Call of the Falcon: A Quincy Story

Call of the Falcon: A Quincy Story is a 2010 adult animated action drama film based on the TV series The Story of Quincy. The was directed, co-written and co-produced by series creator Garrett Fredrickson. It features the show's regular voice cast with Liam Neeson, John Leguizamo and Brad Pitt voicing new characters, as well as a cameo from 60 Minutes ' Jeff Fager. The film's plot concerns Quincy McShane, who has returned to Durania after the events of the final episode of season three and is trying to adjust back to his life as a detective, but a new enemy in the form of a cult known as "The Falcons" has come to wreak havoc in the town, and things start to get more personal when Captain Saffron aspires to protect a female member of the group, leading to the police force becoming one of their prime targets. However, with what happened on Quincy's mission before going on vacation still being in his mind, and effectively being triggered by one of the cult's actions, he begins to wonder if being a detective was the career he should've taken in his life.

Initially written in mind as the first episode of the fourth season of The Story of Quincy, the length of the screenplay ultimately ballooned into a feature film format, and was initially submitted as a TV movie for TNT, but executives at Warner Bros. Pictures were so impressed by it they stepped in and offered to make it into a theatrical film instead. Garrett Fredrickson initially served as a producer and script editor for the film due to his contract with Walt Disney Pictures, but after it ended, he decided to direct the film due to his influence on the project.

Call of the Falcon: A Quincy Story premiered in Los Angeles on April 2, 2010, and was released in the United States by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists on April 9, 2010 and by Warner Bros. Pictures internationally. It received positive reviews from critics and Quincy fans, with massive praise towards it's story, characters, animation and voice acting, and grossed a worldwide total of $246.3 million at the box office. The film won two Annie Awards for Directing in an Animated Feature Production and Best Achievement in Voice Acting and was nominated a Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Feature Film. It was the last film to be released under the United Artists banner.

Plot
Coming soon!

Cast

 * Steve Blum as Quincy McShane
 * Vic Mignogna as teenager Quincy
 * Cherami Leigh as Princess Sophie
 * Jason Marsden as Captain Saffron
 * Sean Hayes as Louis
 * Mark Hamill as Chief Aarons
 * Liam Neeson as Milton Harrison
 * John Leguizamo as Hubert
 * Alexis Tipton as Felicia Harrison
 * Travis Willingham as Shane Bishop
 * Brian Donovan as Harlan Weaver
 * Charlie Adler as Griswald McCoy
 * Brina Palencia as Lorelei Harrison
 * John Cleese as Zach T. Darwin
 * Brad Pitt as Reynard Castro
 * Rachel Leigh Cook as Megan Knowles
 * Rob Paulsen as Klay
 * David Lander as Vincent
 * Tom Kenny as Jack
 * Frank Welker as Raymond
 * Roger Craig Smith as Timothy Pierpoint
 * Debra Mooney as Queen Amelia
 * Martin Short as Baron von Frederick
 * Greg Ellis as Prime Minister Digby
 * Kath Soucie as Clara Fairbank
 * Wendy Makkena as Quincy's Mother
 * Jeff Fager as the news reporter
 * Christopher Sabat as the judge
 * Ian Sinclair as the investigator
 * Tim Curry as Forrester Roland
 * Carl Andy, Jr. as the waiter (cameo, credited as Roger Andrews)

Additional voices

 * Gregg Berger
 * Candi Milo
 * Jamie Marchi
 * Eric Vale
 * Jerry Jewell
 * John DeMita
 * Jonathan C. Osborne
 * Mike McShane
 * Jennie Kwan

Development
The story for Call of the Falcon came from the eighteenth volume of the Quincy manga, which followed Durania being attacked by a cult known as "The Falcons" and Saffron aspiring to protect one of it's members while Quincy is assigned to try and stop them. Intially, the story was planned to be adapted as the series premiere of the show's fourth season, but as the screenplay was being written by writers Alan Templeton and Mayori Sekijima, they found the story wasn't even completed by the time they reached the page amount needed to fill a twenty-two to twenty-four minute runtime. They then tried to write the episode as a fourty-four to fourty-six minute double length episode, but the same thing ultimately happened, leading to series creator and executive producer Garrett Fredrickson to suggest having the season four premiere be a TV movie leading into the fourth season instead. The story was altered from the manga in various ways, in particular to focus on Quincy questioning his identity following his mission to bring Colin "Mindwalker" Baker to justice, something which wasn't particularly brought up in the story. The script was completed in 2007 and submitted for approval to TNT, however, it came out so good that the executives at Warner Bros. Pictures offered to purchase the script for a feature film instead of a television release.

The project was formally announced at Anime Expo 2008, and the show's staff briefly halted production on new episodes in order to focus on the movie. Despite Garrett Fredrickson's large involvement in the series, he initially declined to direct the movie due to him working on 1001 London Days and Tech for Miramax and Walt Disney Pictures, respectively, though he still agreed to produce the film nonetheless. Afterward, Fredrickson would assign Michael Arias the position of director and also brought on the original manga's creator, Ryotaro Sekizawa, to help produce the film. The animation company, Kyoto Animation, decided the give the positions of animation directors to Cowboy Bebop 's Toshihiro Kawamoto and Samurai Champloo 's Kazuto Nakazawa; Barry Josephson, one of the movie's producers, found this decision to be "very fitting" as many of the fight sequences in The Story of Quincy took inspiration from the two series'.

Fredrickson began significantly modifying the story, creating new ideas and changing existing ones. Notably, he changed Felicia Langstaff to the daughter of the Falcons' leader, Milton Harrison, in order to make the story more intriguing when Quincy and the others are brought into the mix with the cult. Eventually, Fredrickson found himself so engrossed in the project that he decided to take up the role of the movie's director in place of Arias. This, fortunately, posed no effect on the production of Tech, which went as Fredrickson and Disney had intended, and after it's production ended, he immediately shifted his focus to the Quincy film, which would be called Call of the Falcon. Around the same time, Warner Bros. Pictures began negotiating with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer regarding the film's distribution, due to their relatively large film schedule in the first half of 2010. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and United Artists both agreed to distribute Call of the Falcon, with Warner Bros. Pictures retaining the distribution rights for most international countries. MGM would also distribute the film in Japan, France and Switzerland in addition to the United States.

Casting
The film stars the show's main cast members: Steve Blum as Quincy McShane, Cherami Leigh as Princess Sophie, Jason Marsden as Captain Saffron, Sean Hayes as Louis Roffe, and Mark Hamill as Chief Aarons. It also features Rachel Leigh Cook as Megan Knowles, Rob Paulsen, David Lander, Tom Kenny, and Frank Welker as Klay, Vincent, Jack, and Raymond, Debra Mooney as Queen Amelia, Martin Short as Baron von Frederick, Greg Ellis as Prime Minister Digby, John Cleese as Zach Darwin, and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Ellis Whitfield. In addition, it was reported on May 11, 2009 that Liam Neeson, John Leguizamo, and Brad Pitt would voice new characters Milton Harrison, Hubert and Reynard Castro, respectively, and that Jeff Fager of CBS News and 60 Minutes would make a cameo in the movie.

Liam Neeson accepted the role of Milton Harrison due to him having been relatively impressed by some of Fredrickson's other works and having seen a few episodes of the show himself, saying "I wouldn't call myself a diehard fan, but the stuff I saw was quite excellent." John Leguizamo auditioned for the role of Hubert in mid-2008, improvising several lines of dialogue for the character, some of which wound up being used in the movie itself. Brad Pitt described his role as Reynard Castro as "Rusty Ryan from the Ocean's movies, but as a police officer." Character co-designer Toshiyuki Hasegawa also used Pitt as a reference in designing the character's appearance in the movie. Jeff Fager recorded his cameo as a news reporter in "about a week." He later said "It felt kind of fitting to me being an actual news reporter and voicing a news reporter too, it was like poetry." Carl Andy's son, Carl Andy Jr., also made a cameo appearance in the movie as a waiter at a restaurant Quincy and Sophie go to, albeit he was credited under the name Roger Andrews, which he had previously used for the English dubs of The Ballad of Tobio and New Ballad of Tobio: The Movie.

During the production of the movie, FUNimation Entertainment, who had acquired the home video rights to The Story of Quincy in early 2008, made an offer to Garrett Fredrickson to provide their recording services to the series, thus making it easier for Cherami Leigh, who was located in Dallas, Texas, where FUNimation records their anime dubs, to do both. Fredrickson accepted, and decided to take advantage of this by casting various other voice actors from the company in various roles, marking the first time FUNimation had ever been involved in a major animated film. Travis Willingham, Brina Palencia and newcomer Alexis Tipton took up the major roles of Shane Larson, Lorelei Harrison, and Felicia Harrison, respectively, while Christopher Sabat and Ian Sinclair had minor roles as a judge and investigator, respectively. In addition, Jamie Marchi, Eric Vale, Jerry Jewell, and Jonathan C. Osborne all provide minor voices in the film. The voices actors from FUNimation enjoyed their roles in the film, with Tipton saying "It was great fun and to this day, people still meet me because I was the voice of Felicia Harrison." She even stated that she even got offers for voice roles in major animation projects after the film, though she declined them in favor of staying in Dallas to continue work for FUNimation.

Animation
Various stages were involved in the animation process, starting with storyboarding in the United States comprised of a team of various storyboard artists who had contributed to both the show and some other major animated films such as Horton Hears a Who!, Wall-E, and Kung Fu Panda. These would then be translated into Japanese and transferred over to Kyoto Animation for animating. The animators worked semi-digitally with pencil-drawn poses that would be composited into layouts in Photoshop.

Fredrickson enjoyed the process of making the film, feeling it was more "freeing" compared to the television series, in how it was much easier to work on the drawings in comparison to a TV series. Polygon Pictures, who had previously contributed to Fredrickson's film Bob Adams: Final Fate, contributed several CGI elements to the film in addition to the traditional animation. Around this time, the title "A Quincy Story" was added to the title in order to better mention the affiliation with the series.

Soundtrack
Coming soon!

Marketing
Coming soon!

Release
Call of the Falcon: A Quincy Story premiered on April 2, 2010, at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. It later opened in a general release on April 9, 2010. It was later released in Japan by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer via Toho-Towa on May 15, 2010.

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment on July 27, 2010. The DVD and Blu-ray special features include a 20-minute featurette, The Case of the Falcon: Bringing Quincy to Film, featuring interviews with most of the principal cast and crew; several deleted scenes, and three music videos.

Box office
Coming soon!

Critical response
Coming soon!

Video game
A video game based on the film was released for Nintendo DS, Wii, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and the PC on March 17, 2010. It was developed and published by Ubisoft, who had previously did the video game The Story of Quincy: Operation Diamond in 2008.