INTERVIEWS: Jenson Introduces the Shark Tale

Dreamworks Animation previewed its upcoming holiday film, Shark Tale, with an introduction to the large cast of character. It's the story of a fish who is thought to have killed a shark, so he becomes a hero for standing up to the shark Mafia. But when it turns out he's a fraud, he has to prove himself for real. Co-director Vicky Jenson introduced the characters one by one.

Oscar will be voiced by Will Smith. "Oscar, who is a little fish that works at a Whale Wash," Jensen said. "It's kind of a day spa meets car wash facility for whales and he has one of the worst jobs in the joint. Like in a car wash, the guy who vacuums underneath your seats, imagine that with the giant tongue of a whale and he's vacuuming and flossing between the giant teeth. He probably has to swim between the teeth. So, he has sights set on a different kind of lifestyle, one that's maybe a little more glamorous, decorated with a little more bling-bling. He tries everything he can to get there including betting on seahorse races. He's a little bit in debt to everybody."

Robert De Niro will draw upon his old Corleone experience to voice Don Lino. "Then there's Don Lino, our godfather of the great white sharks. He's part of a large syndicate known as the Five Families that include other predators such as killer whales and hammerheads. Don Lino, though, he's got two sons. One is Frankie, a natural born killer. He's a true great white shark, played by Michael Imperioli of 'The Sopranos'. But his brother Lenny is a little bit different. He has a deep hidden secret in that he can't eat meat. If you're a great white shark, this is a very bad thing. It's like being a hitman who can't pull the trigger. Nobody knows about this and he's trying to keep it hidden. [Lenny] is played by Jack Black."

Martin Scorsese, also famous for his own Mafia movies, will voice Mr. Sykes, a puffer fish. "He runs the reef for the Five Families. He's also Oscar's boss because he has a legit business in that he owns the car wash, a money-laundering kind of thing."

The film's two main female characters are voiced by Renee Zellweger and Angelina Jolie. "Angie is played by Renee Zellweger. She works at the Whale Wash, she's known Oscar forever and she's had a crush on him forever. He can't see it because like his other dreams, he thinks he's destined for something a little flashier, which takes the shape of Lola, who is played by Angelina Jolie. She's also working her way up the food chain in her own unique fashion. She's a little bit of a man-eater and when Oscar shows up a hero, she sets her radar on him, so that's fun."

Several well known character actors make up the supporting cast. "There's Luca the consigliere played by Kevin Pollack and then another member of the Five Families would be the killer whale and he's played by Vincent Pastore. Now, Sykes has some muscle working for him. He's got some Rastafarian jellyfish and we love them. They're played by the comedian Doug E. Doug and also Ziggy Marley, which is really cool. Then there's the elderly patriarch of the leopard sharks and this is Don Brizzi and he's played by Peter Falk. He's so cool."

Jensen promises that the fishy characters of Shark Tale, though sharing similar CGI processes, will look significantly different from the characters of films like Shrek. "'Shrek' required more human type of movement so that you'd buy a fairy tale in a real world. We want to go back and play with animation and do what it does best, which is the squash-and-stretch and the playfulness in the exaggerations you can do in animation. So, to do that in CG - which hasn't really been done before, not as a goal - these guys started playing with 2-D tests to make them really get pulled apart. This is also an experiment to see how much 'human' and how much 'fish' these
characters needed to be."

Check out the characters at SharkTale.com. Jensen also added that several big music acts will grace the Shark Tale soundtrack. "Music is going to be really huge in this movie. Will Smith is going to be doing a couple of songs and producing as well as some of the biggest names of hip-hop. Will is going to be working with Missy Elliott and Floetry which is going to be fabulous. Another exciting thing is that Steven [Spielberg] has never released the theme to 'Jaws' before and this the gold mine, this has been the holy grail of hip-hop for a long time and we get to use it! So, that's really exciting."

Shark Tale opens October 1, 2004.