Yesterday in Cannes, independent movie production studio, EuropaCorp,
announced that they would be partnering with HP to make an animated
film based on Mathias Malzieu's, 2007 best-selling novel, "The Boy with
the Cuckoo-Clock Heart." EuropaCorp won the film adaption rights back
in January 2008 and wants HP to provide collaboration in terms of
technology and marketing. HP will use new technology to create the film
including HPZ8oo workstations and HP Dream Color displays. The
application of this technology and 2D storyboard to make a non-relief
3D will be used to produce an old-style animated film with the
appearance that it was created 50 years ago. 

The €20 million ($25 million) production will be directed by Malzieu
along with Stephanie Berla. Malzieu's band Dionysos will be using music
from their gold-selling album that was inspired by the book to make the
soundtrack as well. In response to the artistic liberties they are
being granted as directors, Berla calls the production "a real auteur
film," as reported by "The Hollywood Reporter: The Cannes Daily." The
film will be produced by Virginie Besson-Silla with Fance's Duran
Duboi, French TV group France 3 and a pre-buy from Canal Plus.
Production already began in October and the movie is set for a fall
2011 release. French actors Jean Rochefort and Rossy de Palma, along
with singers Arthur H. and Olivia Ruiz, will do the film in French.
Given the book's international success, translated in 15 plus
languages, international versions of the movie are in the works as
well.

The story is about a boy in 19th-century Edinburgh whose heart was
replaced at birth be a cuckoo-clock. As a young man he tests the
strength of his heart when he falls in love with a girl and follows her
across Europe to Andalusia. Besson-Silla adds that it's a story for all
ages, "our target audience in 7-77 years old." 

                              
-Rebecca Sokoloff