‘Icarus’: Watch the Teaser For A Feature From Former Pixar Animator Carlo Vogele [Exclusive]

Carlo Vogele, a seven-year Pixar animation veteran and director of stop motion shorts, is leading the development of the animated feature, Icarus, with Luxembourg-based film studio The Iris Group.

A concept trailer that he directed for the project was shown at Cartoon Movie in Bordeaux, France, last week. Cartoon Brew offers the exclusive online debut of the trailer below:

The Greek myth of Icarus serves as the basis of the film, but there are some new twists to this classic tale about a boy who flies too close to the sun. “The idea is to imagine the youth of the young Icarus, a part that goes unmentioned in the myth as we know it,” Vogele told Cartoon Brew. In Vogele’s version, the story will focus on the friendship between Icarus and the Minotaur, both of whom are portrayed as outcasts.

The logline:

The cheerful gods of the Olympus are rewriting the myth of “Theseus and the Minotaur” from the perspective of Icarus, who befriends the young Minotaur hidden in the royal palace of Knossos. When King Minos imprisons the “monster” in the secret labyrinth, Icarus risks it all to save his childhood friend and becomes entangled in a tragedy of manipulation and betrayal.

The Greek gods—Zeus, Poseidon and Aphrodite—serve as the narrators and spectators of the story. They are re-imagined as newspaper journalist-gods who are trying to craft their version of the story, and the story switches between them pulling the strings from above and the mythological story in ancient Crete. The gods are cg characters, but rendered with flat lighting to merge with the painted backgrounds, “like a moving illustration” Vogele described.

Ancient myths are the wellspring of contemporary superhero stories, and Vogele believes that returning to the source will yield rich material for a film. “The mythical heroes are ruthless and relentless,” he said. “They are archetypes who will sacrifice anything and anyone to fulfill their mad passion, no virtue too big, no vice too cruel. Their lack of empathy is truly chilling, but they are the bright-eyed defenders of their own justice and integrity, which makes them fascinating.”

Nicolas Steil, Iris Group CEO and producer of Icarus, is setting up the film as a co-production with still-to-be-determined studio partners in Belgium and Germany.

The family film has a targeted completion date of 2019. The budget is undisclosed for now.