Sonic the Hedgehog designer Naoto Oshima working on CGI film under working title ‘The Monkey Prince’

[Gumbit]

Sonic the Hedgehog designer Naoto Oshima working on CGI film under working title ‘The Monkey Prince’

It looks like Japanese film company Toei Animation and Chinese giant Bona Film Group are partnering up for CGI flick under the working title ‘The Monkey Prince‘.

This film was just shown off the other day as part of the Tokyo Film Festival and will have quite a bit of big names including Sonic the Hedgehog character designer Naoto Ohshima, who is obviously going to design the film’s characters along side Takao Noguchi (Dreamworks/Sony Pictures veteran). The film will be directed by John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Ant Bully) and written by J. David and David N. Weiss (Shrek 2, The Smurfs)

Chuck Williams is being brought into production of the film, Chuck has a long history with Pixar and Disney Animation working on projects such as Brother Bear and Beauty and the Beast. He had this to say:

 

“Anime characters have worked so well around the world. We felt it would help lend the film a unique feel to develop the characters with bright-colors and an anime style.”

The film will primary be aimed at English speaking audiences world wide and the studios have suggested that the Chinese release will get slightly special Mandarin version. Would have been pretty cool to get Naoto Oshima involved in the upcoming Sonic the Hedgehog movie, but this project might be cool too.

Source : http://segabits.com/blog/2018/10/25/sonic-the-hedgehog-designer-naoto-oshima-working-on-cgi-film-under-working-title-the-monkey-prince/#more-63553

The character looks very similar to Monkey Khan :

Aren't Sega concerned about that like the crap Pen Kender did about Shade being similar to Julis-su ?

[Marco9966]

This looks cool! I can't wait to see the other characters.

[Sean]

Penders didn't create Monkey Khan (that would be Frank Strom) and he certainly did not come up with Journey to the West or its characters.

Don't talk about Penders in this topic.

[Gumbit]

1 hour ago, Sean said:

Penders didn't create Monkey Khan (that would be Frank Strom) and he certainly did not come up with Journey to the West or its characters.

Don't talk about Penders in this topic.

I didn't mean to say he was created by Penders , I meant the similarity could lead to the same situation .

[Shaddy Zaphod]

With Toei and anime Sun Wukong I'm surprised Dragon Ball wasn't the first thing that came to mind.

[Adamis]

1 hour ago, Gumbit said:

I didn't mean to say he was created by Penders , I meant the similarity could lead to the same situation .

Monkey Khan is inspired by the same tale as all the other "Monkey King/prince/whatever" versions.

Nothing to worry about.

[Indigo Rush]

I am absolutely going to watch this.

[Chili Dawg]

Talent from Sonic, Jimmy Neutron, and Shrek... This is likely to be the most memable film the world has ever seen.

[Tornado]

12 hours ago, Sean said:

Penders didn't create Monkey Khan (that would be Frank Strom) and he certainly did not come up with Journey to the West or its characters.

Don't talk about Penders in this topic.

Plus Naka told Oshiima to fuck off to go make Blinx nearly twenty years ago. He's literally been out of Sega longer than he was ever at Sega; so even if Penders wanted to take on a company as famously litigious as Toei for making a character based on a four hundred year old story that doesn't really look like a character Penders didn't even make from a comic he worked on, Sega wouldn't even be a footnote in the case.

[AstroSeedP]

Not sure if it's just a coincidence or not but... To tie this even more to SEGA, I'm reading various reports that Marza Animation Planet is also involved with this.

It actually makes sense considering Chuck Williams is currently president of Marza USA, plus, the fact that Marza has collaborated with Toei beforehand for the Harlock movie.

[Polkadi~☆]

Awesome to hear Naoto Oshima is on this project as a character designer (his style radiates off this one picture shown alone!), and I'm very interested in this project. It's like one whole all-star project, with even Toei involved in this film. I must know more!

Journey to the West is a classic story, and I hope this film does it justice. Cool to know it might be specially lip-synced in Mandarin too, it deserves that for a film like this.

[Conando]

Well considering Monkey Kahn is a rip off of the Monkey King...Anyway, I'm interested. Can't actually think of us having any decent adaptations of Journey to the West, save for Dragon Ball which was only very LOOSELY based on it.