A Fairy Tale Comedy Musical with Singing Dragons and Monsters

   

"Bret McKenzie Says He’s Writing a Fairy Tale Comedy Musical Akin to LABYRINTH That Involves “Singing Dragons and Monsters”
           

While speaking with Steve, McKenzie said that he’s currently in the process of developing a screenplay of his own with the help of Bobin:

“I’m in the middle of a script for a kind of—it hasn’t got a name yet but it’s a fairy tale comedy musical, sort of akin to Labyrinth or something like that. I’m developing and that script’s halfway through. James Bobin’s helping me. I’m the official writer but we’re developing it. I want to make a comedy musical with singing dragons and monsters and stuff. [It’s] live-action, so it would be a mixture of The Muppets and The Princess Bride.”

McKenzie went on to caution that it’s still very early days on the project so there’s no telling how much it will change when/if it comes to fruition, but he seems highly enthused by the idea:

“No title yet but it’s definitely my favorite thing I’m working on at the moment. It’s early, though, it’s early. It’s still developing.”

Bret McKenzie Tells Us More About His Labyrinth-Style Musical
By Scott Pierceon March 10th, 2014 at 8:26pm

What do you do after you've won an Oscar for your music in a Muppets movie? Make music for the sequel, obviously. But with the March 21 release date for Muppets Most Wanted fast approaching, we want to know more about multi-talented actor, writer, and composer Bret McKenzie's project he teased last year: A fair tale musical in the vein of Jim Henson's 1986 classic, Labyrinth. I spoke to the Flight of the Concords mastermind yesterday about how the project is coming along, what to expect, and whether he can just take my money Veronica Mars-style. Here's the stuff that got me more excited than I already was:

The script he worked with James Bobin on is done. McKenzie really loves puppets:

   We've finished the script. I started writing songs for a musical fairy tale. I grew up loving The Dark Crystal. That was one of the few VHSs we had. We had two - that and National Velvet. We watched The Dark Crystal a lot in my house. There's something about puppets, Muppets in particular, that are so much more interesting, fallible, and real. Obviously, they're not real, but how strange is it that a puppet can be more real than most computer animation? People are getting better at animating things with flaws, but there's something about something that's handmade that immediately gives it a life and a character that I think surpasses animation.

He denies having a title, but he's just not ready to share:

Do you have a working title for the script?

No.

No? Just Untitled Fairy Tale, Dark Crystal, Labyrinth-like Project?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's got a long untitled title. It is exciting. I'm hoping to get that going soon.

The movie will be whimsical, big, and have a theatrical release:

How big should we expect this to be? Will it have a giant theatrical release?

Yeah, I guess so. It'll be a big movie. It's inherently quite big because of the nature of it. There's an epic quality to it. I always love being drawn into another world. What I feel like hasn't been done is that there's a lot of dark fairy tale interpretations being made, but I don't think there's a film that's been made that is playful. It's going to be a comedy fairy tale. You're going to have monsters, but they're going to sing funny songs. That excites me - like a singing dragon doing a funny song.

EPIC!

BRET MCKENZIE OF FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS WRITING FANTASY FILM FOR WARNER BROS. (EXCLUSIVE)

Known for being one-half of the music duo Flight of the Conchords, Bret McKenzie has broken into film as a triple-threat of acting, music, and writing. His newest project, a fantasy film for Warner Bros. Pictures titled MOONLAND, taps him as the screenwriter and reunites him with The Muppets director James Bobin.

The film follows a young, 11 year-old girl who winds up in a magical world via a homemade flying bike. She immediately gets wrapped up in an exciting adventure when she’s wrongfully imprisoned and escapes to go on a mission with a knight to rescue a princess. While this may sound like the same story that’s been told time and time again, with the unique humor of McKenzie and Bobin behind it, it’s bound to be an original take.

Back in 2013, McKenzie revealed to Collider that he was working on a fairy tale musical comedy with Bobin that had elements pulled from the likes of Labyrinth and The Princess Bride. At the time, the project didn’t have a title, but it could very well be that it now does and these two projects are one and the same.

Bobin is also set to produce the film, with Jesse Ehrman and Jon Gonda of Warner Bros. overseeing the film for the studio.

mattdshane  Today’s session was olde school

k.schaal Guys look at Bret’s classic features. I pale in comparison!

HollyBobz83 wrote:I hope this is coming out of development hell now; it sounded promising from the interview this weekend - when he mentioned a director had had to drop out before, I really wanted the interviewer to ask if he'd considered asking Taika