Talisman (2004 animated film)

The Talisman of A Thousand Powers is a 2017 animated fantasy action adventure film directed by Garrett Fredrickson and starring Rob Rackstraw, Ariel Winter, Toni Collette, Patton Oswalt, Bill Nighy, Kenan Thompson, Meryl Streep, Eric Bogosian and Christopher Lloyd. In this story, a bashful person named Shannon Piermont (Rackstraw) discovers a magical talisman capable of all sorts of powers, and by some luck, he ends up beginning to work for the Castillo household and their daughter Kiera Castillo (Winter), however, a wicked sorceress (Collette) wants to use the talisman to destroy the world.

The film originally began development in 1980, with Fredrickson having written the first and second drafts of the script a year later. Due to later wanting to get into the dubbing business and since he was starting to get other film ideas at the same time, he ended up shelving the idea. In 2011, however, he rediscovered the second draft of the script whilst cleaning up his house, and he decided to put it back into active development. He alongside The Lion King co-writer Jonathan Roberts and The Tale of Despereaux writer Gary Ross revised the script to be more up to Fredrickson's current standards. Paramount Pictures purchased the dstribution rights to the film in 2014, while Japanese animation studio Ufotable was contracted to do the animation for the film.

The Talisman of A Thousand Powers premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival and was released in theaters in the United States on June 9, 2017. The film grossed about $515.8 million at the box office and received generally positive reviews from critics. The film was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 90th Academy Awards, but lost to Pixar's Coco. It is currently Fredrickson's highest grossing film and the highest grossing animated film released by Paramount Pictures. It was the final film to star David Ogden Stiers before he passed away in 2018.

Plot
COMING SOON

Cast

 * Rob Rackstraw as Shannon Piermont, a bashful and somewhat clumsy yet surprisingly brave boy who attempts to stop Dia with the talisman. He has very little dialogue, only speaking when he seems to think he should say something. Even though Fredrickson listed that he planned to get a notable actor to voice him in the 1981 drafts of the screenplay, when the film re-entered development he opted against this, instead deciding to hire a lesser known actor to voice him, stating "if you have a celebrity voicing a character like Shannon, you'd probably just see the celebrity rather than the character himself, and so I figured I'd change that." Rackstraw had previously voiced in numerous other Garrett Fredrickson productions, such as providing various character voices in The Story of Quincy, and voicing the race announcer in the English dub of Leafie, A Hen Into the Wild, and he had tried several different voice characterizations before Fredrickson chose his final voice.
 * Ariel Winter as Kiera Castillo, a beautiful sixteen year old girl who comes from the rich and dignified Castillo family, but she acts rather humble and sweet towards those she's around, especially towards Shannon, whom she develops a crush on as the story goes along. In the 1981 draft, Jamie Lee Curtis and Karen Allen were considered to voice her, but the actors had gotten older by the time the film had re-entered development, so Winter was cast instead. Fredrickson decided to get Winter based on her performance as Sofia from Disney's Sofia the First.
 * Toni Collette as Dia, a wicked sorceress who plots to destroy earth using the talisman's power. In the 1981 draft, Dia was originally a male character before being changed to a female, with John Hurt and Sean Connery both being considered as the character's voice. Cloris Leachman was also considered to voice her when the film re-entered development. Similar to Rackstraw, she had previously voiced Queen Amelia in The Story of Quincy.
 * Patton Oswalt as Rick, Dia's hen-pecked and well-intentioned but incompetent henchman.
 * Bill Nighy as Elmer, Kiera's posh and stuck up butler. He initially takes a dislike to Shannon but eventually warms up to him as the story goes along.
 * Kenan Thompson
 * Meryl Streep as Mia Castillo, Kiera's mother and the head of the Castillo household.
 * Eric Bogosian as Sebastian Castillo, Kiera's father. He is especially protective of Kiera, though unlike Elmer he doesn't take a dislike to Shannon.
 * Christopher Lloyd as Darrell Castillo, the brother of Sebastian.
 * Domhnall Gleason
 * Heidi Klum
 * Paul Giamatti
 * Will Forte
 * Ray Porter
 * Jeff Bennett
 * Shawn Hoffman
 * David Ogden Stiers
 * Rupert Everett as the beginning narrator

Additional voices

 * Bob Bergen
 * Rodger Bumpass
 * Susan Silo
 * Patrick Pinney
 * Sherry Lynn
 * Dorothy Elias-Fahn
 * Scott Menville
 * Jack Fletcher
 * Jill Talley
 * Corey Burton
 * Dee Bradley Baker
 * Mona Marshall
 * Steve Lively
 * Bill Farmer
 * Amanda Winn Lee
 * Kevin Michael Richardson
 * Michael Sorich
 * Debi Derryberry
 * Michelle Ruff
 * Richard Epcar
 * Garrett Fredrickson
 * Fred Tatasciore
 * Jennifer Hale
 * Lex Lang
 * Kevin Dorsey
 * Mela Lee
 * Kari Wahlgren
 * Joe Whyte

Development
Garrett Fredrickson first planned the film all the way back in 1979, after reading numerous fantasy themed novels. After writing The Hollywood Connection in 1980, he decided to try and write the film and pitch it to various film studios. At the time Fredrickson was originally considering making it a live action film rather than an animated film. The first and second drafts of the film were written in 1981, however, after helping Carl Andy to write the English dub of Space Firebird, Fredrickson became more interested in importing an anime film, thus eventually bringing over A Penguin's Memories to the states. Following this, he decided to put more focus on another film he had in mind, The One Special Maiden, which was his first time he made a film for a major film studio. As he got more film ideas and as he got more contracts with film companies, his originally planned film ended up being forgotten for the longest time.

In 2011, however, while he was cleaning out his house, Fredrickson found the second draft of the script, and after reading through it, he decided to try and salvage the script and potentially complete it as a film. Shortly after the film was put into active development at LIVE Entertainment, Fredrickson hired Jonathan Roberts and Gary Ross to revise the movie's script so it would be more up to Fredrickson's current standards, especially due to the original script featuring numerous references to 70s pop culture, Fredrickson himself said "At the time it might've been at least acceptable, but by now it's basically Shrek or Aladdin of the 70s or 80s. It was just too dated for my liking."

Walter F. Parkes and Nina Jacobson joined the production as producers in 2013, Village Roadshow Pictures also joined production at the same time to help co-finance the film. Paramount Pictures came on board in 2014, beating out other distributors such as Warner Bros, Universal, The Weinstein Company, and the then newly founded STX Entertainment. Paramount agreed to some of Fredrickson's demands such as creative control and a final cut privilege, and they even enlisted David Ellison of Skydance Media to join the production as another co-financer.

Similar to Fredrickson's previous film 1001 London Days, much of the worldbuilding in The Talisman of A Thousand Powers was inspired by real life British locations, with the world seeming to be a fictionalized version of Great Britain. For inspiration, the art directors went to such places as Buckingham Palace, Calton Hall, and Forth Road Bridge, among others.

Animation
Like with many Garrett Fredrickson works, the film's animation was done in Japan, this time at Ufotable. The film's character designer, Takashi Takeuchi, had previously worked for the company as the character designer for the anime series Fate/Stay Night. Several stages of animation were involved in the production, with Fredrickson himself having to translate the text of each piece of dialogue written on the storyboards into Japanese so it would be easier for the animators to understand what to animate. The film utilized a blend of both 2-D traditional animation, and computer generated imagery. At one point, Paramount Pictures did suggest if the film could be fully CGI animated, but Fredrickson insisted to keep the film traditionally animated, as very few animated films released nationwide at that point had been using traditional animation.

Music
The Talisman of A Thousand Powers was scored by Robert Folk. Initially, Fredrickson wanted Alan Menkin to compose the film's score, but he was unavailable, so Folk was brought in to do the score instead. The score was recorded at Abbey Road Studios by Nick Wollage and Slamm Andrews, with the latter mixing it at Media Ventures and Patricia Sullivan-Fourstar handling mastering.

Release
The Talisman of A Thousand Powers first premiered at the 2017 Cannes Film Festival on May 24, 2017, and was released in 2-D and 3-D by Paramount Pictures on June 9 of that year.

Marketing
The film's teaser trailer was first released on August 9, 2016 and was attached to the theatrical releases of Pete's Dragon, Sausage Party, Ben-Hur, Kubo and the Two Strings, The Light Between Oceans, and When the Bough Breaks. The film's main trailer was released on November 15 of that year and was attached to the theatrical releases of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Moana, La La Land, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Sing, and A Monster Calls. The third and final trailer was released on February 7, 2017 and was attached to the theatrical releases of The Lego Batman Movie, John Wick: Chapter 2, The Great Wall, Rock Dog, Logan, Kong: Skull Island, and Beauty and the Beast.

Marketing for the film included $40 million spent by Paramount Pictures for advertising, including partnerships with Funko Pop, Jakks Pacific, Kellogg's, Airheads, IHOP, and American Express.

Home media
Paramount Home Media Distribution released the film on DVD, Blu-Ray, Blu-Ray 3D, 4K UHD Blu-Ray, and Digital HD on October 10, 2017. It was the first Garrett Fredrickson film to be released on 4K UHD Blu-Ray and the last film from Paramount Pictures to be released for Blu-Ray 3D. The DVD release contains an audio commentary by the filmmakers, behind-the-scenes footage, a look into the film's cast, and four deleted scenes.

Box office
In North America, The Talisman of A Thousand Powers opened alongside the 2017 remake of The Mummy along with It Comes at Night and Megan Leavey and was projected to gross about $25-40 million from 3,765 theaters during it's opening weekend. Paramount had a couple of reservations about having the film debut the same date as The Mummy as they were worried about the film being overshadowed by it. The film made $15 million from Thursday night previews and on it's first day, it $26 million at the box office, thus causing Paramount to increase their projections to $35-50 million. It debuted to $40 million at the box office, on par with projections, and finishing second behind Wonder Woman, and becoming the most successful debut for a Garrett Fredrickson film. During it's second weekend the film made $75 million at the box office, placing second behind Cars 3. The film closed on September 28, 2017, finishing with a total of $153,283,192 in the United States and Canada with an additional $362,429,602 overseas, bringing the film's total gross to $515,712,794. The Talisman of A Thousand Powers became Paramount's highest grossing animated film, surpassing The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge out of Water and becoming Garrett Fredrickson's highest grossing animated film.

Critical response
The review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported an approval rating of 68% based on 263 reviews, with an average rating of 7.33/10. The website's critical consensus reads "While it may seem familiar in places, The Talisman of A Thousand Powers is still a charming and entertaining film that'll satisfy both Fredrickson fans and those who want something a little different in animation." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews", audiences on CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A-" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrax reported filmgoers gave it an 85% overall positive response.

Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter said, "The Talisman of A Thousand Powers might be one of Garrett Fredrickson's finest films, with it's great story, charming and likable characters, stunning animation, and talented voice work." Peter Traver of Rolling Stone rated the film 3 out of 4, giving praise to the film's voice acting (particularly Rackstraw, Winter, and Streep), animation, and worldbuilding calling it "probably one of the most well developed worlds in modern filmmaking." Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times found the film to be "charming, but not exactly the best film from Fredrickson."

Many reviews favorably compared the film to The Mummy which opened the same day as it. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian said that the film "seems to better know what it wants to be, a good old animated fantasy film, compared to The Mummy, it seemed that Fredrickson was carefully thinking about where he wanted elements of the film to go." Similarly, Owen Gleiberman of Variety wrote "This feels less like a vehicle for an actor fighting with the material and more like a film that knows what it's trying to do. Here, the hero isn't so much a cocky scoundrel as he is just a charming sort of everyman who is thrust into this situation when he gets the talisman. It makes for a less dated and more interesting sort of character."

Accolades
Coming soon!

Video Game
A tie in video game developed by Idea Factory International and published by Activision was released on November 7, 2017. It was the first time Idea Factory International made a video game based on a film and the first one to be for an American animated film. The game received mixed reviews.