Robert Ben Garant, who wrote and starred in Comedy Central‘s Reno 911! and penned the script for both Night At the Museum movies with fellow Reno star Thomas Lennon, has signed on to adapt the manga Tuxedo Gin for the big screen. Weirdly enough, it delves into slightly familiar territory, as far as non-human things taking on the personalities — or in this case, souls — of humans. The movie will be a Disney release with the title Tux, and will hopefully fare better than The Zookeeper aka Night At the Zoo (especially if it’s being written by Garant, who I may or may not trust with my life when it comes to comedy).
Tuxedo Gin, which was published in Japan from 1997 to 2000 and created by Tokihiko Matsuura, is not exactly kids’ fare. While it’s true that it involves talking animals, the reason they’re talking is actually kind of tragic. Ginji Kusanagi, a teenage boxer, is killed in a car accident while traveling to a date with the girl he loves, Minako Sasebo. In order to see her again, Ginji has to live an entire life an an animal — in his case, a penguin — before he can be reincarnated as a human again. Why? Because he was a horrible person in life, and this is what karma hath wrought for him.
Now, talking penguins are definitely what you’d call family-friendly, but what of this element of tragic death? Obviously, death is no stranger to kids’ movies, but to go from such a dark element into what appears to be a very light-hearted one seems like it might be the tiniest bit too dark for kids. Of course, everyone in that museum was also dead before they came to life, weren’t they?
Garant, who is best known for his sketch comedy work on The State (at least if you’re part of Generation X), makes regular trips from demented to family-friendly and back again in his career, so we choose to be cautiously optimistic about this.
(Deadline via Spinoff Online)
