

The Amazing Maurice was made by three filmproducers, Andrew Baker, Robert Chandler and myself (as well as Rob Wilkins from Narrativia, producer for the Pratchett Estate) and, as the producer who initiated the project, I was asked to write a short personal introduction to the art of this ‘amazing’ film.

The Brothers Grimm wrote a lot of stories in Germany in the 1800s. Fairy Tales. Some of these tales are funny, some are soppy, many are just – in the strict sense of the word – grim. My parents, being influenced by the protest revolutions of 1968, kept me away from the grim German cultural heritage and didn’t tell me, for example, about the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Robert Browning tinkered with the gruesome story, but the tale remained broadly the same for centuries. On the 26th of June 1284, during the pagan midsummer,a multi-colored costumed piper led 130 childrenout of the town of Hamelin in Germany – never to be seen again. The man with the “magic flute” hadn’t been paid by the Mayor for getting rid of a plague of rats, and this was his revenge on the town. According to the Hamelin Museum, this story is known in forty-two countries in thirty languages.

However, the contemporary author who offereda unique insight and gave us a new take on the talewas Terry Pratchett. He wrote a fantastic melangeof the fairy tale, adding an amazingly clevertomcat, Maurice, as the main protagonist,surrounded by highly intelligent talking rats, askinny, gawky piper named Keith, a human story-dynamo and Grim [sic] descendant called Malicia, dangerous crooks and many anxious citizens. He also gave us one of the more terrifying adversaries in modern children’s literature in the form of the

6

THE AMAZING MAURICE: THE ART OF THE FILM  O

7

“Terry Pratchett has made the originalHamelin legend popular in far more thanforty-two countries and thirty languages.”

EMELY CHRISTIANS,PRODUCER

THIS SPREAD Various designs for Keith Candle byCarter Goodrich

Rat King. Terry’s special skill was in showing us whythe Rat King did what it did.

I was all the more pleased that Narrativia believed in us and gave us, as co-producers, the rights to make this magnificent film out of the novel.

Terry Pratchett has made the original Hamelin legend popular in far more than forty-two countries and thirty languages. Tourists raid the medieval town, which still today looks purpose-built for a fairy tale with all its mysterious heritage-protected wedding-cake houses. And it is wonderful thatour movie will carry Terry Pratchett’s pied piper

story around the world – full of energy, wit, fantasy, unexpected twists and turns, exciting scenes, lovable characters, memorable dialogue, entertaining action and a moral compass!

Everybody who worked on this movie was inspired by Terry Pratchett’s sensational book. If he had written it earlier, even my parents would have told me this enlightened story of the Pied Piper of Hamelin – which happened only 199 kilometers north from the place I was born.

Emely Christians

FOREWORD

7

Introduction

When acclaimed British author TerryPratchett’s Carnegie Medal-winning bookThe Amazing Maurice and His Educated Rodents was first published in 2001, critics praised its entertaining plot, memorable characters and the fantasy master’s trademark sense of humor and clever world view. As a glowing review of the book in The Guardian put it, “Pratchett bungee-jumps into the midst of grim things, and lifts his hat!”

The beloved author’s trademark charm and delightful characters have now come to animated life in a new movie, directed by Toby Genkel and co-directed by Florian Westermann, with a scriptby Terry Rossio. Featuring a stellar voice cast that includes Hugh Laurie, Emilia Clarke, David Thewlis, Himesh Patel, Gemma Arterton, Ariyon Bakare, Joe Sugg, Julie Atherton, Hugh Bonneville, Peter Serafinowicz, David Tennant, and Rob Brydon, the adaptation is produced by Emely Christians, Andrew Baker, Robert Chandler and Rob Wilkins.

The plot, which has been described as “outrageously cheeky” by critics, is a fresh spin on the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The central character is, of course, Maurice (voiced perfectly by Laurie) – an ethically challenged ginger cat who uses a group of super-intelligent talking rats and a naïve piper boy called Keith (Patel) to con villagers out of their money. As they often do, things take a surprising turn when they meet a clever, book- loving girl called Malicia (Clarke) who has her own ideas about how this story should turn out.

TOP Concept art for BadBlintz by Felix Presch

MIDDLE Bad Blintz moodsby Heiko Hentschel

RIGHT Bad Blintz housesby Edwin Rhemrev

OPPOSITE Concept art forBad Blintz by Felix Presch

8

THE AMAZING MAURICE: THE ART OF THE FILM  O

The tale of how this twenty-eighth book in Pratchett’s Discword fantasy series (and the first one written for children) was adapted into a charming feature, co-produced by Sky Cinema, Germany’s Ulysses Filmproduktion and the UK’s Cantilever Media, with animation studios Studio Rakete and Red Star 3D, has its own twists and turns as well.

Emely Christians, an acclaimed producer withGermany’s Ulysses Filmproduktion, whose manycredits include A Stork’s Journey, Niko & The Wayto the Stars, Luis and the Aliens and the two Ooops!Noah Is Gone movies, had optioned the rights anddeveloped the script and project, but was lookingfor partners to jointly realize the productionof the property. “We had

started to put our own people on the project and had some terrific production design art created by Heiko Hentschel,” Christians recalls. “That was around the time I got to know Andrew Baker and our other producer, Robert Chandler. We wanted to add a team from the UK, because this was a Terry Pratchett adaptation.”

Andrew Baker is a lifelong fan of Pratchett’s work and has all of the author’s books on his mantelpiece. A veteran of ITV Kids and producer of the animated series Robozuna and the acclaimed documentaryThe United Way, Baker was looking for ananimated feature to develop when he readthe script, penned by Terry Rossio, oneof the original writers of Aladdin

(1992) and Shrek (2001), back in 2016. “I read it on a flight from Miami to London and I thought it was absolutely brilliant,” says Baker. “There were some differences to the book, but the spirit of the book was in the screenplay. I thought the characters were exactly as Terry Pratchett had written them, so I said yes right away. Robert and I began our conversationswith Emely, and we got to know each other as wellas Narrativia, the production company that handlesthe Pratchett estate.”

Ulysses and Cantilever wanted a UKpartner animation studio and felt it madegreat sense for Sheffield-based Red Star3D – who had recently completed theirfirst feature film – to split the workwith Studio Rakete in Hamburg.

9

Chandler, who had worked with the team at Red Star 3D studio on their previous feature, StarDog and TurboCat, also fell in love with the script and Pratchett’s eccentric and unforgettable characters. “The screenplay was so much fun to read as well,” he recalls. “Luckily, the incoming director of Sky Cinema, Sarah Wright, is also a big cat lover. She saw the poster art we had created for the project and could see that our Maurice had bags of character. She read the script and loved it, too. Before long, Sky came on board.”

The producer was also in charge of finding the right voice actors for the project. “We were very lucky to have Debbie McWilliams in charge of our casting,” Chandler mentions. “She has cast the last fifteen James Bond movies. When Debbie phones you, you take the call! I don’t think our partners were expecting to get all the amazing actors who came on board, but I always knew we’d get a good cast. This is a story with such depth and range. Once Hugh Laurie joined and everyone saw the caliber of talent attached, including Rossio’s script and Heiko Hentschel’s designs, it became easier to attract actors.”

Both Chandler and Baker point out that the simple mention of Terry Pratchett’s name opened doors for them. “That’s how we ended up with our character designer, Carter Goodrich,” recalls Baker. “We did some research and decided that we would love him to take an early shot at designing the characters. Of course, we had big ambitions for the way we wanted the movie to look, but we knew we wouldn’t have a budget like a Disney feature. We managed to finance the project for about €10.5 million initially, so when we reached out to Carter and to the actors, we told them that we didn’t have a lot of money to play with. But as soon as we told them it was a Pratchett project, it began to open doors.”

Goodrich says he was immediately intrigued by the story’s mixture of a cat, rats, a period costumed pied piper and a smart female protagonist. “The fact that the rats were in their own costumes as well is always a bonus,” he adds. “When animals are clothed it allows for more opportunities to find good shapes and clues regarding who the character is or could be.

“I was allowed to simply make a pass on the characters without too much input

as to details,” he recalls. “The inspiration comes from how I might see or imagine them; who they might be in addition to their assigned role in the story. If the characters don’t come with a whole lot of specific details, then they’re usually more fun and easier to explore. When you don’t have all the voices in your head, then it’s a looser, freer process, so you might be able to bring something to the table that hadn’t been considered, which gives the character something unexpected. Not that I necessarily did that with these characters, but I hope I did!”