Projects and Partners

The Monkey King

Spencer Proffer will serve as the Co-Executive Producer and Music Director on the $ 35MM Chinese/Canadian Co-production of The Monkey King, set for worldwide release in over 50 countries, Summer, 2013. Proffer/M17’s partners on the production team are led by a team of major award winning producers, anchored by Mainframe Co-Founder and DIC/Hanna Barbera top executive, Christopher Brough (REBOOT, TRANSFORMERS, SPIDERMAN and the CASPER and BARBIE). Also on the team is Steve Waterman (Alvin & The Chipmunks/Stuart Little/Casper), Mo-Ho Tsi (President Scholar Film Group), Arclight’s Australian icon Gary Hamilton, and Ying Ye (Managing Director of Easternlight Films). Our Chinese Distribution partner is the China Film Group Corporation.

The Monkey King is the main character in "Journey to the West", a ribald Chinese folk tale by Wu Cheng'en, written more than 500 years ago during the Ming Dynasty and hugely popular ever since. The Monkey King is an ancient Chinese classic tale of an immortal monkey that challenges the mythical Asian gods and their class system with his super natural powers to protect the mortal beings of the monkey clan that had adopted him after having been born from stone. Our intent is to bring this epic folk tale to the silver screen to touch the hearts and minds of both the international and domestic film going markets by influencing it with the highest possible quality from our extensive experience in the field of animation.

Films like DreamWorks’ “Kung Fu Panda” was a highly acclaimed box office hit that crossed both the international and domestic markets with incredible financial and cultural success. We believe The Monkey King can equally reach the same success by carefully weaving a sensational, emotional and comedic action packed story with highly entertaining classic CG animation that will appeal to both the North America and the entire world film going market by drawing our inspiration from the extraordinary Chinese art and it’s mythology and merging it with the North American filmmaking sensibilities that have been seen in such film studios as PIXAR and Disney Animation.

Our directors, award winning Ralph and Dick Zontag have developed a long history in striving for the highest quality in animation) with their work. The Zondag brothers have over 20 years experience in animation and have distinguished themselves as two of the animation industries leading artists for their exceptionally high standards of quality in the fields of 2D and CG animation, storyboarding, character designing, directing and writing.

They began their industry career animating and storyboarding on a variety of projects including the award winning, Smithsonian-inducted first ever computer generated television series “REBOOT”. They served as Directors and as Animators on the Oscar Award winning box office hit, “An American Tail”. The Zondag brothers Directed their first animated feature, “We’re Back: A Dinosaur Story” for Executive Producer Steven Spielberg and went on to become the principle animators and storyboard artists on several animated feature films including box office hits “BOLT” (2008), “Meet the Robinsons” (2007),“Chicken Little” (2005), the Oscar award winning “Pocahontas” (1996) and for the Directing and Writing of Disney’s “DINOSAUR” (2000) which earned over $350M. Together, Ralph and Dick Zondag have been principally involved with animated motion pictures that have earned over $1.7B Worldwide.

Appealing to the Asian community with the cross purpose of also appealing to the North American community, our intent is to cast The Monkey King with the biggest Asian actors known such as Jackie Chan, Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi. We’ll also be able to have our actors perform in both Chinese and English allowing the film to have the best possible performance in two languages. We’ll score the picture to evoke a highly emotional and comedic feel while still keeping it epic to match the enormous scale of the story. Also, by placing a song written specifically for The Monkey King, we’ll be able to utilize a strong emotional component that has been a staple in many animated movies dating all the way back to “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs” With its stunningly beautiful backgrounds, sets, CG animation, voice talent, music and sound, The Monkey King will be one of the most enjoyable and memorable animated film experiences for years to come… AND… with it’s array of unique and wonderful characters it will surely spawn a franchise with many more sequels to come.