David Silverman to Direct ‘Extinct’

*This is a user-submitted post by Eli Sanza*

According to Variety, international film distributor China Lion Entertainment will be co-producing and co-financing an animated feature film called Extinct with a group of Simpsons veterans on the writing team that include Joel Cohen, John Frink and Rob LaZebnik, and one of the oldest Simpsons veterans David Silverman in the director’s chair.

The film will be about an “adorable species of fluffy animals” called Flummels who go back in time to save their species from extinction, and is set to be released in the first quarter of 2020.

In case no one’s ever heard of China Lion, it is a film distribution company founded in 2010 that is headquartered in Los Angeles and specializes in the distribution of major films from top Asian-Pacific producers. It has brought mainly Chinese-language films to North America, Australia, and New Zealand. In 2014, they formed a production company devoted to feature film projects for both Chinese-speaking and English-speaking audiences. China Lion president and CEO Jiang Yanmin says that many different cultures can be represented easier in animation, an art form that tends to be more fantasy-based and therefore less offensive to more people.

David Silverman has previously directed The Simpsons Movie, co-directed Pixar’s Monsters, Inc. and was responsible for the animation in every original Simpsons short on The Tracey Ullman Show. He was previously announced as the director of an animated Pink Panther film from MGM back in 2014, which as of 2017 is still in development.

Edited by: Kelly Conley