Lenny Henry Leads Voice Cast of Animated Feature "Juul," Heading to Toronto Film Festival
Studio 100 Film has added the CGI animated feature "Juul" to its international sales slate and will introduce the project to buyers at the Toronto Film Festival, according to Variety.
The English-language voice cast features Lenny Henry, the British comedian and actor whose career spans from the BBC sketch show The Lenny Henry Show to a turn as a Discworld librarian in The Colour of Magic. Henry's involvement gives the project a recognisable name for sales agents to pitch as they shop the film to distributors around the world.
Behind the camera, the film is directed by Tom Van Gestel and written by An De Gruyter. The original score draws on jazz-world talent: Michael League and Bob Lanzetti, both of the Grammy-winning fusion collective Snarky Puppy, contribute music.
The story is set in the 1950s and follows Juul, a 17-year-old circus acrobat who is declared brain-dead after a tragic accident. Her magician father then presents her as a "living puppet" to revive the failing family circus — while Juul herself remains fully conscious but unable to control her own body. The premise lands somewhere between fairy tale and gothic horror, an unusual register for CGI animation aimed at international audiences.
Production is under way, with delivery scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2026. That timeline means the finished film would reach distributors in late 2026 at the earliest, positioning it for theatrical or streaming release the following year.
The production pipeline spans five European countries. Fabrique Fantastique in Belgium leads as producer, with co-producers M.A.R.K.13 (Germany), Keplerfilm (the Netherlands), Mr Miyagi (Spain) and Avalon Films (Ireland) — a structure that taps multiple national film incentives and funding bodies, common practice for European animation projects of this scale.
Studio 100 Film, the Munich-based sales arm of the Studio 100 Media group, handles worldwide sales with the exception of Belgium, Germany, Spain and the Netherlands. Those four territories are retained by the respective co-producers, who will manage their own domestic distribution deals — a standard arrangement in co-production financing, where each partner recoups from its home market first.
Toronto's festival, running each September, doubles as a marketplace where sales agents present upcoming titles to international distributors. Lorena Booth, senior manager of sales and acquisitions at Studio 100 Film, told Variety that "Juul" represents the kind of ambitious animated storytelling the company is looking to bring to international audiences.
For buyers walking the Toronto circuit, the pitch is straightforward: a dark, original animated feature with a name cast member, a jazz-inflected score, and a delivery date that could slot into the 2027 release calendar.
