DreamWorks Animation Cleans Up With Maintenance Purchase

Elizabeth Grunewald

The Pope of Chilitown
Oct 4, 2010
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DreamWorks Animation Cleans Up With Maintenance Purchase

Maintenance is a comic about janitors who work for evil geniuses, and DreamWorks Animation just bought the film rights.

DreamWorks Animation's most recent release was Megamind, a movie about a supervillain and his superhero foe. The animation company isn't letting go of evil geniuses just yet, though. DreamWorks has just acquired the rights to the comic Maintenance, a series set in the world's largest think tank for evil science. Jim Massey (Death Takes a Holiday, Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen) and Robbi Rodrigues (Hero Camp, Stephen Colbert's Tek Jansen) are the co-creators, and Maintenance is published by Oni Press [http://www.onipress.com/series/maintenance], best known for Scott Pilgrim and Wasteland.

Manny and Doug are the series's protagonists, janitors employed at TerroMax, Inc. Oni describes Manny and Doug's as "not your typical custodial crew," exclaiming, "when they're not dealing with toxic spill monsters and talking mansharks, they still have to worry about mad scientists, crazy would-be dictators, and the cute girl who works at reception!"

DreamWorks actually pulled the rights right out form under Warner Bros., who had been setting it up as a picture for director McG (Charlie's Angels, Terminator Salvation). Joe Ballarini was penning the script for Warner Bros., and seeing as I've never heard of any of his five writing credits (including Dance of the Dead and Father vs. Son), I'm sort of glad DreamWorks acquired the rights.


Source: The Hollywood Reporter [http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/blogs/heat-vision/dreamworks-animation-nabs-movie-rights-61365]

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Sinclair Solutions

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Jul 22, 2010
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This sounds rather cool in my opinion. Dreamworks most likely saved it from becoming shit (the director of Charlie's Angels and Terminator Salvation, really?).
 

AvsJoe

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May 28, 2009
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It sounds like a fun comic to read; here's hoping it will also become a good film.
 

maddawg IAJI

I prefer the term "Zomguard"
Feb 12, 2009
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Sounds like a good idea, but as we all know, any good idea can still be a crap movie or book or whatever.
 

Palademon

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Marv21 said:
I would read that, because I think, hell it sounds interesting.
This reminds me that the only book I've ever bought and read by choice was The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases.
 

Casual Shinji

Should've gone before we left.
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Jul 18, 2009
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RobCoxxy said:
But Pixar are better.
My thoughts exactly.

Dreamworks Animation has only ever made 2 good movies; Antz and The Prince of Egypt. They might have redeemed themselves slightly with How To Train Your Dragon, but the majority of their track record has been shallow pop culture-referencing garbage.

Oh, and lets not forget the horrendous amount of celebrities they cram into their movies who have absolutely no talent for voice acting.
 

Beastialman

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Sep 9, 2009
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Casual Shinji said:
RobCoxxy said:
But Pixar are better.
My thoughts exactly.

Dreamworks Animation has only ever made 2 good movies; Antz and The Prince of Egypt. They might have redeemed themselves slightly with How To Train Your Dragon, but the majority of their track record has been shallow pop culture-referencing garbage.

Oh, and lets not forget the horrendous amount of celebrities they cram into their movies who have absolutely no talent for voice acting.
Come now surely the first Shrek movie was good.

All in all this sound pretty good movie plot.
 

rsvp42

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Casual Shinji said:
Dreamworks Animation has only ever made 2 good movies; Antz and The Prince of Egypt. They might have redeemed themselves slightly with How To Train Your Dragon, but the majority of their track record has been shallow pop culture-referencing garbage.
Hey now, Kung Fu Panda was a highlight among their films. And Megamind, though a bit over-done in the animation in some places, surprised me and was actually really good. They just need to let Nico Marlet design more of their movies. His work on Panda and Dragons was amazing. They haven't quite nailed down an appealing house design for humans yet.
 

Not G. Ivingname

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RobCoxxy said:
But Pixar are better.

Observe:
I am not sure to be happy for Dreamworks taking something different from what they normal do, or screw it up trying to fit it in the above framework.
 

rsvp42

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Not G. Ivingname said:
I am not sure to be happy for Dreamworks taking something different from what they normal do, or screw it up trying to fit it in the above framework.
So they have a face they like to do in their posters. If there's problems with the movies, that's not it.

 

Harbinger_

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Jan 8, 2009
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I'm looking forward to this one. Alot of the stuff that Dreamworks has done in my opinion have been rather hit and miss at least when it comes to movies I find enjoyable.
 

Nouw

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The Squid sold it for me, looks interesting and probably hilarious thanks to there being 2 guys.
 

Tartarga

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This does sound like the kind of thing that would be better suited in Pixar's hands. Still with a concept like that it would be hard to screw it up, even for Dreamworks. Unless they're trying to screw it up of course, then we're screwed.
 

Tom Phoenix

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This just reminds me that someone needs to make a Space Quest movie or TV series.

Blitzwing said:
Casual Shinji said:
RobCoxxy said:
But Pixar are better.
My thoughts exactly.

Dreamworks Animation has only ever made 2 good movies; Antz and The Prince of Egypt.
And Shrek 1&2 and Megamind and Kung Fu Panda and The Road to El Dorado.
I thought that Madagascar and The Madagascar Penguins were preety good too.
 

Vrex360

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Mar 2, 2009
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I think that deep down Dream Works Animation have made five movies that I really liked:

1.Shrek

2.Road to El Dorado

3.Antz

4. Monsters Vs Aliens (at points)

5.Megamind

Other than that, Dreamworks Animation makes some truly awful movies. Uninspired borderline junk movies obsessed with silly pop culture jokes and sometimes seem sucpiciously like cheap attempts to compare to Pixar. I mean I remember something about them making a cheap movie about 'Space Chimps' the same year Wall-e came out. Yeah, that was kind of doomed to fail.


So yeah overall, it sounds like an interesting story and premise but given Dreamwork's track record, I don't know how I'll feel about this one.