Georg Holm and Orri Dyrason, the bassist and drummer for Sigur Rós, produced 2014's holiday-themed family film The Three Dogateers Save Christmas in which three talking dogs save Christmas from burglars much like Macaulay Culkin did in Home Alone 25 years ago. The movie's tagline is "Christmas just went to the dogs," so it's no surprise it's just one part of what turns out to be an entire Dogateer franchise--Jurassic Bark is in the works and Indiana Bones might actually turn out to be a thing. Watch the trailer for The Three Dogateers Save Christmas, below.
Although after watching the trailer 50 times and failing to find any connection between the Icelandic post-rock band and the movie, Pitchfork reports that Dyrason recently confirmed his and Holm's involvement with the movie in an interview with The Grapevine, explaining "us serious artist types all banded together to produce a talking dog movie."
The project came about when childhood friend approached the musicians about investing in a film during a poolside conversation. After digging through a ton of options which were mostly low-budget horror flicks, the duo settled on the talking dog movie. As Stereogum reports, Dyrason explained to The Grapevine that their "dream was to get Chevy Chase to star in it. You know, a Christmas movie with Chevy Chase--it can't go wrong. When Chevy fell through, we acquired the talents of Dean Cain, and...the rest is history!"
In the interview, Dyrason discusses the lessons he and Holm learned being the producer of a work rather than the artist--most of those lessons were economic. He explains: "you know, you have to be careful with your budget if you want to make money," adding that they "were very stringent, pinching pennies at every opportunity." He also notes that "If you watch the movie, you'll notice that the dogs' mouths are sometimes obscured by strategically placed Christmas tree branches when they're supposed to be talking--that's because the budget for the animation software stuff that makes it look like the dogs' mouths are moving in synch with the voice acting ran out, and we refused to raise it. There was lots of stuff like that going on."
Overall, the experience gave the drummer some serious perspective in regards to record execs. He told The Grapevine that "all of the sudden, I could sort of understand record company people. Those guys just want money, they don't mean anything by anything--they don't care about music--they just want to make money. And that's great, because we need record companies that make money so people like me can focus on making music."
When asked whether or not people should go see The Three Dogateers, the drummer said "You can try, but it's a horrible movie. I doubt you'll manage to finish it. I don't think I did."
