James Lamont and Jon Foster, best known for being two-thirds of the writing team behind “Paddington in Peru,” are re-teaming for the newly-announced AI animated feature “Critterz.”
The project is a feature-length adaptation of 2023’s groundbreaking short film of the same name, and comes from Vertigo Films, the Federation Studios-owned U.K. production company, which is teaming with AI creatives at Native Foreign. Lamont and Foster — who also helped write StudioCanal’s pre-school “The Adventures of Paddington” animated series and Channel 4 comedy “Wasted” starring Sean Bean — will pen the script for the family adventure, which is set to expand the world of the so-called Critterz characters.
The 2023 short “Critterz,” written and directed by Chad Nelson, a creative specialist at OpenAI, became the first ever AI film to combine visuals generated by OpenAI’s Dall•E system with traditional animation techniques. It screened at numerous festivals, including Annecy, Tribeca and Cannes Lions and was nominated for a PGA Innovation Award.
