Bob Adams: Final Fate

Bob Adams: Final Fate (JPN: ボブ・アダムス：最終的な運命, literally Bob Adams: Final Destiny) is a 2006 animated film and a stand alone spinoff to A Penguin's Memories. Like with the English dub of the original film, Garrett Fredrickson was a director for the movie, alongside Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence director Mamoru Oshii, while Mitsuhisa Ishikawa of Production I.G. along with Jerry Beck, Chris Jenkins, and Douglas Wick produced the film. Marshall Efron, who voiced Bob Adams in the English dub of the original film, reprised his role for this movie, as did Lou Diamond Philips, while Timothy Dalton, Donal Logue, and Eric Idle voice new characters. The animation for the movie was provided by Production I.G. and Polygon Pictures while Spyglass Entertainment, Red Wagon Entertainment, and Fredrickson's own LIVE Entertainment co-financed the movie, and it was distributed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures. It was the first animated film directly released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer since All Dogs Go to Heaven 2 and the first film directed by Garrett Fredrickson after his production company was renamed to LIVE Entertainment. In the film, Bob Adams is discharged from the hospital and starts going through a midlife crisis following when he learns why Mike attacked him the way he did. He eventually meets a pair of former con artists named Zachary Roland and Nicholas Franks, who were in a similar position as him, and he joins them on their mission to stop a madman named Phil C. Schemmer before he creates havoc across the United States.

Although being produced and released early in Japan, the film was geared towards the United States market rather than the Japanese one. Bob Adams: Final Fate was widely promoted by MGM and Sony, with tie in promotions made by Subway, 7-Eleven, Gap, among other companies. The film had it's premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre on May 5th, 2006 before being released to theaters on May 10th, 2006 in Japan and June 14th, 2006 in the United States, where it grossed $212.3 Million on a $74 million budget, and it received favorable reviews in the United States.

Plot
COMING SOON

Voices

 * Marshall Efron as Bob Adams
 * Timothy Dalton as Mr. Zachary Roland.
 * Donal Logue as Nicholas Franks
 * Eric Idle as Phil C. Schemmer
 * Lou Diamond Philips as Jack. Philips was one of a few actors who reprised his role from the first film for this one.
 * Pat Hingle as The Librarian. Hingle voiced The Librarian in place of Burl Ives due to Ives' passing in 1993.
 * Sarah Michelle Gellar as Olivia
 * Ruby Marlowe as Kayla
 * Mark Hamill as Martin
 * Julia Roberts as Judy
 * Tony Hale as Horace
 * Rupert Farley as Benson
 * Tom Bosley as Dr. Moe
 * Emma Thompson as Caitlyn
 * Clancy Brown as The Judge
 * Wallace Shawn as The Reporter
 * Larry King as a Newscaster
 * Chris Sarandon as Mike (archival footage)
 * Debbie Reynolds as Jill (archival footage)

Additional Voices

 * Frank Welker
 * Kirk Thornton
 * Kevin Michael Richardson
 * James Cranna
 * Tom Kenny
 * Neil Ross
 * Scott Menville
 * Corrinne Orr
 * Jeff Bennett
 * Jaishon Fisher
 * Kath Soucie
 * Tress MacNielle
 * James Arnold Taylor
 * Doug Stone
 * Spike Spencer
 * Jess Harnell
 * Corey Burton
 * Steve Bulen
 * Robert Axelrod
 * Jimmy Hibbert
 * David Lander
 * Dee Bradley Baker
 * John Schwab
 * Rolf Saxon

Development
During the 1990s, while directing several other films, Garrett Fredrickson revisted A Penguin's Memories and became quite interested in the character of Bob Adams, the stingy record producer for PVC Records. As his fate in the film was left ambiguous, Fredrickson began to brainstorm ideas about a story regarding what happened to him and if he ever changed his ways. In an interview, Fredrickson stated "Bob Adams was kind of a difficult character for me to properly wrap my head around, the question in my mind was "Is he evil or not?" I eventually decided he wasn't and was just a cheap a**hole, so with that mindset, it became easier to handle the character in my opinion." Fredrickson decided to take the project to Konami Holdings in Japan, since they were the owners of the character designs in A Penguin's Memories, and they seemed quite enthusiastic about the project. It was first officially announced in 2001 a few months after the release of Fredrickson's then most recent film, The Angel and the Introvert, as a joint production between Fredrickson's own Nightstorm Productions (later renamed LIVE Entertainment during production) and Konami Entertainment, with Spyglass Entertainment, Douglas Wick and his production company Red Wagon Entertainment later agreeing to co-finance the film. The film was then shopped the numerous film studios from mid-2001 to 2002, when the film was eventually taken to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who had previously distributed the previous film under United Artists, and they agreed to distribute and co-finance the film, owing to the cult status the original film had gained at the time.

Writing
Writer John Orloff considered that "writing what happened to Bob when he woke up started off rather easily. It seemed natural for him to want some sort of payback for what happened to him and for him to learn about Mike's dark past." However, it seemed a little harder for the crew when they went past that point. Fredrickson stated that they tried hard to avoid the common trapping most animated follow-ups where the storyline would be a rehash of the first movie's story and that they rathed tried to create a more original story. While developing the screenplay, Fredrickson made it clear to keep the mature tone of the original Penguin's Memories in place since he felt that was where the original film's heart lied, but he also agreed to some of MGM's requests as well, including giving the film a few dollops of comedy here and there and also having the film be more action-oriented, as they considered that to be one of his greatest strengths as an animation director. Konami considered that the film might be a little too dark in some areas and asked if some things could be removed or altered to suit their tastes. Orloff and Fredrickson recounted that it was fairly difficult to figure out what scenes should be taken out, but when they viewed the film through storyboards, they felt that it flowed better without those scenes. These deleted scenes were still included as bonus features on the DVD and Blu-Ray releases of the film.

Animation
Pre-production on Bob Adams: Final Fate began in August 2004 at LIVE Entertainment and the animation was done by Production I.G. in Tokyo, Japan, followed by post-production work in Hollywood. The film's co-director, Mamoru Oshii, decided to use the same technique he used for the Ghost in the Shell films called "digitally generated animation" (DGA), which is a combination of cel animation, computer graphics (CG), and audio that is entered as digital data. When designing the film's setting, Fredrickson considered using Missouri as a base for Central City as one did happen to exist there, but he instead settled on New York as the location. This had been the first time Fredrickson had been to New York proper since the 1970s. Much of the animation for the film was designed to carry the same aesthetic as the original film, but whereas in that film background penguins mostly came in the same blue color as many of the major characters of the original film did, most of the penguins created for this film, especially the background penguins, come in all sorts of different colors, including blues, reds, greens, oranges, yellows, etc. This was done to distinguish the film from Konami's usually character designs, and they even supervised the character designs themselves.

Casting
Marshall Efron, Lou Diamond Phillips, Clancy Brown, Frank Welker, and James Cranna were the only past actors from A Penguin's Memories to contribute to this film, with the former three reprising their original roles (Bob Adams, Jack, and The Judge, respectively) and the latter two providing additional voice parts. The film also features anime voice actors Bridget Hoffman (credited as Ruby Marlowe), Kirk Thornton, Corinne Orr, Doug Stone, Spike Spencer, Steve Bulen and Robert Axelrod in various roles, with the former providing the voice of Kayla. Timothy Dalton had auditioned for the role of Zachary Roland sometime in early 2004, while the filmmakers initially wanted John Ratzenberger to voice Nicholas Franks, but he was unable to provide the voice due to scheduling conflicts with Pixar, as such, the role was assigned to Donal Logue instead. Beforehand, Bruce Willis, Jim Broadbent, Ryan Reynolds, Martin Lawerence, and Alan Tudyk were considered for voicing him. Eric Idle was offered the part of Phil C. Schemmer by Garrett Fredrickson and he accepted the part due to his enjoyment of the original A Penguin's Memories and Fredrickson's earlier film The Angel and the Introvert. To go along with Rupert Farley as Benson, the crew initially wanted an English comedian like Lee Evans or Hugh Laurie to voice Horace, but the character's nationality was changed to American when Tony Hale was suggested for the part. Chris Sarandon and Debbie Reynolds appear in the film via archived recordings of their dialogue from the original film in the flashback scenes. This was the first film from Garrett Fredrickson not to have Carl Andy provide a voice role as he was busy directing the film To Live at the same time, and would later retire from the film industry as a whole in 2008.

Release
During the film's production, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was purchased by Sony, Comcast and a consortium of other companies, with their distribution platform being folded into Sony Pictures Releasing. Like many of their other films at this same time, Bob Adams: Final Fate was assigned to Columbia Pictures for distribution. Although MGM was able to win back some of the distribution rights when they relaunched their distribution arm, the rights to the film have been retained by Sony rather than transferring to MGM.

Bob Adams: Final Fate had a "blue-carpet" premiere at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the United States on May 5th, 2006. Many of the attendees included some of the film's actors along with actors who contributed to earlier Garrett Fredrickson works, including George Hearn, Ving Rhames, Sheena Easton, Anne Hathaway, Stanley Tucci and Steve Blum. It later opened in theaters on May 10th, 2006 in Japan, and on June 14th, 2006 in the United States. Like with the original movie, the film was rated PG-13 by the MPAA, this time "For sequences of action violence/peril and thematic elements", as by 2006, the MPAA rating system became more strict, thus making more sense why it was given a PG-13 rating.

On July 14th, 2007, the film had it's television premiere on [adult swim] with a TV-14-LV rating. It was originally planned to be broadcast on Cartoon Network's "Toonami" block, but was then considered to be more suitable for [adult swim] instead. It also had broadcasts on Starz during the late 2000s and early 2010s.

Marketing
As a sort of "showcase" for the film, Fredrickson directed a prequel short film to A Penguin's Memories called Chart Crazy, which was released in theaters with Good Boy! in 2003. The teaser trailer for the film was released on March 18th, 2005 and was attached to the theatrical releases of The Ring Two, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed and Fabulous, Beauty Shop, and Kung Fu Hustle, and was also included as a bonus feature on the Two-Disc Special Edition DVD of A Penguin's Memories under license from MGM. The first trailer was released on August 5th, 2005 and was attached to the theatrical releases of The Dukes of Hazzard, Four Brothers, The 40 Year Old Virgin, A Sound of Thunder, Venom, Lord of War, Corpse Bride, Roll Bounce, and A History of Violence. The second trailer was released on January 13th, 2006 and was attached to the theatrical releases of Last Holiday, Underwold: Evolution, The New World, When a Stranger Calls, The Pink Panther, Final Destination 3, and Date Movie. The final trailer was released on March 10th, 2006 and was attached to the theatrical releases of ''The Hills Have It, Failure to Launch, V for Vendetta, Inside Man, Ice Age: The Meltdown, Scary Movie 4. and Silent Hill''. The film's first TV spot premiered on April 17th, 2006 and was seen on channels such as ABC, CBS, NBC, The WB, Comedy Central, Fox, and Cartoon Network on the late night [adult swim] block.

MGM and Sony chose to put a large sum of money into the marketing deals for the film and Fredrickson was given control of merchandising. Subway sold eight Bob Adams: Final Fate toys and Dunkin Donuts sold themed penguin shaped donuts for one month in June 2006. There was also a tie-in deal with 7 Eleven, where they sold a limited edition Blue Penguin Slurpee that same month, which was a Blue Raspberry flavored Slurpee. Build A Bear also sold plush toys of the film's main character, Bob Adams, where patrons could "build" their own Bob and dress him up in all sorts of clothing. Gap Inc. also sold special clothes featuring the characters from the film for a limited time in 2006. For the film's Japanese release, a manga written and illustrated by Tatsuyoshi Kobayashi was released in July 2006, and was later licensed by Viz Media via a deal with MGM/Sony in the United States, being released in November 2006 under the title "Bob Adams: The Graphic Novel". Along with the release of the film, a tie-in video game was published by Ubisoft and MGM Interactive for all current video gaming systems. All versions of the video game are the same with minor graphical differences, with only the Nintendo DS version changing the overall format.

Box Office
Bob Adams: Final Fate grossed $212.3 million on it's budget of $74 million. It was far more successful than the original in terms of box office mainly because MGM & Sony had more time to do proper promotion for the movie, and was also a surprise success for a 2D animated movie, as most at the time didn't exceed studio expectations, mainly thanks to the advent of CGI animated films. The film's success prompted Fredrickson to stick with outsourcing his animation to Japanese companies from then on out rather than switching to doing CGI animation like most companies were doing.

Critical Response
Bob Adams: Final Fate received favorable reviews from critics. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a score of 75% based on 181 reviews, the site's critical consensus reads "Bob Adams: Final Fate might not offer the strongest of storytelling or even much fidelty to it's predecessor, but it's remarkable visuals and heart will definately resonate with animation and anime fans of all kinds". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 67 indicating "favorable reviews".

Roger Ebert gave the movie a positive review of three stars saying in his review that "For a film that's set after a film that didn't need a follow up, Bob Adams: Final Fate is surprisingly great, although it's pretty clear it's more of a stand-alone feature rather than a sequel to A Penguin's Memories." Richard Roeper also gave it a positive review stating the film "Does a good job keeping itself tied to the world of A Penguin's Memories while also making itself stand out as it's own movie." The New York Times said that Bob Adams: Final Fate was "one of the most delightful films of 2006."

Home Media
Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released Bob Adams: Final Fate on high definition Blu-Ray Disc, PSP UMD Video, and DVD in the United States on October 17th, 2006, making it the first animated film from Sony to be released on Blu-Ray. In Japan, the Japanese Blu-Ray Disc and DVD was released by Bandai Visual, this release carries both the Japanese dub and the English dub, similar with the US DVD, which contains the English version with a subtitled version of the Japanese dub. Sony's DVD contained a making of documentary on the film, an audio commentary, the film's trailers and TV spots, deleted scenes, storyboards and rough pencil tests of scenes, and a music video for the movie's closing song "You're Not Alone". This is one of few Sony/MGM collaborations Sony retains rights to.

The film also recieved a VHS release in the UK, but the VHS was only available for a very limited time at Tesco, and was the last film ever released on VHS in the UK.