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Arctic Dogs
Arctic Dogs (also known as Arctic Justice internationally or Polar Squad in the UK) is a 2019 animated comedy film co-written and directed by Aaron Woodley[6] and co-directed by Dimos Vrysellas. The film stars the voices of Jeremy Renner, Heidi Klum, James Franco, John Cleese, Omar Sy, Michael Madsen, Laurie Holden, Anjelica Huston and Alec Baldwin. Entertainment Studios released Arctic Dogs on November 1, 2019, in Canada and the United States. It was a box-office bomb, grossing less than a fifth of its production budget of $50 million and received generally negative reviews from critics. Despite its critical and commercial failure, the film spawned a franchise including a web series and multiple spin-off series and films. PlotSwifty (Jeremy Renner), an Arctic fox, works in the mailroom of the Arctic Blast Delivery Service, but he has much bigger dreams. He wishes to become a Top Dog, the Arctic's star husky couriers. To prove he can do it, he commandeers one of the sleds and delivers a mysterious package to a secret location. Once there, he stumbles onto a hidden fortress, overseen by the nefarious Otto Von Walrus (John Cleese). The blubbery evil genius commands an army of oddly polite puffin henchmen. Swifty discovers Otto Von Walrus' villainous plan to drill beneath the snow-packed surface to unleash masses of ancient gas to melt the Arctic and become the world's supreme ruler. To stop this sinister scheme, Swifty enlists the help of his friends: P.B. (Alec Baldwin), a neurotic polar bear, Lemmy (James Franco), a scatterbrained albatross, Jade (Heidi Klum), a brainy red fox engineer and Swifty's love interest, Leopold (Omar Sy) and Bertha (also voiced by Heidi Klum), two conspiracy theorist otters and Magda (Anjelica Huston), his curmudgeonly caribou boss. Voice cast
Production and releaseThe film was announced as Arctic Justice: Thunder Squad on August 30, 2014 with AMBI themselves handling international sales.[7] The film's cast was announced on May 5, 2015. Around that time, Dimos Vrysellas was originally tapped to direct.[8] On February 14, 2017 Open Road Films acquired the North American distribution rights to the film and was originally scheduled to be released on an undisclosed 2018 date.[9] The film was acquired by Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures in the United States and Canada due to Open Road Films' bankruptcy and solely released on November 1, 2019.[10][11] Lionsgate Home Entertainment released it on DVD and Blu-ray on February 4, 2020. It made $1.3 million in total US video sales.[12] ReceptionBox officeIn the United States and Canada, Arctic Dogs was released alongside Harriet, Terminator: Dark Fate and Motherless Brooklyn and was projected to gross $5–10 million from 2,835 theaters in its opening weekend.[13] It made $700,000 on its first day and ended up debuting to just $2.9 million, finishing 10th and marking the worst opening of all-time for a film playing in over 2,800 theaters.[14][15] Critical responseOn the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 13% based on 16 reviews and an average rating of 3.8/10.[16] Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 28 out of 100 based on four critics, indicating generally unfavorable reviews.[17] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale, while those surveyed at PostTrak gave it an overall positive score of 64% and a 41% "definite recommend".[14] In 2020, it received a Canadian Cinema Editors Awards nomination for Best Editing in Animation.[18] Animated series and spin-off filmsA web series set after the events of the film titled Arctic Friends was released in September 2020 on both Apple TV+ and Amazon Prime Video, consisting of 40 collections (160 shorts).[19] Another spin-off series titled Puffins was also released, featuring the voice of Johnny Depp as Johnny Puff.[20][21] A spin-off of Puffins, entitled Puffins Impossible, was released in April 2022, with Depp reprising his role as Puff.[22] There are also two Christmas live action/animation spin-off films titled Christmas Thieves (2021) and The Good Witch of Christmas (2022).[23][24] Spin-off animated films
References
External links Wikiquote has quotations related to Arctic Dogs. |
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