The Movie
In August 2006 The Weinstein Company revealed in a press release for an animated version of The Nutty Professor that it had a "CG-animated project" called "Opus" "in the works". Numerous online movie databases, including The New York Times, have entries for the movie, titled Opus: The Last Christmas, and give a release date of December 19, 2008. Some of these sites name Berkeley Breathed as the director, while others list Tim Bjorklund and Paul Taylor. Initially, Miramax Films was reported to have obtained the movie rights to the series, but the project migrated to The Weinstein Company with the departure of the Weinstein brothers from Disney and Miramax.
However, on May 8, 2007, during an interview by NPR radio host Diane Rehm, Mr. Breathed responded to an e-mail question regarding the existence of Opus: The Last Christmas by saying,
| “ | Uh, the better question is, 'Is there an Opus movie going to come out?' and the answer is 'no.' And, now I can say it's all for the better. Uh, the Weinstein brothers at Miramax tried for five years to develop an Opus movie, their first animated film, and it was, let me just say, it probably wasn't destined to be, as ... as it probably shouldn't. And the problem with developing these kinds of movies and films is that inevitably they discover that a property as idiosyncratic as a comic strip doesn't translate well unless you have the confidence of bringing the creator in and factoring him into the creation of the movie. They never, never do that. Yeah, um, they just don't trust us. So without that control there probably shouldn't be an Opus movie. | ” |
In a June 2007 interview with Salon.com, Breathed confirmed that the Miramax feature was "dead", but left the door open for an independently produced Opus film:
| “ | There'll only be a movie if I'm writing it, which will probably keep him off the big expensive screen ... probably just as well. | ” |
Read more about this topic: Opus (comic strip)
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