TV and Film:The Amazing Maurice

The Amazing Maurice
Promotional Poster
ASIN	[1]
IMDB	10473036
First Broadcast	TBA
Broadcast Channel	Feature Film
Director(s)	Toby Genkel, Florian Westermann
Producer(s)	Julia Stuart (Sky), Emely Christians (Ulysses), Andrew Baker and Robert Chandler (Cantilever Media) and Rob Wilkins (Narrativia)
Writer(s)	Terry Rossio
Starring	TBA
Duration	85 minutes
Episodes	1
Series	Children's books
Annotations	Annotations for TV and Film:The Amazing Maurice
Notes
Preceded by	The Abominable Snow Baby
Followed by	'
All data relates to the UK home release.

The Amazing Maurice is an animated feature film adaptation of The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, produced by Cantilever Media and Ulysses Filmproduktion for Sky Cinema, in conjunction with Narrativia.

It is the first feature film adaptation of Terry Pratchett's works and the first to be originally screened in cinemas. It’s UK premiere was at the Manchester Animation Festival, though it's first broad release in the UK was on Sky Cinema's pay television network in December 2023. It was released worldwide in early 2023.

Blurb

Maurice, a streetwise cat, has the perfect money-making scam. He’s found a dumb-looking kid who plays a pipe, and his very own horde of rats – rats who are strangely educated, and literate, so Maurice can no longer think of them as “lunch”. And everyone knows the stories about rats and pipers... However, when Maurice and the rodents reach the stricken town of Bad Blintz, their little con goes down the drain. For someone there is playing a different tune. A dark, shadowy tune. Something very, very bad is waiting in the cellars. It’s not a game anymore. It’s a rat-eat-rat world down there and the educated rats must learn a new word...EVIL.

Differences from the novel

While the film is broadly faithful to the book, in order to fit the medium, the runtime and perhaps a broader (and younger) audience, many things are simplified. Here are some of the biggest changes.

• The character of Hamnpork, and much of the subplot of the rats moving on from their old ways, are not in the film. (The group embrace the Mr Bunnsy inspired search for paradise.)
• Maurice does not always hide his ability to talk. In the first scam at the start of the film, he takes a much more active role, directly talking to the village’s inhabitants about the rats and telling them “the Piper” is the solution. (One child in the crowd repeatedly points out that it’s a talking cat, establishing this is meant to be unusual, but the rest of the crowd take no notice.)
• The rat catchers make the Rat King by accident, rather than deliberately as a masterwork. It controls them directly using greed and fear, rather than subtly influencing their minds. There’s also no mention of them using eight rats, causing this Rat King to be magically powerful; in this version all Rat Kings have “mind power”.
• The Rat King controls a large number of rats inside a coat, scarf, hat and mittens, allowing it to masquerade as the “Boss Man” of the rat catchers. It doesn’t use the name “Spider”. When it lures in Dangerous Beans, it’s inside the Mayor’s office.
• The Mayor is more suspicious of the rat catchers, suggesting that perhaps there’s a connection between the missing food and the rats they’ve supposedly eradicated, but is intimidated by the “Boss Man” and drops this line of questioning.
• Clicky the clockwork mouse is magically alive, though this is played for laughs. It refuses to enter a trap when it’s scared, and later in the film shows up to save the day. In the finale, it is shown to have a family of clockwork mice.
• The “real” Pied Piper in the film has a magic flute and lives in a cottage in the woods near Bad Blintz. Rather than arriving for a showdown with Keith, Malicia knows that his magical pipe is the only thing that can break the power of a Rat King, so they go looking for him to steal it. When he discovers them, he uses the pipe to make them walk into his oven. (In witch terms, he's gone a bit “Black Aliss”; Malicia says the situation is “so Hansel and Gretel”.) After they escape with his pipe he’s not seen again.
• The rats become part of the town of Bad Blintz, turning it into a tourist attraction as in the book, but there’s no discussion with the Mayor about how it will all work; it's just part of the happy ending.
• Much more of Malicia’s discussion of stories are about whether or not she and Keith will be a couple, and romance tropes in general. They kiss in the end, and Malicia says he’s a “great kisser, actually” during her final narration. (Both characters seem older in the film than in the book.)

Easter eggs

As well as being implicitly set on the Discworld (we see a drawing of the Disc on A’Tuin with the turtles, and “Unseen University of Ankh-Morpork” is explicitly mentioned), there are many references to Pratchett and the Discworld novels scattered throughout the film.

A few to look for:

• Malicia has a copy of Twurp's Peerage on a lectern, and a life-sized metal statue of the Luggage (it appears to be a functional chest, perhaps made of copper).
• The fountain in Bad Blintz’s town square is a statue of a dragon coming out of a toilet; possibly a swamp dragon?
• There is a bust of Terry Pratchett in the Mayor’s office.
• Rincewind and Twoflower (or at least two characters who greatly resemble them) turn up in Bad Blintz at the end; quite appropriate now it's a tourist attraction. “Rincewind” is also seen dumping rubbish out of the literally Unseen University in a flashback.

Cast

• Hugh Laurie (and Bastian Pastewka) as Maurice
• Emilia Clarke as Malicia Grim
• David Thewlis as Boss Man
• Himesh Patel (and Jerry Hoffmann) as Keith
• Gemma Arterton as Peaches
• Hugh Bonneville as The Mayor
• David Tennant as Dangerous Beans
• Ariyon Bakare as Darktan
• Rob Brydon as The Pied Piper
• Julie Atherton as Nourishing
• Joe Sugg as Sardines
• Janin Ullmann as Nahrhaft

Tie-in Books

Several books and new covers were released to tie-in with the release of the film:

• The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents - with a new cover, plus an introduction by Rob Wilkins telling the story of how the book was imagined by Terry.
• The Unadulterated Cat - with a new cover and altered title, The Unadulterated Maurice, plus a new introduction by Rhianna Pratchett.
• Mr. Bunnsy Has An Adventure - a facsimile edition of the book from the story, as it appears in the film.
• The Amazing Maurice The Art Of The Film

External Links

• The Amazing Maurice at the Internet Movie Database
• The Amazing Maurice page at Narrativia (archived version of previous page)
• Cantilever Media
• The Amazing Maurice at the Ulysses Filmproduktion website
• Sky Cinema announcement on Sky Group website