First still images from Genndy Tartakovsky's Hotel Transylvania with Adam Sandler and co.

First still images from Genndy Tartakovsky’s Hotel Transylvania with Adam Sandler and co.

March 13th 2012, 9:45pm

When I first heard of HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA it was associated with Adam Sandler’s name, which immediately caused me to roll my eyes and toss it into the “who-gives-a-shit” portion of my brain. However, in doing that, I overshadowed one of the most interesting aspects of this project and that’s that it is directed by none other than Genndy Tartakovsky, creator of the animated series Samurai Jack and the first animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars animated mini-series’.

And, suddenly, I’m intrigued by the potential of this project. Granted, it’s still got Sandler, but the thing is, I don’t hate the guy. He just hasn’t done anything worth a shit in the last decade. My opinion shouldn’t matter to him anyway. He sleeps in a mansion and probably in a waterbed full of hundred dollar bills.

Tartakovsky, however, is a talented animator who has proven himself time and again. Samurai Jack is one of my all-time favorite animated series. It’s fun, frenetic, inventive, and bursting with energy. If Tartakovsky can inject that into what would normally be considered just another run-of-the-mill animated pic then we may well be in for a treat.

Oh, and here’s those images:

Not too shabby, I suppose, but not exactly changing the face of animation. Aside from Sandler as Drac, the voice cast includes: Selena Gomez (Mavis, Dracula’s daughter), Andy Samberg (Jonathan, a human), Kevin James (Frankenstein), Fran Drescher (Eunice, Frankenstein’s wife), Cee-Lo Green (Murray the Mummy), David Spade (Griffin the Invisible Man), Steve Buscemi (Wayne the Werewolf), Molly Shannon (Wanda the Werewolf) and David Koechner (Quasimodo).

Here’s the official synopsis:

Welcome to the Hotel Transylvania, Dracula’s (Adam Sandler) lavish five-stake resort, where monsters and their families can live it up, free to be the monsters they are without humans to bother them. On one special weekend, Dracula has invited some of the worlds most famous monsters; Frankenstein and his bride, the Mummy, the Invisible Man, a family of werewolves, and more, to celebrate his daughter Mavis’s 118th birthday. For Drac, catering to all of these legendary monsters is no problem but his world could come crashing down when one ordinary guy stumbles on the hotel and takes a shine to Mavis.

HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA opens on September 28, 2012