DreamWorks Animation Cleans Up with Movie Rights to "Maintenance" Comic

You see them in all sorts of action films: The horde of nameless-or occasionally named-minions who work for the evil organization. They usually spend most of their time getting killed by the film heroes or killed by their evil bosses in a fit of rage. So far the most a film ever covered about the life of such a stooge came from a deleted scene in "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery." But now those curious to see what the life of a evil corporation minion entails will have a chance courtesy of DreamWorks Animation and their recent acquisition of the Oni Press comic book "Maintenance."

Author Jim Massey and illustrator Robbi Rodriguez detail the lives of two janitors working for the evil corporation TerroMax, Inc. And the life of a janitor in an evil corporation is not just toxic spill monsters and time machines. It is something more menial such as cleaning up after toxic spill monsters and repairing those buggy time machines. And there are also various coworkers and bosses to deal with such as the mad scientists, the professional killers, the alien repomen, and of course the cute girl who mans reception.

Formerly a McG project for Warner Bros., the studio eventually dropped the project into DreamWorks Animation's hands. Those hands seem more competent in tackling such a project given their successes with the recent supervillain film "Megamind." The barrage of pop culture references and topical humor from "Maintenance" fits the DreamWorks Animation formula of throwing pop culture references and topical humor into almost every animated project since "Shrek." So the writers can take a small rest knowing that most of the jokes are already written in the "Maintenance" comics.

The relative obscurity is a good thing for this project. Since it is so obscure, DreamWorks Animation can easily pass it off as a nearly original project just like "Over the Hedge" nearly fooled me into thinking it was a DreamWorks Animation original. It will give audiences unfamiliar with "Maintenance" a good opportunity to grow aware of the comic and perhaps read it if it turns out to be a good film. So for a last minute grab before the holidays, DreamWorks Animation made a fairly decent grab.

All this "Maintenance" animation project needs now is a director, writer, producers, and some voice actors to fill the roles.