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Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius is a 2001 American animated science fiction comedy film produced by Nickelodeon Movies, O Entertainment and DNA Productions, and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by John A. Davis and written by Davis and producer Steve Oedekerk. Its voice cast includes Debi Derryberry, Patrick Stewart, Martin Short, Rob Paulsen, and Jeffrey Garcia. The film follows the title character, a schoolboy with super-genius intelligence, who must save all of the parents of his hometown from a race of egg-like aliens known as the Yolkians.
The idea for Jimmy Neutron was first conceived by Davis in the 1980s, in which he wrote a script for a short film titled Runaway Rocketboy and starring a prototype character for Jimmy named Johnny Quasar. After revisiting the abandoned script several years later, Davis decided to retool it as a computer-animated short and potential TV series. A 40-second demo was animated using LightWave 3D and gained popularity at the 1995 SIGGRAPH convention, garnering the attention of Oedekerk and leading DNA Productions to develop an extended TV pilot. After a successful pitch to Nickelodeon, a 13-minute episode was produced, and Nickelodeon, impressed with both the character and the 3D technology, raised the possibility of making both a TV series and a full-length feature film. Davis suggested that the film be made first, so that the production team could create the assets on a higher budget and reuse them in the TV series. Production officially began in early 2000 and was completed in roughly 24 months, with the studio considerably raising its staff count and expanding its studio space. Jimmy Neutron was the first computer animated film to be created entirely with off-the-shelf animation software, including LightWave and project:messiah.
Backed by a strong pre-release campaign, Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was released on December 21, 2001,[1] and was a box office success, grossing $103 million worldwide against a $30 million budget. It earned generally positive reviews for its characters, humor, vocal performances, and sense of charm, fun, and wit. It was nominated for the inaugural Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2001, ultimately losing to Shrek. It was the only animated Nickelodeon film to be nominated in that category for nearly a decade until Rango (2011) was nominated and won.
Due to its success, the film was continued into an animated television series called The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron, Boy Genius, which premiered on July 20, 2002, and ended on November 25, 2006. Four years later, a spin-off series called Planet Sheen was produced, focusing on Jimmy's friend Sheen Estevez. This series premiered on October 2, 2010 (alongside T.U.F.F. Puppy), and ended on February 15, 2013.
A simulator ride based on the film called Jimmy Neutron's Nicktoon Blast was set to take place after the events of the film and featured guest appearances by other Nicktoons characters. It opened at Universal Studios Florida on April 11, 2003, and closed on August 18, 2011.
The idea for a series about a boy with super-genius powers was first conceived in the 1980s by John A. Davis, who scripted and storyboarded a short narrative titled Runaway Rocketboy, centering around a character named Johnny Quasar (inspired by a facetious nickname that his summer co-workers had coined for him in his youth)[3] who builds a rocket ship and runs away from his parents.[4] Davis stated in an episode of the Nickelodeon Animation Podcast that he initially wrote the concept with the intention of creating it as a live-action film with special effects and matte shots, even going so far as to apply for a grant to fund the project, but found that getting such an investment was difficult since the film was not educational or informative.[3] The idea laid dormant for several years until Davis came across the abandoned script while in the process of moving.[3] Around the same time, Davis' Dallas-based studio, DNA Productions, had just begun experimenting with the use of computer animation after obtaining copies of LightWave 3D. In turn, Davis realized that the film would be fitting as a CGI film, since all of the science fiction set pieces could be entirely modeled in 3-D.[3]
Davis, alongside studio co-founder Keith Alcorn, created a 40-second proof-of-concept demo film which depicted Johnny and his robot dog, Goddard, flying through an asteroid belt and greeting the viewers. Simultaneously, Davis and Alcorn worked to create a story bible outlining a potential television series. The demo short was shown off in 1995 at the SIGGRAPH CGI convention, where it was entered into a competition for LightWave films. The demo quickly garnered notability in the computer animation industry, receiving frequent press coverage in magazines and winning two "Wavey" awards- one for Best Character Animation and another for Best in Show. Among people who caught wind of the film was Steve Oedekerk, the founder of O Entertainment, who saw a still shot of Johnny and Goddard in a CGI magazine. Oedekerk, a strong backer of computer animation, was impressed by the characters' designs, stating in an interview that the image particularly stood out to him because it "seemed fun" compared to the mostly-photorealistic work being done with computer animation at the time.[5] He cold-called Davis requesting to see a tape of the full short. After watching the demo, as well as seeing the show bible which Davis and Alcorn had developed, Oedekerk expressed interest in helping to pitch their concept to different networks.[4][6]
After the pilot was completed, Nickelodeon executives, who were impressed by the pilot and still enthusiastic about the show's potential, raised the prospect of creating a theatrical film to accompany the TV series, much to the surprise of Davis and his team at the studio. During the initial pitch to Nickelodeon, Oedekerk had highlighted the idea that using computer animation would allow the same models and assets to be reused between both a film and a TV show, an idea which Nick held strong faith in.[4] Davis further suggested that the feature film be created first, since the characters being modeled could be created at a higher quality than they would have with a TV budget. Although Nick was worried that it would be more difficult to attract a movie-going audience without the TV show to build an install base for the series, these concerns were answered with a series of short TV interstitials which would begin airing in order to build up hype for the upcoming film.[4][6]
With a budget of roughly $30 million, production of Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius was greenlit in Fall 1999, and work began on a script for the film.[7] Production officially started in February 2000 under the direction of Davis. In order to speed up the pace of work for a feature film, the company's staff count was considerably increased from 30 to around 150 employees, and the studio's workspace was also reformed in order to fit such a team of filmmakers.[5] The film was completed in 24 months, roughly half that in which most other CGI films were completed.[4][6]
The screenplay for Jimmy Neutron was written by Davis and Oedekerk, as well as Rugrats staff writers David N. Weiss and J. David Stem.[6] In creating the many ideas in Jimmy Neutron, Davis and Oedekerk thought back to their childhoods, trying to think about "what a kid would create if he had the ability to create any kind of gadget."[4] The film was largely inspired by Davis' own love of science fiction which he had since childhood, drawing influence from various sources including Thunderbirds and Ray Harryhausen's stop motion work. Oedekerk's 6-year-old daughter, Zoe, came up with the idea for "burp soda", which ultimately appeared in the movie as one of Jimmy's many inventions.[4] According to Davis, the Ultralord-obsessed Sheen Estevez was inspired by Davis' own love of collecting.[3] Sheen was initially intended to be Japanese, as he was named after the nickname of a Japanese employee who had worked for Davis, but the filmmakers had trouble finding a suitable voice actor of Japanese descent. Incidentally, they changed the character's nationality to Mexican after opening the role to a broader category and eventually settling on Mexican-American stand-up comic Jeff Garcia.[3][8]
Jimmy Neutron was the first computer-animated film to be created entirely using commercial animation programs rather than proprietary software, with most animation done using both Lightwave and project:messiah.[4] Characters were first modeled in Lightwave, after which they were rigged and animated in Messiah. Texture painting was done via Adobe Photoshop, while compositing work was completed in Maya Fusion.[5] In addition to serving as executive producer, Alcorn was the film's lead character designer, and created actively simplistic and cartoonish designs in order to avoid overcomplicating production. To animate crowd scenes, methods of simplification were used to make animation less time-consuming: characters that were farther from the camera had less articulation, and animators would duplicate the same characters, offset them to different areas, and change their body parts to differentiate them. One particular scene shows a crowd of 6000 Yolkians, each of which uses one of 30 distinct animation loops.[5]
According to Davis, the character models were intentionally given a "sculpted, graphic look," both to avoid making them look overly realistic and to circumvent the prospect of having to deal with simulating cloth or hair.[5] The over-the-top character designs, in turn, influenced the film world's aesthetic (e.g. cars were modeled to be able to fit the characters' stylistically large heads).[5] Off-the-shelf shaders were favored over ones which created more photorealistic lighting in order to maintain a cartoonish appearance throughout.[5]
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