The Pixelators

The Pixelators is a 2016 American computer-animated science fiction comedy film produced by 20th Century Fox Animation and distributed by 20th Century Fox. The film was written, produced and directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller from a screenplay by Rodney Rothman and Derek Connolly, with a story by Lord, Miller, Connolly, Nicole Perlman, and Edward Mendez, and features an ensemble cast with the voices of Tom Holland, Anna Kendrick, Kevin Hart, Jason Statham, Ryan Reynolds, Zoe Saldana, Keegan-Michael Key, Jason Sudeikis, Gabriel Iglesias, Ellie Kemper, Kristen Wiig, and Jenny Slate and tells the story of two video game designers which they get sucked into a video game universe deep inside the realms of a magic arcade cabinet.

Development of The Pixelators began in 2004 when Mendez wrote the original concepts of the film. The film, originally titled Level Up, was announced by Fox in October 2007 with Mendez as director, later joined by John Stevenson as co-director in 2010. Its development continued through 2007 and 2011 until its cancellation in 2012 following story issues. However, the project was revived in 2013 with Lord and Miller replacing Mendez and Stevenson as directors. Much of the cast were signed in to voice the characters from 2014 to 2016. Fox Animation created new software technology to produce the film's animated visuals.

The Pixelators premiered at the Regency Village Theater in Los Angeles on November 21, 2016, and went into general release on December 9 in 3D, IMAX 3D, and Dolby Cinema formats. The film received mixed reviews from critics who praised the animation, score, character design, and voice acting but criticized the plot, heavy on product placement of the studio's intellectual properties, and lack of originality with several negative comparisons and similarities to Disney's Wreck-It Ralph (2012). Despite the mixed reception, the film was a box office success, grossing $592 million worldwide against a $105 million budget. It received a nomination for Best Animated Feature at the 44th Annie Awards, and was also nominated for Best Original Score, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Sound Editing at the 89th Academy Awards.

The film launched a new franchise with a television series, The Pixelators: Game On!, which debuted on June 8, 2018 on Fox Family, a sequel directed by Mike Bell and Emma Maxwell, titled The Pixelators: Level Two, which was released on February 7, 2020, and a television special titled The Pixelators Holiday premiering on Fox on November 25, 2020. The third and final installment, titled The Pixelators: Supercharged, is set for release on September 29, 2023.

Plot
Bryce Jones is a 19-year-old video game designer living with his mother Harper. After his father died, he began to profess his love for video games when he was just 6 years old. 12 years later, after being inspired by games and graduating from gaming school, he finally became a video game designer along with his best friend Carl Stevenson. One year after becoming a video game designer, he has been working on his own video game titled Cop Stories. With the game almost complete, Bryce designs the main character of the game, Alice Summers, a young woman who is struggling to become a police officer in the game's story. Later that day, Carl meets up with Bryce to tell him that he found an old game arcade cabinet titled "Pixel City" over at an abandoned arcade. Later that night, Bryce and Carl discover the arcade machine at the abandoned arcade and then they tried that machine out. Bryce pushes the start button on the machine, then nothing happens at first with Bryce saying it does not work, but all of a sudden, the arcade starts to have a blinding white flash that begins to suck up random things in the arcade building. Bryce and Carl try to escape, but they fail and get sucked into the arcade cabinet.

Bryce and Carl discover a video game city deep inside the realms of the arcade cabinet, and they meet a penguin named Peppy that can talk and be understood in the video game universe, though the gamers playing his own game simply hear him as a normal penguin. Later, the gang are then attacked by a party of Virus Ninjas, which are Lord Hex's minions. The trio escape and Peppy explains to Bryce and Carl that Hex is planning to wipe out and erase the entire video game universe with the power of hacking out the Pixel Gems in the Game Temple.

In order to defeat Hex and stop him from wiping out the video game world, the gang must form a team named The Pixelators. Peppy leads the gang to Bryce's own video game, Cop Stories. Entering the game, Bryce becomes enthralled with his own game, coming to life and his own action-oriented adventures. Peppy shows the trio to a secret underground battle arena where all game characters can fight off their enemies. The arena's owner, Carlos recognizes Peppy, who injured his Black Dragon in a previous battle, and demands another rematch. He doses the Black Dragon with gas that makes creatures go wild, stirring the dragon into a violent rage, and Peppy is unable to summon his powers to fight back. While attempting to save Peppy, Bryce knocks Carlos over and breaks several gas vials, sending the arena's creatures into a frenzy. The arena is raided by police and the gang is taken by Alice Summers, who is actually trying to save them from city criminal Carlos, and his friends, The Master Rapper and Big Bill.

Carlos and his friends try to stop the gang, starting a car chase between the two, with the help of Alice's amazing driving talent to escape the criminals. Unfortunately, Peppy accidentally takes the steering wheel, making the police car crash under a bridge, but surprisingly escaped from Carlos. Later at the police station, the chief suspends Alice from her job after not trying to catch Carlos, and for destroying her own police car, leaving Alice saddened. Bryce then apologizes to Alice for getting her suspended, but she tells him that it's her fault, since she is trying very hard to become a great cop but fails due to her clumsy and childish acts. Alice then invites Bryce, Carl, and Peppy to her apartment and tells the trio how Alice became a cop after Lord Hex invaded her home and kidnapped her mom when she was young. Bryce then tells Alice if she is interested in joining the Pixelators and defeating Hex once and for all, and Alice thinks about it, remembering her kidnapped mother, and finally accepting it.

The team later head to an adventure video game titled The Nature Legend where Nya and Jay are in, and later on, they are attacked by Virus Ninjas again, chasing them through the forest, but are fended off by a shockwave bomb which Peppy threw at the ninjas. They then end up in a field of colossal Nature Giants, where Nya saves the team. After Nya saves Bryce, Carl, Peppy, and Alice, they are subsequently attacked by men on motorbikes which Nya calls them "Forest Savages", but manage to escape by fleeing through the trees and jumping off a cliff into a river where they find one of the river's whales, where the team are engulfed and they travel to the forest village, inside the whale. At the forest village, Nya explains Lord Hex stealing the game's own Forest Crystal from its shrine, gaining control of all the forest's animals and plans to use it to have the animals invade Pixel City along with his plans to erase the video game universe. Nya then tells Alice to warn everyone in Pixel City that the only way to get back there is to go through Fox World. There, Alice befriends the Fox Animation Girls, being encouraged by them to address her sense of unfulfillment and reaching an epiphany. Meanwhile, Lord Hex's forces invade the village, where Bryce and Nya attempt to fight them off, but they are soon confronted by Hex himself, only just escaping when Jay throws a smoke grenade as a distraction and leads them to a secret passage. Alice meets back up with the team at a mountain, where she forgot to tell the citizens of Pixel City, after being caught up with the Fox Animation Girls, getting Peppy, Carl and Nya frustrated, but Bryce forgives her.

Bryce, Peppy, Carl and Alice leave The Nature Legend game and end up in a game called Dance Frenzy!. While there, the team must dance their way out in order to leave and get to the Game Temple, as told by Trinity, the host of the game. They are once again attacked by the Virus Ninjas, and their actions cause the gamer to delete the game off of their console. Bryce and Alice escape, but Peppy and Carl are taken along with the game and end up in the trash. As a result of losing their friends, Bryce gets outraged and ends his friendship with Alice, leaving her heartbroken and in tears while Bryce decides to find the temple himself.

Suddenly, after Bryce left, Alice is captured by Hex and his henchmen, along with Peppy and Carl where they ended up in Hex's prison while Alice is taken captive by Hex himself. Meanwhile, Bryce finds the Game Temple but the temple's guardians told him to find his epiphany in order to save the universe. Bryce, Nya and Jay devise a plan to infiltrate Hex's lair and save Alice, Peppy, and Carl from his prison. Bryce later saves Alice, Peppy, and Carl and helps them escape the prison, setting off all the security alerts, overloading the prison's system. However, Hex captures Alice and strapped her to the top of Pixel Tower, where Hex unveils the gems to destroy the game universe once and for all. Peppy finally summons his powers to battle Hex's henchmen while Bryce frees Alice from the tower. The two escape, but Hex traps Bryce under rubble and threatens to kill him when every video game hero appears to fight off Hex's crew. Bryce later finds Hex in his lair, just about to break the gems. Bryce fights Hex throughout the lair and Hex accidentally knocks the gems into the energy beam, breaking them. With Bryce nearly killed, he realizes that he must follow the epiphany that the temple's guardians told him. Bryce knocks Hex with one of his own weapons and throws him at the self-destruct button, with a huge explosion destroying Hex's lair. The townspeople of Pixel City believe Bryce is dead, but it turns out that he survived the explosion. Hex and his enforcers are arrested and Bryce repairs the gems, saving the video game universe. Bryce embraces the responsibilities of his new life with the Pixelators now being hailed as heroes. Despite saving the video game universe, Alice and Peppy are fired from their games for disobedience and major city destruction, but however, they are quickly reinstated by the Game Temple's guardians and Mayor Mark, the mayor of Pixel City, to form the Pixelators team, and assures the gang the team was only the beginning for them.

Meanwhile, Hex, still in possession of one of the Pixel Gems and having lost his sanity, begins plotting his revenge.

Voice cast

 * Tom Holland as Bryce Jones, a video game designer.
 * Jason Drucker as a young Bryce Jones
 * Anna Kendrick as Officer Alice Summers, an optimistic police officer who is the protagonist of Bryce's game Cop Stories.
 * Kevin Hart as Carl Stevenson, Bryce's best friend.
 * Ryan Reynolds as Peppy Penguin, a sarcastic, wise-cracking penguin.
 * Jason Statham as Lord Hex, a mean-spirited corrupt villain who wants to hack and wipe out the video game universe.
 * Zoe Saldana as Nya, a nature warrior princess.
 * Jason Sudeikis as Jay, a speedy bird-like creature who is Nya's companion.
 * Ellie Kemper as Amelia, the gatekeeper of Pixel City.
 * Gabriel Iglesias as Carlos
 * Keegan-Michael Key as The Master Rapper
 * John Cena as Big Bill, a tough fighter.
 * Kristen Wiig as Harper Jones, Bryce's mother.
 * Jenny Slate as Trinity, a "super cool" dancer.
 * Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill as Ed and Elliot, two multicolored shape-shifting creatures who annoy Bryce.
 * Nick Offerman as Wizman, a wizard.
 * Patrick Stewart as Mayor Mark, the mayor of Pixel City.
 * Will Forte as Mr. Marshmallow
 * Ike Barinholtz as Mr. Duckett, an anthropomorphic duck who is basically afraid of everything.

Additional voices

 * Seth Green, Chris Hardwick, Quinton Flynn, Christopher Nicholas Smith, and Grey Griffin as Hack Masters, Lord Hex's henchmen.
 * Nolan North as The Police Chief
 * Grey Griffin, Phil LaMarr, Christopher Miller, Jeff Lieberman, Pamela Porter, and Scott Mosier as Cop Stories Police Officers.
 * Cam Clarke, John DiMaggio, and Kari Wahlgren as The Game Temple Guardians.
 * Kevin Michael Richardson, Lily Jensen, and Jonathan Gaines as Cop Stories Thugs.
 * Matt Flynn, Steve McCarthy, Kirk Hooper, and Ben Potts as Apes
 * Ben Potts also voices Biker Leader.
 * Robert Tinkler as Felony Felix
 * Jorma Taccone as Doctor Pyro
 * Joseph Haro as Timmy
 * Alex Borstein as Timmy's Grandma
 * Dee Bradley Baker as Bread Vendor / Benny

Several characters from other Fox films and media also make cameo appearances with their original or current voice actors, such as Kristen Bell as Alaina Gleen, Mandy Moore as Kate Anderson from Kate & Chris, Avril Lavigne as Crystal, Anne Hathaway as Princess Joanna from Puppet Pals, Tara Strong as Laura Reed from Twentieth Toons, Zooey Deschanel as Audrey Martinez from History Island, John Leguizamo as Sid and Chris Wedge as Scrat from Ice Age, Dan Castellaneta as Homer Simpson from The Simpsons, Tom Kenny as Felix Fox from Twentieth Toons, Meg Ryan as Anastasia "Anya" Romanova from Anastasia, Rebecca Wilkinson as Alice Rose from Sister Light, Sister Dark, and Andy Serkis as Caesar from the Planet of the Apes reboot films.

ADR Voice Performers

 * Steve Apostolina
 * Maggie Baird
 * Holly J. Barrett
 * Daniel Booko
 * Jen Cain
 * Catherine Cavadini
 * David Cowgill
 * Niall Cunningham
 * Debi Derryberry
 * Giselle Eisenberg
 * Jeffrey Todd Fischer
 * Johnny Gidcomb
 * Jackie Gonneau
 * Wendy Hoffmann
 * Joanna Leeds
 * Susan Leslie
 * Yuri Lowenthal
 * Scott Menville
 * Max Mittelman
 * Heidi Brook Myers
 * Matt Nolan
 * Arthur Ortiz
 * Devika Parikh
 * Courtney Peldon
 * Ben Pronsky
 * Jason Grant Smith
 * Kelly Stables
 * Skip Stellrecht
 * Pepper Sweeney
 * Fred Tatasciore
 * Randall Thom
 * Lisa Wilhoit
 * Matthew Wood
 * Ruth Zalduondo

Fox cameos and references
To be added

Development
The concept of what would become The Pixelators originated from animator and character designer Edward Mendez in 2004. In 2006, Mendez pitched the idea to then-20th Century Fox Animation president Chris Meledandri, shortly after the release of Puppet Pals. In October 2007, the film was announced as Level Up as a 3D computer animated feature with Mendez set to direct and Melissa Hester producing. It had originally been announced in April 2010 that Kung Fu Panda director John Stevenson would be co-directing the film alongside Mendez. However, on May 7, 2011, it was reported that Stevenson and Mendez had stepped down as directors due to other commitments, making 20th Century Fox remove the film from its planned 2014 release schedule.

On January 11, 2012, Fox announced that production for Level Up was cancelled, usually due to story issues and lack of directors. However, in November 2012, Mendez conceived of a new idea for the film and began discussing it with Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, where Mendez let them have his original idea. On September 20, 2013, Fox revealed that the film was back in production, as Phil Lord and Christopher Miller were selected to write and direct the film with Hester and Mendez serving as executive producers. In November 2013, Lord and Miller revealed the film's new title, The Pixelators, and a reworked storyline.

Writing and casting
In 2010, when Edward Mendez and John Stevenson were directing the original Level Up film, Wallace Wolodarsky and Maya Forbes were selected to write the film. When the film got cancelled in January 2012, Forbes explained that the film was "just not working right". On May 16, 2014, 20th Century Fox announced that Derek Connolly and Rodney Rothman would be co-writing the film, alongside Phil Lord and Christopher Miller.

On October 8, 2014, Ryan Reynolds, Jason Statham, and Anna Kendrick were added to the voice cast of the film. On July 25, 2015, Deadline Hollywood reported that Kevin Hart will voice a main character named Carl. Tom Holland later joined the cast as the lead character on October 20, 2015. The full cast announced their respective roles via announcements on Fox Animation Century City's official Twitter on February 10, 2016. The team was able to secure all the Fox Animation Girls' original voice actresses, except for Alicia Silverstone as Alice Rose from Sister Light, Sister Dark, as the filmmakers couldn't get Silverstone into the cast of The Pixelators, and Rebecca Wilkinson, one of the film's lead animators, who performed Alice Rose's voice for temporary tracks, but the team considered it a good substitute, allowing Wilkinson to voice her in the final film.

Animation and design
Over the seven years before the film's release, Fox Animation Century City had substantially over-hauled its production workflow and animation software since the development of Alaina Gleen. The Pixelators was the first Fox Animation Century City film that used Fox BOOM 2.0., a updated rendering system of the original Fox BOOM that offered the studio's new animation and lighting software through the entire production as part of the overhaul of the original BOOM rendering system used since the first Puppet Pals. Called by Fox Animation CEO Stuart Snyder as "the next generation of Fox Animation Century City". Before the new system, artists had to build reflections and shadows manually, which became increasingly complex as the models and the setups became more technologically advanced.

A newly-made custom software program was used for the film, to create over distinctive characters, and later including the highest number of characters in any Fox Animation film, with 386 individual characters with 5,119 variants. One of the Fox Animation animators who helped out to bring some of the 2-D Fox Animation Girls into CG animation was Michael Hodge. In designing the characters and art style, Lord and Miller were inspired by Walt Disney Animation Studios films, and they decided that the characters in The Pixelators would be loosely styled in akin to Disney's art style in their modern CGI animated films, such as Tangled, Frozen and Wreck-It Ralph.

Fox Animation had contracted Korean Disney animators Shiyoon Kim and Jin Kim, to begin working on the character design alongside fellow Fox character designers Edward Mendez, Mike Reeves, Travis Massey, Carter Goodrich, and Sylvain Deboissy, while Peter de Sève served as the main character designer for Peppy Penguin and Jay. Although the characters were initially designed by Mendez, Jin Kim altered on some of the characters' faces. Production wrapped on October 27, 2016.

Music and post-production
Most of the soundtrack comes from older songs from the 70s, 80s, and 90s. This was because Lord was so fascinated with nostalgia that he wanted the film to be unique as well. Additionally, The Weeknd recorded a new song titled "I Feel It Coming", where it was used in the film's end credits.

The lead cast members began recording the film's dialogue in late November 2015 at the LA Studios recording studio in Los Angeles under the supervision of original dialogue mixer Carlos Sotolongo. Additional dialogue was recorded at an ADR facility on the Soundtrack Group's New York studio, since the production team had to work around the busy schedules of other cast members. The final orchestrations of the score were all recorded at the Newman Scoring Stage on the 20th Century Fox studio lot in Century City by an 80-piece orchestra, and Alan Meyerson mixed the score at Eastwood Scoring Stage on the Warner Bros. Pictures studio lot in Burbank.

Although the music and almost all the dialogue were all recorded elsewhere, most of the sound effects and the final re-recording mix to the Dolby Atmos format were performed at Skywalker Sound by Gary Rydstrom, Randy Thom, Lora Hirschberg, Jeremy Bowker, and Gary Summers. Production wrapped on October 27, 2016.

Theatrical
The Pixelators was initially scheduled for release on December 16, 2016, but in May 2016, it was pushed back a week back to December 9, 2016, to avoid competition with Lucasfilm's Rogue One. The film premiered at the Regency Village Theater on November 21, 2016 in Los Angeles in an out-of-competition screening. In the United States, it received a wide theatrical release by 20th Century Fox starting on December 9, 2016 in RealD 3D, IMAX 3D, Dolby Cinema, premium large formats, and D-Box. The film was later released in the United Kingdom on January 13, 2017 and in Australia on December 22, 2016. The film was released two months later in China on February 17, 2017.

The film had its TV broadcast debut on February 22, 2019, airing on FX. The airing achieved over 5.2 million viewers, lifting FX's usual ratings in February.

Marketing
A video game based on the film was released on December 13, 2016 for Nintendo 3DS, Wii U, Xbox One, and PlayStation 4, and published by Activision and developed by Beenox.

The film's teaser trailer was first released online on January 26, 2016 and was attached into Kung Fu Panda 3 three days later. The official theatrical trailer for the film was released on July 5, 2016, and was later attached into The Secret Life of Pets. The final trailer was released online on October 16, 2016. Fox teamed up with several major companies to promote the film, including McDonald's, who included eight toys in their Happy Meals featuring the main characters, General Mills, and Gamefly.

Home media
The Pixelators was released on Digital HD on March 17, 2017, and on Blu-ray, Blu-ray 3D, 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray, and DVD on March 28, 2017 by 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Box office
The Pixelators grossed $248.2 million in the United States and Canada and $344.2 in other countries for a worldwide total of $592.4 million, against a budget of $155 million.

North America
In the United States and Canada, The Pixelators was released alongside Office Christmas Party and the expansions of Miss Sloane and Nocturnal Animals and pre-release tracking suggested the film would open to $55–60 million from 4,054 theaters in its opening weekend. It played in 3,460 3D theaters, 425 IMAX theaters, and 315 premium large format screens. It earned $5.2 million from Thursday night previews. Buoyed by good word of mouth, it earned $22.9 million on its opening day, breaking the record for the biggest opening day for an original Fox Animation film. It ended up overperforming in its opening weekend, grossing $70.2 million, which was the biggest animated opening in December at the time until Cool Spot: Spot Goes to Hollywood (which was also from the same studio) overtook this record with its $232.5 million opening weekend five years later. In its second weekend, the film made $43.6 million, dropping 38%, and finishing second behind newcomer Rogue One: A Star Wars Story ($155 million).

Critical response
The Pixelators received mixed reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 47% based on 174 reviews and an average rating of 5.1/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Even though The Pixelators boasts a talented cast and top-notch CG animation, they aren't enough to save the disappointing end result from a muddled story, shameless exercise in IP-driven branding, and loud and frenetic action that has little replay value." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 43 out of 100 based on 34 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Michael Rechtshaffen of The Hollywood Reporter considered the film "very amazing and hilariously well-done." Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the film three-and-a-half stars out of four, saying "An eye-popping and irreverent animated experience from the guys who brought you The Lego Movie... The Pixelators is a fast, fizzy and frenetically entertaining film that proceeds to obliterate with a 2-hour blast of color, noise, ingenuity and fun." Joe Morgenstern of The Wall Street Journal criticized the film's story, describing it as "too formulaic." Glenn Kenny of The New York Times gave the film a negative review, writing, "Let's be clear, then: The Pixelators isn't pointless because it's based on video games. It's pointless because it's pointless". Andy Webster of The New York Times called it, "A poor man's Wreck-It Ralph". In his review for TheWrap, Alonso Duralde wrote, "The Pixelators is an awful candy-coated, hard shined brick of postmodernism—a mix of pop-culture references, 80s nostalgia, product placements and internet memes".

Sequels and potential spin-off

 * Main articles: The Pixelators: Level Two and The Pixelators: Supercharged

A sequel titled The Pixelators: Level Two was confirmed by 20th Century Fox on January 13, 2017 and was released in theaters on February 7, 2020. Phil Lord and Christopher Miller returned to produce and write the sequel with a script written by Nicholas Stoller and Rodney Rothman. All of the main cast also reprised their roles in the sequel, and are joined by Zach Galifianakis, Daisy Ridley, Tiffany Haddish, James McAvoy, Sterling K. Brown, Trey Parker, and Josh Gad. The sequel takes place three years after the first film, with a new powerful supervillain named Dr. Silverclaw from an abandoned 80s video game kidnaps Bryce's friends and plans to threaten to destroy the entire video game universe, Bryce and Lord Hex may have to make the impossible choice to team up and fight against Dr. Silverclaw. Meanwhile, Alice Summers has been crowned princess in a new video game titled Flower Heaven. Directors Lord and Miller also said that a Pixelators spin-off film focusing on the Fox Animation Girls could be made depending on the audience's response, and "if there's a good story to be told".

A third and final film, titled The Pixelators: Supercharged, is set for release on September 29, 2023, with Steve Martino directing and Phil Lord and Christopher Miller returning as producers and Holland, Kendrick, Reynolds, Hart, and Saldana set to reprise their roles.

Television series

 * Main article: The Pixelators: Game On!

A traditionally-animated television series based on the film titled The Pixelators: Game On! debuted on June 8, 2018 on Fox Family. All of the the main cast were replaced by Josh Keaton, Amanda Leighton, Seth Green, Phil LaMarr, Catherine Taber, Roger Craig Smith, Grey Griffin, Kari Wahlgren, and Michael Gough, respectively.

Television special

 * Main article: The Pixelators Holiday

Main
To see the main transcript of the film, click here.

Trailers
To see the transcript for the trailers of the film, click here.