@’s by Zenescope’s Ralph Tedesco !!!
SJIMBROWSKI (SJ): So I’m here to talk to you about GRIMM FAIRY TALES and I’m just wondering kind of like what was the motivation and how it all got put together with the whole Kickstarter thing.RALPH TEDESCO (RT): Well, we had wanted to do a GRIMM FAIRY TALES animated feature originally. Jon Schnepp, director of METALOCALYPSE and a couple of other Adult Swim TV shows…VENTURE BROTHERS…he’s done a bunch of them and now I can’t think of them. So what happened was Jon was a fan of our comic book series and he came to us and was like “Dude, this would make a great HEAVY METAL type R rated series and or feature film.” He was like “I want to do that. Let’s do this together.” So rather than deal with the studios, who have been a pain to deal with, with our version of GRIMM, we decided to team up with John and Titmouse Animation Studios where John does most of his shows through; we all kind of met up and decided “Let’s do a Kickstarter, so it will keep it in the family” and we wanted to get enough money to do the pilot episode of the series.
So we put the Kickstarter together, and $175,000, which I mean it would probably cost more than that, but Titmouse was working with us and we said “You know what? We want to do this right.” So what happened was we got together, we put this on Kickstarter, and we wanted to get our fans behind to pledge and we have a bunch of different things you could pledge, like if you pledge a hundred dollars, you’re getting a bunch of stuff. I mean it’s not like you’re not getting anything for your pledge. You’re almost getting your money’s worth for the stuff you’re pledging.So that’s how it started and we then went out and attached talent, so we got Lena Headey from 300 to sign on as a voice talent.
SJ: From GAME OF THRONES.
RT: Yeah, GAME OF THRONES. You might know that show… she was in 300 too. And then Brianna Evigan, who is known for SORORITY ROW and STEP UP 2. So she signed on and we were in talks with a couple of other pretty big names, but I can’t say. But yeah, so that’s what we are doing and we are trying to just get the fans behind it in order for us to be able to take that money and turn it into an R rated, badass animated series.
SJ: Cool.
RT: Pretty cool.
SJ: There seems to be a lot of interest in fairy tales these days. Why do you think it was hard to get funding originally?RT: I don’t know. (laughs) Realistically…because we came out with this in 2006, GRIMM FAIRY TALES. We were out there. We would come out and take pitch meetings and everybody seemed to be like “We don’t really know how it would be made. Would we do it as a TV series? Would it work as a TV series? Would it work as a film?” We kind of just got brushed aside a lot, and then all of a sudden we saw all of these other fairy tale movies and shows coming out and we were like “Wow, what’s happening? We’ve been out here trying to pitch this dark twist on classic fairytales for years and now all of a sudden they are doing it anyway, without us.” So we decided “Let’s do it ourselves.”
SJ: Cool! Be sure to check out the Zenescope Kickstarter Campaign here and make the GRIMM FAIRY TALES Animated Series directed by Jon Schnepp a reality!
Proofs, co-edits & common sense provided by Sleazy G
