In America, his debut feature has taken more money than the high profile new releases of Bruce Willis, Will Smith, and Jim Carrey. Yet you won't see him at premieres, hear him moaning about the size of his trailer, or read about him getting up to no good on Sunset Boulevard. That's because Jimmy Neutron is a ten-year-old boy genius. Oh, and a cartoon character.
"Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" has taken an impressive $80 million since opening in the States last December, a figure comparable to the box office gross of "The Rugrats Movie" - another spin-off feature made by kids' TV network Nickelodeon.
"Jimmy Neutron" is a step up technically from "Rugrats", being a 3D computer-generated animation, but while Pixar won't be quaking in its boots just yet, it will be looking over its shoulder at Nickelodeon's ability to make a highly profitable movie for only $25 million. ("Monsters, Inc.", by comparison, cost an estimated $115 million.)
So, who is Jimmy Neutron? Well, although he's only officially ten-years-old, the character was first devised in the mid-80s by John A Davis, as a boy genius who makes his own rocket ship. It wasn't until the mid-90s that he surfaced on celluloid, though, when a 40-second short, "Runaway Rocket Boy", was screened in an animation contest. Awards duly followed.
But it was only when director Steve Oedekerk ("Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls") saw an image of the short - Jimmy with his robot dog sidekick, Goddard - in a CGI magazine that things really started to take off. Oedekerk got in touch with Davis and his business partner, suggesting they develop "Runaway Rocket Boy" into a TV series.
Expanding the 40-second clip into a short cartoon, now called "The Adventures of Johnny Quasar", the trio took their dream for a CGI TV series to Nickelodeon. Smart move.
The TV network ordered a pilot, which went into production two years later, at the end of 1997. And when that was well received, Nickelodeon ordered both a series and feature film, sensing their first "multimedia character" - someone who would appear in movies, online, in video games, and in print. And that's a major reason why "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius" has managed to flourish so spectacularly at the box office.
John A Davis, who has written, produced, and directed the feature-length film, says the cartoon has allowed him to "live out a lot of childhood fantasies - what would it be like to if you got all disgruntled at your parents and you just built a rocket ship and flew away from home? Or if you could build your own little robot dog?" For the answer to those questions, visit Jimmy Neutron in Retroville to find out.
