Stand By Me Quincy

Stand By Me Quincy is a 2023 Live Action/Traditionally animated romantic drama film directed by TJ Fredrickson and produced by Fredrickson & Samuel Goldwyn Jr. It is about a lonely hand named Quincy who ends up meeting a person or what the hands call "An Outside Mystic Being" named Sophie, and even if it's not right to be with one of them, the two end up falling in love with each other. It is produced by Fredrickson Entertainment and Samuel Goldwyn Films and distributed by Universal Pictures.

Stand By Me Quincy was released to theaters on October 7, 2023. It received mixed to positive reviews from critics with some praising the film's visuals and romance angle, but criticizing the story. It also earned $14 million in the box office against it's $25 million budget.

Plot
COMING SOON

Voices

 * Elijah Wood as Quincy, a polite but lonely hand who seeks companionship
 * Annie Golden as Sophie, an "Outside Mystic Being" who becomes very close friends with Quincy to the point where the two end up falling in love
 * Malcolm McDowell as Mr. Louis, a corrupt and aggressive businessman who runs a successful printing press and treats his employees like slaves, especially Quincy. He is the main antagonist of this film
 * Richard Steven Horvitz as Ricky, a level-headed hand who before meeting Sophie, was the closest thing Quincy had to a friend
 * Corbin Bleu as Jeff, a worker of Mr. Louis who is shown to be a pretty good singer, even though his songs are usually cut off by Mr. Louis
 * Neil Crone as TBD
 * John C Reilly as Curtis, the hardest working person of the printing press and the only one that Mr. Louis treats properly
 * Patrick Warburton as TBD

Development
In 1999, TJ Fredrickson came up with the idea of making a series centered around a character who's only friend was a being that not many people knew about, a pilot without any dialogue from the characters was made in 2001 and pitched to FOX Family Channel, however it was rejected for simply not being good enough for the network.

In 2003, after working on The Adventures of Noddy, Fredrickson decided to renew interest in the project, but instead do it as a feature film as he felt it would've worked a lot better as a feature film rather than a TV show. It was later confirmed that the movie would be a mix of live action and animation, similar to films like Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Rock-a-Doodle, where some characters would be done using live action and others using animation.

In 2006, Samuel Goldwyn Jr signed on as a producer and his company Samuel Goldwyn Films signed on as the production company and distributor for the film, and some of the voice actors, including Annie Golden and Malcolm McDowell, were confirmed to be in the film. Dom Deluise was going to voice Quincy, but due to his passing in 2009, he was replaced by Elijah Wood. Because of a financial problem in 2008, Samuel Goldwyn Films dropped out as the distributor, but Goldwyn Jr stayed as a producer. A few weeks later, Universal Pictures made a deal to help Samuel Goldwyn Films and Fredrickson Entertainment co-finance the film, and Universal later became the main distributor of the film

Filming
COMING SOON

Animation
The film's animation for some of the characters like Sophie was done in the style of Anime, as Fredrickson thought that the art style of Anime just worked with the characters that would be done using animation. The character animation was going to be outsourced to Hal Film Maker, but during the production they merged with Yumeta Company to form TYO Animations, leading to TYO to become the animation company for the film. Similar to Who Framed Roger Rabbit, mime artists, robotic arms, puppeteers, and mannequins had to be used in order to do some scenes that would be a little more hard to do.

Hand Puppeteering
Fredrickson decided to make the film more unique by having the live action characters be human hands, but he did confirm that the inspiration didn't come from the Noggin series Oobi, he got the idea on his own. The way they were handled is having puppeteers perform as the characters, where after filming the scenes the characters would have their voices dubbed by their voice actors, however, some scenes where the elbow of the actor could be seen had to be masked out using the editing.

One real difference between most hand puppet material is that the film does not feature visible eyes for the Hand characters. Universal did suggest to give them eyes, but Fredrickson stated otherwise because he thought it would be a lot more unique to have them lack eyes.

Rating
Unlike most PG rated movies at the time of this film's release, the film contains some elements that would be seen in a PG-13 film including some violence as well as harsh language. Fredrickson had pushed the movie to get a PG rating as he stated "It does contain some adult features, sure, but I mostly intend this film for family audiences that can handle some of the content.". The movie was submitted to the MPAA 5 times and each time it was responded with a PG-13 rating, an executive from Universal stated that the movie "needed" a PG rating, there was also some speculation that Fredrickson "freaked out" because of it, but he denied these claims, the next day the movie was rerated PG for unknown reasons with the original film intact.

Release
The film was released on October 7, 2023. It was going to be released in December of 2023, but it was moved up as it was a lot closer to being finished prior to November coming up.

Box Office
Stand By Me Quincy was released to theaters alongside Real Steel and The Ides of March and grossed about $14 million against it's budget of $25 million. It ended up in 3rd place behind The Ides of March.

Critical Reception
Stand By Me Quincy received mixed to positive reviews, on Metacritic the film has a 64 out of 100 indicating favorable reviews, whilst on Rotten Tomatoes the film has a score of 59% based on 121 reviews with an average rating of 5.6, the site's critical consensus reads "Stand By Me Quincy 's beautiful cinematography may be a winning point of the film, but it's story is strictly by the numbers".

Roger Ebert gave the film a 3.5 out of 4 saying "The film's concept of a cross between live action hands & Anime is honestly a strange choice, but the execution of the style is pretty well done, even if the story isn't exactly that good"

The film's story arc was considered a little too similar to stories like The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Romeo & Juliet. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film a 2.5 out of 4 saying "The film seems to rely a lot on concepts from other stories in where it makes the film not as good as it could be".

Home Media
Universal Pictures Home Entertainment released the movie on DVD & Blu-Ray on March 13, 2024, this DVD contained an audio commentary with TJ Fredrickson & Samuel Goldwyn Jr, a making of documentary on the film, the film's trailers and TV spots, some deleted scenes, and the pilot that Fredrickson pitched to FOX Family Channel.

Future
In an interview with TJ Fredrickson about a possible sequel, he stated that the film will not be getting a sequel as he felt it didn't need one.