Foodfight! is a name animation fans hear about once every two years, get confused about where they heard it, see and remember the images and promo trailer, and then laugh and laugh until the film news disappears for another two years. But the joke will finally be on us, as Foodfight! inches closer to getting a legitimate release. On DVD. In Europe.
For those of you who might be unfamiliar with Foodfight! (which is probably a lot of you as Foodfight! is really obscure), here is the story. In 2000, Larry Kasanoff decided he could do animated movies better than Pixar. So he got in a car with his buddy and drove around until they found an idea. I guess his wife also had him pick up some milk, because the idea turned out to be a supermarket, and all the products coming alive during the night. It was a detective story where Dex Dogtective and friends like to dance and have fun at the Copbanana club, until the mysterious Brand X moves next door. Kasanoff got a bunch of companies to pay for product placement (Charlie the Tuna, Mr. Clean, Cap’n Crunch, Chester Cheetah, Twinkie the Kid, the Energizer Bunny, the Brawny paper towel guy, and many more) and Threshold Entertainment was born! Foodfight! was targeted for a 2005 release (with distribution by Lions Gate), and Kasanoff was quoted bragging about how his animators were networked from all over the globe. There was also going to be a 3D animated prequel series called Foodfight!: The Adventures of Dex Dogtective.
But 2005 came and went with no release. 2006 came and went with no release. Fall 2007 was announced as the release time, but that also came and went with no Foodfight! In 2010, merchandise for Foodfight! was found at a store, but the film was still AWOL and no one had heard a peep since 2007. That article is also great because some of the animators show up to describe their experiences and about how little of the film was completed. According to the stories, the hard drives containing the film’s files were stolen in Christmas 2002.
Eventually, things fell apart even more, and in 2011 you could purchase what was completed of the film at auction! It looks like Boulevard Entertainment was the lucky winner, paying around $2.5 million (for a film rumored to have $50 million production costs) and dumping this thing on DVD. With a website that says “©2012 Fireman’s Fund Insurance Company.” Surely, quality, quality stuff.
Quality.
So let’s quote the official site to bloat up this article even longer:
Charlie Sheen, Hilary Duff, Eva Longoria and Christopher Lloyd lend their unmistakable voices
to this computer-animated tale of a supermarket that ‘springs to life’ after the doors have been locked
and the workers have all gone home. When the lights are turned out chaos reigns for the ‘products’ in
this grocery store. The grocery store transforms into a city, and from every door of this city comes
two types of characters: well-known marketing icons and new characters…This full-length CGI Movie features character/products including; Dex Dogtective (Charlie Sheen),
Sunshine Goodness (Hilary Duff) and Daredevil Dan (Wayne Brady). They all hang out at the Copa-
Banana in the produce section, but trouble is brewing within this bustling metropolis. When the villainous
Lady X (Eva Longoria) arrives in town with her Brand X minions, the brand-named products start to get
a little hot under the label. As sleuthing U.S.D.A. (United Supermarkets Defense Association) –
Dex Dogtective teams up with flying stunt squirrel Daredevil Dan and the beautiful Sunshine Goodness
to uncover the truth about these unmarked invaders, it begins to appear that the only way to fend off
the dreaded Brand X is to engage them in an all-out, no-holds-barred FoodFight!…
(please note that this is the second official site, as Threshold Entertainment’s original site is as dead as the dream to make Pixar 2.0 is.)
One thing that is weird is seeing who was hot way back in 2000, and knowing what their careers have done since then. Some have had almost as crazy a ride as Foodfight! I do think that Sunshine Goodness will become a cult figure among crazed furries, so they got that going for them.
Stories about Foodfight! dating back to 2000!
AWN
FastCompany
AnimationMagazine
CartoonBrew
