THE GREAT GATSBY ANIMATED - You may have read or at least heard of the classic novel “The Great Gatsby” by the American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. Set in the 1920’s Jazz Age on Long Island, New York’ the story is about a young man’s interactions with mysterious multi-millionaire Jay Gatsby and Gatsby’s obsession to reunite with his former lover, a young woman named Daisy Buchanan. There have been adaptations for television and film, the most recent starring Leonardo DiCaprio. And it has been recently announced that a full-length animated version is in the works to be directed by writer-illustrator and Academy award winner Bill Joyce who lives and works in his hometown of Shreveport, Louisiana. I asked Joyce about why he chose “Gatsby” for this project.
“Gatsby seemed the most cinematic of all the books I’ve ever read, Joyce explained. “It hit me on an aspirational level. Gatsby is such a as Fitzgerald says in the book ‘he had about him a romantic readiness about which I’ve never seen in any man or since’, and that romantic readiness fueled me.”
Joyce is teaming up with another writer/illustrator Brian Selznick who wrote “The Invention of Hugo Cabret” which was adapted into the Oscar winning movie: “Hugo” directed by Martin Scorsese. Imaging will be handled by the leading animation studio DNEG Feature Animation in London which also has operations worldwide.
"Gatsby seemed the most cinematic of all the books I've ever read," Bill Joyce, writer/illustrator and filmmaker
“Most of our crew is in London actually with a smattering of people in Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago; some across eastern Europe,” Joyce said. “And that’s the way we’re going to keep working, I don’t know if we’ll ever be in the same room together.”
Joyce has written and illustrated over fifty children’s books, he’s won television Emmy’s for his work in the animated children’s series “Rollie Pollie Ollie” and an Academy award in 2012 for the animated short: “The Fantastic Flying Books of Mr. Morris Lessmore” which he created in his own MoonBot Studios that he established in Shreveport the same year. MoonBot Studios no longer has as large a footprint as it once did but has since transitioned into “HandyBot”, a smaller version of its former self. But thanks to the magic of Zoom online meetings and digital technology, Joyce is still collaboration with other creatives the world over on this and other future projects as the animation format allows endless possibilities.
“Computers are a communication device and they’re also a way to make imagery, “Joyce said. “If someone puts it in front of me and turns it on and tells me where to look and occasionally which button to push, I can get the job done.”
Actors to voice to the roles in “The Great Gatsby” have yet to be cast. The film is expected to be released in 2023.
