What began as a personal dream in in 2003 for Chinese film director, Kerr Xu, has culminated in a national historic event in China today with the release of Xu’s highly-anticipated feature film, AniMen (aka Triton Force). Made by Xu’s studio, Shanghai Hippo Animation Design, AniMen is the first fully CG animated 3D feature film to be released in China. It is a revolutionary and masterful fusion of 1990’s cartoons with 21st century video games; imagine Star Wars meets the Ninja Turtles, but in 3D. The movie which took over 6 years to complete and which consists of over 60,000 sketches and drawings, is both a visual and a production-cost marvel: It is jam-packed with impressively-detailed action scenes, battleships, backdrops, and characters but cost only $10 million Dollars to make – 1/5th of the cost of similar films made in Hollywood. AniMen, which seamlessly blends Chinese elements such as Chinese opera and Kung Fu style action with themes unique to the American culture, will soon be released in the US as well after a successful script translation and dubbing by Executive Producer Sam Baldoni and Producer and American Dub Director Justin Baldoni.
CelebMagnet, the first American medium asked to cover this story, spoke with Xu last night who was in China, eagerly awaiting the release of AniMen in 14 hours from the time he spoke with us. AniMen is Xu’s first movie and he could not be more thrilled with the buzz that his inaugural movie has already created: There are 5 million web-page references on “AniMen” on the Chinese version of Google and the two movie trailers have been viewed over 3 million times. Xu estimates that 100 million people in China already know about this movie and if the pre-release excitement turns into actual movie sales, Xu will be a very successful director right out of the gate.
So, how did Xu enter the film-making business, position himself to direct such a monumental film, and partner up with seasoned American entertainment experts such as the Baldonis? It didn’t come easy but Xu persevered despite the odds. Like many others like him, Xu started dreaming about being a film director early in childhood. When his parents, including a father who was the head of the Chinese Aerospace program, did not support his dreams, he had to reluctantly put his passions on the back burner. He came to the US and studied business instead, on a full scholarship, receiving his MBA in 1990 from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.
As serendipity would have it, Xu met a lot of people in the film business while in school in the US, including a man named Abie Toller who is heavily involved in the entertainment world and is the father of Mos Def. The relationships he formed with people in the movie industry only fueled Xu’s life-long passion for film-making, but he still continued to put those plans on hold and continued to live the life his parents had wanted for him. After graduation, Xu moved back to China and became an investment banker, but he could not let go of his childhood dreams. So, he began asking the connections he made in the finance world to financially back his film-making dreams. In 2003, Xu finally quit his investment banking job and with help of his financiers, founded a Pixar-like company, Shanghai Hippo Animation Design. He then reached back to his American connections and Abie Toller in particular and asked for help to get his new company off of the ground. Toller in turn called his own friend, Sam Baldoni, and told Sam all about this aspiring filmmaker in China. This should have been a tough sell for Toller as no one else at that time was thinking or talking about China as having an influential role in the movie making business. But Toller knew Baldoni would be the perfect person for Xu to pair up with because Baldoni has always been a visionary–the first to appreciate the potential in many hidden gems.
Sam Baldoni has been in TV and film production all of his adult life and has a long successful track record in the entertainment industry. Baldoni was a founding father of the multi-billion dollar product placement industry by introducing the concept in Steven Spielberg’s Gremlins. Baldoni also managed one of the industry’s most consistently profitable companies, Baldoni Entertainment. Since its inception in 1983, Baldoni Entertainment has worked on every Steven Spielberg movie, and on hundreds of other major studio films such as: Back to the Future, Lethal Weapon, Top Gun, Ghostbusters, Scent of a Woman, Pretty Woman, The Firm, The Fugitive, Patriot Games, A Few Good Men, Jerry Maguire, and Spiderman. For over five years, Baldoni was also retained by television mogul Aaron Spelling’s Spelling Television, Inc. where Baldoni conceived ingenious methods of integrating products, as well as creating an entirely new application of product placement, which saved Spelling Entertainment millions of dollars in production expenses.
After hearing about Xu, Sam Baldoni agreed to hold an introductory call with Xu. After the initial call, Baldoni fell in love with Xu’s ideas and visions and knew instinctively that Xu possessed that special “something” which could revolutionize Chinese film-making. He asked Xu to fly to Los Angeles and met with him at LAX. After reviewing Xu’s animations on a laptop, Baldoni decided at once that he would work with Xu. Baldoni flew to China two weeks later to help Xu find further funding for his new company. Over the course of 17 visits to China, and despite numerous obstacles and hardships, Baldoni helped Shanghai Hippo Animation Design grow into a company of over 200 employees; a company about to premier a history-making movie. Baldoni also launched a US-based sister company, Shanghai SJS Animation Design to distribute Xu’s films in America.
As his first movie project, Xu immediately started working on AniMen which took six years to complete. He sent the finished Chinese film to Baldoni to create English subtitles for the movie. After viewing the film and reading the script, Baldoni quickly realized subtitles would not accurately convey the film to an American audience and that the script had to be re-written to be well-understood. Sam Baldoni then brought Justin Baldoni on board to address these issues. Justin is a seasoned actor, appearing as a regular on such shows as WB’s Everwood and starring in NBC’s Heroes. He has also starred in many feature films, including the soon-to-be released The Tribe and Barry Minkow. Justin is also an up-and-coming director, having directed campaigns for Universal Records and Warner Brothers, and artists including Bobby Valentino, Snoop Dogg, and Jason Derulo.
CelebMagnet spoke with Justin and asked him about his role with AniMen. He responded: “We got the Chinese version of the film about a month ago and realized that for the film to work in America we had to make some minor story changes and character tweaks. With Kerr’s blessing, we hired some great writers, found some of the best voice actors in America, and went to work on one of Hollywood’s busiest mixing stages. The biggest challenge in directing the English version was that the characters’ mouths were moving in Mandarin and we were trying to get them to speak English! Luckily, with the help of some extremely talented actors and our crew, we made it work. We are really excited about AniMen (a.k.a Triton Force) and I know the American children will love it. Kerr did a magnificent job and I am grateful to be a part of this historic film and we can’t wait to get to work on the sequels and the TV series!!” Justin’s dubbing and script re-write were both extremely well-received by the capacity-filled audience at a screening held in Hollywood on May 25th. Here are a couple of shots from the screening:
The international distributors for AniMen loved the English-version as well, so much so, that they plan on releasing that version in several countries including Japan, S. Korea and throughout Europe with the only exception being a possible release in French and German languages as well in France and Germany, respectively.
So, what is next in store for Xu? He plans on making at least two sequels to AniMen, one to be released per year over the next two years, and has already finished 60 minutes of the expected 120 minutes of AniMen 2. He promises that the next two movies will be even more visually impressive than the first one as CG technology is improving at a rapid pace. Plans for AniMen 3 include a combination of live action acting with animation, along the lines of Avatar, but technology will be so greatly advanced by the time he starts that project that the audience will not be able to tell the real actor apart from the CG animation. And who does Xu have in mind for the starring role in the third segment of AniMen? Well, the one and only Justin Baldoni, of course. In addition to working on AniMen sequels, Xu plans on coming to Hollywood next month to start work on an American-made film called Jungle Master; a feature animated comedy film focusing on environmental protection issues – imagine Home Alone meets Al Gore, set against a jungle background. He likes to continue making films which integrate different cultures into one, making him a truly international director and a unifying figure as well.
As for Sam Baldoni, he told CelebMagnet, “I am honored to be a part of history. Kerr is a visionary and the minute I met him, I knew he was destined to do great things and I wanted to help him reach his goals. He has become part of my family. When I go to China, I feel like I am home. It’s a genuine real feeling and that is why we work so well together and will continue to accomplish so much more together.” For his next endeavor, Sam Baldoni wants to help Xu build a film school next to Shanghai Hippo Animation Design studios to teach film-making skills to a whole new generation of Chinese children who otherwise would not have the opportunity to live out their dreams. Baldoni will garner the help of other American actors and filmmakers in his efforts to help marry the Chinese and American cultures into a cooperative endeavor. Baldoni sees China as a hot up-and-coming market for film. He says that right now, China only has 3,500 movie theaters for its population of over 1.4 billion people. But another 15,000 theaters are currently being built with even more planned in the near future, making China even more ready for explosion onto the movie-making scene. And Sam Baldoni could not be happier.
Left to Right: Justin Baldoni, Nathan JIang, Sam Baldoni