'Trolls': Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake Bring Sugar and Spice to New Trailer
Your favorite (or least favorite) toy from the ’90s is finally being made into a movie — no, not Beanie Babies. Not Furbies. We’re talking about the cute, if also slightly terrifying, troll dolls.
While Disney has dominated the first half of the year with animated favorites like Zootopia and Finding Dory, DreamWorks is placing its bet for top toon of the winter holiday season on Trolls (although Disney’s ready to play with its highly anticipated Moana). The first full-length Trolls trailer (watch it above) tries to win over even skeptics with an upbeat, candy-colored introduction, topped off by a flip through its impressive roster of actor-singers, including Anna Kendrick, Justin Timberlake (who wrote original songs for the film), Zooey Deschanel, James Corden, Gwen Stefani, and Russell Brand.
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Timberlake cited his inspiration for his new songs in an interview with Collider: “Some of the music does sound very ’70s. Overall, you’ll feel that a lot of the music definitely has a little bit of ’70s funk to it, so that was definitely an inspiration for ‘Can’t Stop the Feeling,’ [the soundtrack’s first single] as well.”
Watch Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake sing ‘True Colors’ from the ‘Trolls’ soundtrack at the Cannes Film Festival:
Trolls centers on the optimistic and colorful doll-inspired creatures who love to sing and dance — but they must watch out for the giant Bergens, who love to eat the happy-go-lucky trolls. After their entire village is taken by the Bergens, it’s up to their ever-cheerful, glitter-freckled leader Poppy (voiced by Kendrick) to team with the pessimistic, cynical Branch (Timberlake) to save them, even though Branch is the Squidward to Poppy’s Spongebob.
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In an interview with Entertainment Weekly at the Cannes Film Festival, Kendrick addressed why a trolls movie makes sense: “As a grown up you do think, ‘why do we love those trolls so much?’ The only thing that I can come up with is that they’re that ugly cute.”
Here, DreamWorks plays up the “cute” and reduces the “ugly” that has become synonymous with the actual troll dolls, which everyone involved surely hopes to see stuffed into a lot of stockings this Christmas.
Trolls will open on Nov. 4.
Watch the previous ‘Trolls’ teaser: