Sucker Punch Productions and Sony are currently working on a live-action Ghost of Tsushima movie to go along with an upcoming anime series, which is exciting to see, but what about the studio’s previous franchise Sly Cooper? Over the past decade, many have wanted to see Sly Cooper steal back the spotlight in the mainstream scene, whether it be as a PS5 remaster or a Sly Cooper 5 game. The latest installment saw the Cooper Gang together in 2013’s Sly Cooper: Thieves of Time for the PS3. Regardless, the series has not left the hearts of many fans, especially those who still wish to have seen the canceled Sly Cooper movie come to theaters. While this wish is pretty much sealed behind a lock-proof safe, there was a time when Sony and Sucker Punch were working on the 3D animated film, which even had a teaser trailer released.
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The Sly Cooper movie was set to adapt Sucker Punch Production’s first installment of the series with Sly Cooper and the Thievius Raccoonus. Announced in 2014 through a teaser trailer and PlayStation Blog post, the planned 3D animated movie was in production with Sony Interactive Entertainment and Escape from Planet Earth‘s Rainmaker Studios. Sly Cooper was expected to follow the adventures of Sly Cooper, Bentley Turtle, and Murray Hippo on a global trek across the world to learn about Sly’s family secrets. The film would have also featured Clockwerk, the main villain in Thevius Racoonus and Sly Cooper 2: Band of Thieves, and Carmelita Fox.
There was a lot of attention brought to this project, with producer Brad Foxhoven noting that the team at Rainmaker perfected the look and feel of the series. Being that this was an adaptation, it was confirmed by Foxhoven that the studio was working closely with Sony and Sucker Punch Productions to keep the Sly Cooper film true to the stealth-action platforming franchise. The essence of the Sly Cooper games felt present in the 2-minute teaser trailer, which saw the gang racing across the city to get to a doughnut shop on time.
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The Sly Cooper trailer brought back some familiar voices with Bentley and Murray’s voice actors Matt Olsen and Chris Murphy reprising their roles. While this felt nostalgic to some, the original Sly Cooper voice actor Kevin Miller confirmed that he was not asked to reprise his role, which instead went to Ian James Corlett. While the casting choice did cause some kickback from fans, Miller reassured that he was excited to see the role given to someone else to continue for years to come. However, the casting wasn’t finalized at the time of the teaser, and Miller did note that the movie might require A-list celebrities to voice the roles to appeal to the box office and audiences.
The teaser looked (and still looks) promising, as the animation quality was decent for its time. Although the trailer was released in 2014, it was scheduled to come to theaters in 2016. After two years of lurking in the shadows, then-director Kevin Munroe stated at WonderCon 2016 that the film hadn’t entered production yet, which is mostly due to the production of another Rainmaker video game adaptation based on a well-known Insomniac series: 2016’s Ratchet & Clank.
The box office performance of the 3D animated Ratchet & Clank movie, which features the likes of Sylvester (Sly) Stallone, John Goodman, Paul Giamatti, and Rosario Dawson, only grossed $14 million worldwide with a $20 million budget and received negative reviews from fans and critics. The film’s poor reception led to Rainmaker reconsidering Sly Cooper‘s budget and release, with the movie having had a second trailer in 2017 without a date attached. Unfortunately, Rainmaker left the project in December 2017, selling the rights to the Sly Cooper property thus vacating the roles of all attached. Since then, there have been no updates and the project has been shelved completely.
Seeing how the animation was similar to the game’s aesthetic, it’s a bummer that we will never see this project finished. It didn’t look too out of the box like we’ve seen in the past years, as it looked solely to pay respect to the Sucker Punch Production’s series. While there is the possibility of another animation studio picking it up, the trailer is all we have to look back on for now.
