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‘Senna’ Producer Gullane Preps Sequel to Animated ‘Noah’s Ark’ (EXCLUSIVE)

‘Senna’ Producer Gullane Preps Sequel to Animated ‘Noah’s Ark’ (EXCLUSIVE)

São Paulo production shingle Gullane, which is behind upcoming Netflix series “Senna,” has moved into development on a sequel to the animated feature “Noah’s Ark.”

Produced by Gullane and Walter Salles’ Videofilmes, “Noah’s Ark” has been sold to 45 countries by Edward Noeltner’s CMG Management. It has grossed $4.25 million in territories in which it’s been released.

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Imagem Filmes will bow “Noah’s Ark” in Brazil on more than 1,000 screens, a huge spreading a country of 3,300 screens. Rodrigo Santoro, Alice Braga and Julio Andrade feature among a Brazilian star-studded voice cast. It looks like the biggest release ever of a Brazilian movie in Brazil, Fabiano Gullane told Variety from Toronto, where the company is world premiering Fernando Coimbra’s “Carnival Is Over.”

“Noah’s Ark” was inspired by classic children’s songs by Bossa Nova pioneer Vinicius de Moraes. The 3D animated feature focuses on two male mice, Vini and Tito, who steal onto Noah’s ark, despite spots for only one male and one female of each species.

The sequel will pick up the story of Vini and Tito and female mouse Nina, plus the other ark animals, once they land on dry land. Sergio Machado, co-director of the original with Alois Di Leo, is currently writing a screenplay for the sequel. Gullane is also planning a TV series based on the same characters “but slightly simplified and maybe in 2D,” said Fabiano Gullane.

France’s Le Pacte, Beta Fiction in Spain, and IDC in Spanish-speaking Latin America count on the film’s original distributors. Major territories available for sales include the US, Canada, UK, Germany and Japan.

Produced by Fabiano and Caio Gullane and showrun by Vicente Amorim, whose credits include “Good” with Viggo Mortensen and “Yakuza Princess,” and Jonathan Rhys Meyers, “Senna” is made in partnership with the Senna family, the eight-episode fiction miniseries traces Senna’s personality and personal relationships, from when he moved to the UK to race with a Formula Ford team in 1981 through to becoming the youngest three-time Formula One champion and the fateful 1994 San Marino Grand Prix.

Netflix will release the six-part “Senna” worldwide on Nov. 29.

That makes for the busiest month ever for Gullane, whose 66 features range from its first fiction feature, Lais Bodanzky’s 2001 “Brainstorm,” introducing Rodrigo Santoro, through to Hector Babenco’s Oscar-nominated “Carandiru,” Fernando Coimbra’s “A Wolf at the Door ,” hailed as one of the most auspicious debuts of the decade, to 2015 Sundance winner “Second Mother” and Karim Aïnouz’s 2024 Cannes competition player “Motel Destino.”

“Carnival is Over,” Coimbra’s second Brazilian feature, is Gullane’s seventh feature at Toronto. Sold by France’s Playtime, it weighs in as a tellingly apt relocation of “Macbeth’s” themes of overweening ambition and a self-defeating vortex of violence to a tropical context of Rio de Janeiro, its carnivals and the jogo de bicho illegal gambling mafia.

Leandra Leal, who won best actress at the Rio de Janeiro Festival for her starring role in “A Wolf at a Door,” plays Regina, who pushes husband Valerio (Irandhir Santos) to murder his uncle. The plan is meant to provide a quick exit from mafia silence. But it plunges the couple deeper.

“Fernando is one of Brazil’s great screenwriters and directors,” said Caio Gullane. “This is a powerful film, made in Fernando’s style as a thriller, but which talks about Brazilian politics and above all family relations.”

Produced by Gullane and Portugal’s Fado Filmes, “The Carnival is Over” is co-produced by Globo Filmes, Telecine, Pavuna Pictures, TC Filmes, Playtime and Paris Filmes, which will release the film in cinema theaters in Brazil on Nov. 21 after opening the Rio Festival’s centerpiece Premiere Brazil competition.

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