Berkeley Breathed’s Opus Coming To the Big Screen

Posted by Todd Brown at 3:27pm.

Posted in Film News .

Variety reported today that computer animation studio Wild Brain has reached a deal with Miramax / Dimension to bring their animation projects to both the big screen and DVD and project number one will be a film based on Berkeley Breathed’s Opus. You know, the penguin from Bloom County, Outland and now his own eponymous strip. I have three complete distinct and wildly opposed reactions to this news.

Reaction One:
Hurray! Opus on the big screen! And Berkeley’s already hard at work doing character designs! Whee!

Reaction Two:
Hmmm ... Miramax moving into the CG animation world just as Disney’s contract with Pixar is dissolving in a sea of unhappy feelings. Coincidence? A shot at Michael Eisner? I’ll take door #2.

Reaction Three:
Sheer, abject terror. Why? Script by Craig Mazin. Craig who? Craig “I wrote Scary Movie 3” Mazin. Yeah. I see why someone would think the author of Scary Movie 3 was up to bringing a Pulitzer winner to the big screen.

More terror comes from these quotes and discriptors of the business arrangement between the two companies: “family fare”; “viable product for a reasonable price”; “family fare” (again); “family films”; “family entertainment is the biggest seller in DVD”

Uh, boys? Bill the Cat? Frequent drug use? Sex and violence? Political satire? Brilliantly surreal social criticism, yes. Cute and fuzzy children’s entertainment, no. If you try to make Opus into a cuddly plush toy to sell to my three year old son you will, in the process, destroy everything that makes the character great.