Jorge R. Gutierrez is planning his next animated project for Netflix. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the Maya and the Three and Book of Life director will return to that same mythological, Mesoamerican universe to design a new limited series.
Gutierrez made the announcement during a workshop with students at the Annecy animation festival. Although he didn’t give much more detail, he did say that “a lot of reincarnated characters” would appear and that “It’s pretty crazy, but it’s still really in early development.”
Another project that is further in development for Gutierrez is his animated feature, I, Chihuahua. The project was first announced early last year. It stars comedian Gabriel “Fluffy” Iglesias as the title pup named Chacho, a chihuahua luchador (Mexican wrestler) who enters an international wrestling tournament to save his family.
Gutierrez described I, Chihuahua, as “basically a Street Fighter movie about a little Mexican Chihuahua dog who wants to be a Mexican wrestler.”
He continued: “It’s about this underdog Chihuahua who enters the World Cup tournament for fighters, and there’s going to be fighters from all over the world. He’s going to fight tigers and panthers and cheetahs and jaguars, and he’s just this little dog. It’s about the underdog that is Latin America competing with the world.”
During an interview with Screen Daily, Gutierrez talked about how things have changed on the animation front in Mexico since he moved away years ago.
“It’s magical what is going on in Mexico, isn’t it?” he said. “In Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, there were 50 Mexicans working on the film and more than half in Mexico. Hollywood is turning its gaze toward Mexico and thinking, “If we send productions to Canada, India … and the whole planet, why can’t we send them to Mexico?”