'Zoolander' in animated walk-off (NYT, VAR)
By Nancy Tartaglione
Derek Zoolander is back...as a cartoon character. Under a deal between Ben Stiller's Red Hour Digital (a new subsid of his Red Hour Films) and Paramount Digital Entertainment, the Blue Steel look will be coming at you in an animated spinoff of the 2001 comedy "Zoolander." Meanwhile, Red Hour will also produce an original online comedy, "Billy Glimmer: Entertainer of the Century," which will see Stiller as "a mid-level voice impersonator out of Las Vegas," he told The New York Times.
Under the exclusive deal with Paramount, Red Hour will develop original digital entertainment properties that can be launched as live-action and animated webisodes or social-media games across a variety of platforms. According to Variety, Mike Rosenstein has been upped to director of digital at Red Hour.
Stiller told The New York Times, "It's just a way to say, 'Hey, let's go do a couple of little five-minute episodes' as opposed to saying, 'Hey, let's pitch it to the studio and then let's have a fight over the budget for six months.'"
"Zoolander" co-stars like Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell are expected to provide the voices of their animated incarnations.
The "Billy Glimmer" series will be directed by Jason Woliner.
"It's live-action," Stiller explained to the NYT, "but the level of reality is cartoonish."
"This is the first time that really a triple-A star is going to star in an Internet series for us," Thomas Lesinski, president of Paramount Digital Entertainment told the NYT. "It'll be interesting to really test the boundaries of what we can and can't do online."
Stiller and Red Hour have already produced the comedy series "Stiller and Meara" for Yahoo, starring his parents, Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara, as well as the "Stillerstrong" viral campaign, Variety notes.
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