Unchartered Territory and Rise Pictures to produce Cornelia Funke’s animated adventure – Igraine The Brave
Cornelia Funke’s magical fantasy novel Igraine The Brave is coming to theatres. Oscar-winner Volker Engel, Gesa Engel and Lucia Scharbatke of Uncharted Territory, are to produce together with Ulrich Schwarz and Sven Pannicke of Rise Pictures.
Igraine The Brave will be directed by Holger Tappe (Happy Family 1 + 2, and Animals United) and Volker Engel. Disney Legend Andreas Deja, with his more than 30 years of experience as supervising animator at the Walt Disney Company (The Lion King, Lilo and Stitch, Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast), will serve as animation consultant for the production. Jane Ainscough has written the screenplay, with Grammy winner Alexander Geringas delivering the music score.
RISE | Visual Effects Studios will be responsible for some of the 3D animation – as they had done already for the adaptation of Cornelia Funke’s Dragon Rider – and it will establish a new RISE animation set-up in Munich for this and further projects to come.
L.A. based Robyn Klein and Jeremy Ross are on board as international co-production partners (If Anything Happens I Love You – on the current shortlist for the Short Film Oscar). World sales are being handled by GFM Animation Ltd in London.
Igraine The Brave tells the story of 12-year-old Igraine, the only one in her family who is not interested in magic, but is instead pursuing a headstrong plan to become a knight. Just when her brother accidently turns their parents into pigs, their beloved home Pimpernel Castle, is besieged by the knight Rowan Heartless and his master, Osmond the Greedy. They plan to steal her family’s singing books of magic to become all-powerful. Now it is up to Igraine to save her family – even if it means facing giants and three-headed dragons.
This project will see Volker and Gesa Engel re-locating to Germany with their company Uncharted Territory after more than 20 years in Los Angeles. Volker Engel founded the company with his partner Marc Weigert in Los Angeles in 1999 after winning an Oscar in the ‘Best VFX’ category for his work on Independence Day.
Since then, the company has successfully produced for such studios as Sony Pictures or Twentieth Century Fox and co-produced with broadcasters such as SyFy Channel or the BBC. Their films as co-producers and VFX supervisors include such global blockbusters as Independence Day – Resurgence (2016) White House Down (2012) and 2012 (2009). Volker Engel and Marc Weigert also received an Emmy for their work on the three-part mini-series The Triangle (2005).
Gesa and Volker Engel will open the German office of Uncharted Territory in Nuremberg and run the company with producer Lucia Scharbatke, formerly of Kaamos Film. Other adaptations and original stories for animated and live-action feature films and series are in development, including more material based on books by Cornelia Funke.
Igraine The Brave is the second major international animation production for RISE PICTURES after Dragon Rider. In addition, Stowaway, a spectacular sci-fi adventure from director Joe Penna starring Academy Award nominees Anna Kendrick and Toni Colette as well as Daniel Dae Kim and Shamier Anderson, was produced by RISE PICTURES together with the US company XYZ Films and augenschein Filmproduktion and is soon to be released by Wild Bunch nationwide in German cinemas and around the globe on Netflix.
