05/03/2012 - The famous comic book creator’s next film project will make a mark in Lyon, at the European animation film market.

Among the 55 projects selected for the 14th edition of Cartoon Movie, the co-production forum to be held from March 7 au 9 in Lyon, Animal’z by Enki Bilal will, without a doubt, be the star of the show. Led by production company Gazato Films, the film is to be an adaption of the comic book of the same name, also by the famous French graphic artist and published in 2009. It will be Bilal’s fourth feature after Bunker Palace Hôtel (1989), Tykho Moon (1996) et Immortal (2004).

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Written by Bilal and Olivier Roth, the screenplay is set on Earth, after it has revolted against human aggression in the “Blood Coup”. All the planet’s physical, geographical, and climatological rules have been shaken. Marine turtles fly, the Pic du Midi is next to the Himalayas, and the Baltic Sea has become a desert. Those humans who have survived the chaos roam Earth in search of the only source of survival: fresh drinking water. There are still a few El Dorados, where survival is possible, but for some the only way to reach them is the sea. The D17 Straight is one of these passages.

With a storyboard still in preparation, Animal’z is to bring together real-life shots, 2D and 3D animation techniques, and virtual images. At Cartoon Movie, the hybrid film project should have no trouble finding co-producers, seduced by both the director-artists’s aura and the genre he has chosen: ecological and genetic science-fiction / poetic western.

(Translated from French)