Director Robert Rodriguez, who recently produced the hotly anticipated Predators, has acquired the rights for Ralph Bakshi and Frank Frazetta‘s 1983 animated film, Fire and Ice. The screenplay for the original film was written by Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas, with characters created by Bakshi and Frazetta. The film was created with rotoscoping (shooting the film in live action and then tracing it onto animation cells) and released by 20th Century Fox.
Speaking with AICN – Rodriguez said,
“The awesome Ralph Bakshi and I have been working it out for a while, and it’s now a TROUBLEMAKER STUDIOS PICTURE. What’s cool is, unlike past projects that I’d get involved with that would get stalled for various reasons, I control the rights to this one. So it’s actually in my power to set it up and get it made, which wasn’t the case on other projects. And for you filmmakers out there, that’s really the best way to get things done. If you can manage to get the rights yourself to a property by dealing directly with the artists and creators like I did with Frank Miller on Sin City, and now with Ralph Bakshi on Fire and Ice, it makes a world of difference and you can get started sooner rather than never.”
Check out the trailer for the original below!
Trailer: Fire and Ice
The story takes place shortly after the Ice Age. The evil queen Juliana plots to conquer the world and raises her son Nekron as a master of sorcery and arcane mental powers. Together the two conquer the Ice Kingdom, and from their stronghold Nekron commands massive glaciers to destroy everything between them and their ultimate goal: Fire Keep, ruled by the wise and powerful King Jarol Leo Gordon. Nekron’s latest advance destroys a Northern village, leaving Larn the sole survivor, bent on revenge; it also exhausts Nekron, who resorts to sending emissaries to coerce Jarol into surrendering. When words fail, they resort to kidnapping Jarol’s daughter Teegra, who escapes and accidentally hooks up with Larn. Aided by the mysterious masked warrior Darkwolf, they attempt to return to Fire Keep and mobilize their warriors to bring the fight to Nekron.
