The Sly Cooper series will soon sneak its way onto the silver screen. However, don’t expect the same cel-shaded art style as the PlayStation games.
In the teaser trailer for the recently announced Sly Cooper movie, Sly, Murray, and Bentley go on a mission to get donuts before the bakery closes. When the shop turns off its ‘OPEN’ sign, Sly and co. resort to a more creative means of getting Murray his precious pastries.
Watch the new character models for the Sly Cooper trio in action in the two-minute teaser.
The Sly Cooper movie is to be helmed by animators Rainmaker Entertainment and the independent production company Blockade Entertainment.
The Sly Cooper film won’t show more of the time Sly, Murray, and Bentley spent getting to know each other in the orphanage, says Vice President of Development and a producer on Sly Cooper, David Wohl. “In the film, Sly and his buddies are already together, though they are far from being great at what they do,” says Wohl.
The choice behind the change in art style from cel-shaded to full CG wasn’t an easy one. The film’s producer and CEO of Blockade Entertainment, Brad Foxhoven, said “The global film market leans towards pure CG-animated films. As much as we all loved the cel-shaded look of the game, we collectively felt it would not hold up on the big screen.”
The official synopsis for the Sly Cooper movie reads:
‘Sly Cooper’ is a kinetic and comedic heist film that tells the story of Sly Cooper, an orphaned raccoon thief, along with his childhood friends and partners in crime, Bentley Turtle and Murray Hippo. In the film, Sly learns of his birth family’s secret legacy; that he comes from a long line of talented and international thieves. Endowed with this knowledge, Sly and his friends are catapulted into a global adventure as they race to reassemble pieces of an ancient book holding The Cooper Clan’s family secrets before it can fall into the hands of Clockwerk – an evil Russian metallic owl bent on ending the Cooper family line. From romantic Parisian backdrops to the lush mountains of China, gritty film noir meets bright, colorful graphic novels in this origin story of the world’s greatest thief-turned-hero.
From what we can gather, the voice actors seem to be the same for the three main characters as they are in the game series.
Hollywood’s current video game film adaptation trend started with the announcement of a Ratchet and Clank movie, and reboot/game tie-in for the recently released Tomb Raider.
Sly Cooper will be released sometime in 2014.