EXCLUSIVE: When the CW introduced in 2022 that it was cancelling DC’s Legends Of Tomorrow after seven seasons, actor-writer Adam Tsekhman, who performed Gary Inexperienced, and writer-director Andrew Kasch, who was connected as an editor and director, admit it was a blow.
However the pair, who had turn out to be associates over the course of their six years on the superhero present, didn’t relaxation idle for lengthy as they got here collectively to collaborate on a whacky brief movie known as The Gummy Bear.
“In our despair, Andrew had the concept for the brief and invited me over, and we did it for nothing,” says Canadian actor Tsekhman.
The actor stars within the psychedelic brief as a person who’s given an experimental gummy bear as a freebie together with his common hashish supply. One chew sends him on an sudden mind-blowing journey. Kasch mixes reside motion with a kaleidoscope of various animation types for the journey scenes.
“He obtained a bunch of his associates on board who did superb work,” says Tsekhman, citing stop-motion animator Michael Granberry (Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio, Wendell & Wild) as one of many collaborators. “Everybody was like let’s do that. Will probably be enjoyable.”
A turning level for this private challenge was an invitation to the Eat My Shorts! choice of the annual Simply For Laughs Pageant in Montreal in 2023, the place viewers members requested whether or not a characteristic model was on the playing cards.
Eighteen months later, Kasch and Tsekhman are becoming a member of forces with Paris and L.A.-based gross sales and manufacturing firm Different Angle Footage on a psychedelic street journey film The Gummy Bear, spinning off the brief.
Citing the response of the Simply For Laughs viewers as the place to begin, Kasch says the characteristic combines two of his favourite film genres.
“I’ve grown up on with a deep love of street journey motion pictures and night time from hell motion pictures, from flicks like After Hours to Harold and Kumar Go White Citadel,” he says.
“I requested myself what would occur if we crossed Pee Wee’s Huge Journey with a loopy hallucination drug journey facet, form of like injecting Concern and Loathing in Las Vegas right into a cross-country street journey. That’s form of how the genesis of the challenge began.”
The brand new film will see Tsekhman play a neurotic agoraphobe who is shipped on a life-changing journey after he bites right into a substance-infused gummy bear concurrently falling for the supply girl, who’s on path to the Burning Man Pageant in Nevada.
Satisfied {that a} bio-cannabis firm is about to unleash tainted gummies on the festivalgoers on the occasion, he units off into the desert to avoid wasting her.
Alongside the best way, his path crosses murderous Sheriff Cordell, Russian gangster and organ trafficker Olga, Izzy & Mabel, and an eccentric previous couple who’ve created their very own unbiased state within the desert [inspired by the real-life Republic of Molossia], whereas he’s accompanied by Chris Evans, his trusty Jack Russell Terrier. All further roles have but to be forged.
Tsekhman suggests there may be additionally a post-pandemic subtext to the story because the housebound hero is pressured out of his consolation zone and into the world.
“There’s the concept that should you face the world, take a danger, possibly you’ll be able to change issues for the higher,” he says.
Just like the brief, the drug journey sequences will combine totally different types of animation together with stop-motion, claymation, hand-drawn 2D, rotoscoping methods utilized by Ralph Bakshi on his 1977 movie Wizards, in addition to CGI.
“I like taking part in with combined media. And when you’ve gotten a personality who’s type of flashing out and in of hallucinations on a regular basis, that’s form of a wide-open canvas to throw no matter you need at it,” says Kasch.
Different Angle will each produce and promote the film. The corporate, which is on the AFM with a slate of gross sales titles together with Jean Claude Van Damme-starrer The Gardener, will likely be additionally trying to join with potential financiers on The Gummy Bear, for which there’s a accomplished screenplay.
Husband and spouse staff Olivier Albou and Laurence Schonberg at Different Angle have constructed its popularity over 20 years because the go-to gross sales firm for French comedies and feel-good dramas, with latest titles together with the breakout hit A Little One thing Further.
They moved to L.A. from Paris 4 years in the past in a bid to increase these actions into the U.S., with a give attention to promoting remake and ancillary rights to the movies of their library in addition to growing authentic productions.
As a part of this drive, in addition they launched the French Comedy Membership occasion in L.A. in 2022 to showcase comedies and dramas from France.
Tsekhman first linked with Different Angle by way of Schonberg, who invited him to the French Comedy Membership.
“He began to see what we’re doing and our comedies and so forth,” recounts Schonberg. “He then confirmed us the brief movie The Gummy Bear, which we fell in love with and that’s the way it all took place. These are two very proficient guys.”
