Los Angeles – Nickelodeon’s first full-length stop-motion animated special It’s A SpongeBob Christmas! will premiere on Nickelodeon on December 9 (U.S.) and December 21 (Asia), following its CBS television premiere on November 23.
It’s A SpongeBob Christmas! was inspired by the classic Rankin/Bass specials like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town; and the popular SpongeBob song released in 2009, “Don’t Be a Jerk (It’s Christmas)”, co-written by Tom Kenny (voice of SpongeBob) and Andy Paley. The half-hour special features John Goodman as Santa Claus.
In It’s A SpongeBob Christmas!, Plankton turns everybody in Bikini Bottom from nice to naughty by feeding them his special jerktonium-laced fruitcake all in an effort to get his Christmas wish – the Krabby Patty formula. The Nickelodeon premiere will include bonus scenes featuring a stop-motion version of the character “Patchy,” also voiced by Tom Kenny.
Work began on the stop-motion special in October last year at Screen Novelties production studio, where theartists worked with executive producer, Paul Tibbitt; creator, Steve Hillenburg and creative director, Vincent Waller to ensure the 2D cartoon characters were properly translated into 3D puppets. Six sets were going at one time where 27kg of baking soda was used as snow, 19kg of glitter added sparkle, 10kg of wood chips created Sandy’s tree house floor and 20 boxes of breakfast cereal covered the coral rocks.
Created by Nickelodeon Home Entertainment and distributed by Paramount Home Media Distribution, SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! DVD will be available on November 6 for the suggested retail price of US$14.99. The DVD features behind-the-scenes making of the special and interviews with the cast and crew; a pre-color animatic and yule log.
SpongeBob SquarePants: It’s a SpongeBob Christmas! iTunes Extras edition features over 30 minutes of behind the scenes footage, a sing along version of “Don’t Be a Jerk (It’s Christmas)”, a 360° SPIN-Tacular Character viewer and more. The special was released October 30th on iTunes, Xbox Video, Amazon Instant Video, PlayStation Network and Vudu.
Nickelodeon will also release the It’s A SpongeBob Christmas! album, available for digital download from online music retailers including Amazon and iTunes. Nickelodeon will release the “Don’t Be a Jerk — It’s Christmas” e-book on November 15, with a limited quantity of special edition hard copies available for sale exclusively on www.NickShop.com.
