The Weinstein Company Releases New ‘Leap!’ Trailer

Here’s take two of the trailer for Leap!, the France/Canada co-production that The Weinstein Company (TWC) will release in the United States on August 30.

TWC released a first trailer for the film last March. But then, Harvey Weinstein pushed back the film’s release from April to August, and decided to rework the English dub by re-casting certain voices.

Dating back to the years when he owned Miramax, Harvey Weinstein has an extensive track record of re-writing, re-cutting, and re-casting the animated features that his companies release – and the results often alter the original filmmakers’ intent. Among the more notorious examples is the Miramax cut of Richard Williams’ The Thief and the Cobbler, which was released by Weinstein as Arabian Knight. In 2006, TWC released the UK/France cg feature The Magic Roundabout as Doogal in the United States; the American version was re-written by Fairly Oddparents creator Butch Hartman, notably adding pop culture references and fart jokes, and bombed in the United States.

It’s unclear what kind of changes TWC will make to Leap! The US$30 million film, directed by Eric Summer and Eric Warin, debuted last December in France under the title of Ballerina and has performed well internationally, grossing over $50 million to date.

French film studio Gaumont co-produced Leap! with Quad Productions and Caramel Film. The film marks the first animated feature for Quad producers Laurent Zeitoun, Yann Zenou, and Nicolas Duval, who were responsible for the 2011 French blockbuster Intouchables, which became France’s second-highest grossing homegrown film of all-time. L’Atelier Animation in Montreal, Canada handled animation production.

In 2015, TWC repeatedly delayed the release of the Argentinean animated feature Underdogs, and eventually pulled its theatrical debut, releasing it instead straight to DVD and on-demand.