Jason Sudeikis and Lilly Singh star alongside Rainn Wilson in the fun, colorful 3DCG animated comedy about a clever bounty hunting pig on a global adventure to return a dancing elephant Pickles to a maniacal Vegas showman… for a million bucks; in theaters November 1.
Before he was a bounty hunter, Hitpig was a perfectly predictable, practical, uncomplicated widower pig named Pete, soured by tragedy, and made whole again by a runaway circus elephant named Pickles stepping into his life.
“But before the movies would want it, I knew the story would need – naturally - high-powered weaponry,” notes Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Berkeley Breathed, author of the 2008 picture book “Pete & Pickles” that has been adapted into the 3DCG animated comedy, Hitpig! “Hence, we made a few changes. One of my few designs that survived intact in the film was Hitpig’s splendid gun, by the way. In the book, the only weapon he wielded was a broom he used to sweep his deceased wife’s grave. We had to shrink the gun for animation, but I had far, far too much fun drawing this weapon. I’m still 10.”
Some writers might be turned off by the idea of the previously passive pig character from their beloved children’s book being turned into a morally gray cyberpunk agent.
But Breathed managed just fine.
“For other children’s illustrators, the process is far, far more painful,” he shares. “I’m a filmmaker at heart, so I draw in 3D. The translation is without pain.”
Hitpig!, which releases in theaters Friday, November 1, stars Jason Sudeikis (Hitpig) and Lilly Singh (Pickles) alongside Rainn Wilson as the circus ringmaster. The film’s beautiful animation is produced by Cinesite; Viva Pictures has partnered with Aniventure to handle distribution. Plus, Emmy-nominated composer Isabella Summers, AKA The Machine, architect of the sound of Grammy-nominated Florence and the Machine, created a vivid score that combines orchestra as well as rock elements. The film is set in a futuristic world and follows a bounty hunter Hitpig (with splendid gun in tow) as he sets out to capture a lost circus elephant named Pickles.
Enjoy the trailer:
In the film, Hitpig is hired by Pickles’ ringmaster to bring the dancing elephant “home,” but the pig finds himself at a moral impasse when Pickles expresses a desire to be free from her human owner. As Hitpig wrestles with the decision to honor his fabricated friendship with Pickles or collect the hefty bounty and betray his own conscience, the two characters find themselves on a wild adventure around the world, from Italy to Australia, Vegas to the Midwest, and even the arctic.
“In the original script that Berkely wrote, there were many more locations,” says Italian filmmaker Cinzia Angelini (Mila, Minions), who directed the film alongside David Feiss. “We weren’t a big production, so we had to be smart about what we could fit into the budget and screen time. But sometimes independent productions have more freedom in other ways that spark the creativity.”
One of those creative ideas centered around the color language of the film. Breathed’s original book illustrations were already pretty bold, with rich, bright colors and exaggerated imagery with high contrast when it came to scale. It might have been easier to drastically change the visuals to look more like more recent 3DCG films hitting theaters or make the characters a bit softer for young audiences. But Feiss wanted to keep the unusual tone of Pete & Pickles alive and well through Hitpig!’s animation.
“Breathed’s characters are not traditionally cute,” says Feiss, previously a story artist on Minions: The Rise of Gru and Despicable Me 4. “He has a unique style. He's got this kind of slant to his drawings. He's also a left-handed artist and I’ve always loved the way people who are left-handed draw. It’s different. And what we did with that… it doesn't look like a Pixar film. It doesn't look like a Disney film. It’s got almost a European sensibility.”
And that applies to the film’s color as well. Belgian artist Sylvie Lacroix, known for her work on Space Chimps and Mush-Mush & the Mushables, served as art director and found that Breathed’s unique drawing style paired well with the darker, cyberpunk color scheme that the film’s story called for.
“This film was quite dark in the beginning, but Sylvie added a lot of pastel colors – turquoise, salmon, things like that – and it works,” says Feiss. “That contrast throughout the film differentiates it from other 3DCG movies that are really brightly lit. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it does give Hitpig! its own signature look. It feels right for the genre.”
Finding the look of the film was a relatively smooth process. But creating rules for a cinematic world where animals like Hitpig can talk, think, act and move like humans, while animals like Pickles behave more like traditional elephants (aside from the talking) was a big production challenge. Especially since the story includes human characters as well.
“You need to keep things straightforward and simple for the audience, otherwise something like that gets too messy,” explains Angelini. “The main rule was that Hitpig was the one communicating with humans and the other animals would only talk amongst themselves. Hitpig was the bridge between humans and animals in the world and the only character that could break its own animal rules.”
Feiss adds, “Which makes sense when you think about the fact he’s been betraying animals as his job. Of course, the job didn’t start out that way. It was supposed to be about animal rescue and Hitpig remembers that along the way, though it’s almost too late.”
As a vegetarian, Feiss was partly attracted to the Hitpig project because of its addressing human rights and the fact that Breathed approached the subject in a “non-preachy” sort of way.
“We’re not heavy handed about it,” notes Feiss. “A lot of that message is conveyed through Hitpig and Pickles’ friendship. It has a really sweet message, and it doesn’t get political. Anybody can watch this story and enjoy it for what it is.”
For Breathed, the message of his book and the film adaptation is identical. In his words, they’re both about “the redemptive power of selflessness.” But Hitpig went to places the author says he couldn’t have otherwise gone with “Pete & Pickles.”
“I couldn’t have told this particular story in the 24 pages of a picture book,” Breathed shares. “Because movies flow in my writing veins before all else, I often wrote my dozen books anticipating the changes needed down the line when they were inevitably sold to the movies. Full disclosure: this probably limited their acceptance by the Children’s Fiction genre. But Hitpig’s story-exploding elements, being a bounty hunter and his quarry makes these 90 minutes splendidly fun.”
Angelini adds, “Berkeley is such a fun character, and we have a couple of specific Easter eggs in the film of his art. One is when they are parachuting down from the airplane, and you see on the seam of these pantyhose you see the character from The Bill the Cat Story. There are also some polaroids attached to Hitpig’s van wall of animals he’s captured already, and they are the original paintings of characters Berkeley created. And there’s more. Berkeley fans should keep an eye out.”
Victoria Davis is a full-time, freelance journalist and part-time Otaku with an affinity for all things anime. She's reported on numerous stories from activist news to entertainment. Find more about her work at victoriadavisdepiction.com.
