Sausage Party

Sausage Party is a 2016 American-Canadian adult computer-animated black comedy film directed by Greg Tiernan and Conrad Vernon and written by Kyle Hunter, Ariel Shaffir, Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg from a story by Rogen, Goldberg and Jonah Hill. It stars the voices of Rogen, Kristen Wiig, Hill, Bill Hader, Michael Cera, James Franco, Danny McBride, Craig Robinson, Paul Rudd, Nick Kroll, David Krumholtz, Edward Norton and Salma Hayek. A spoof of Disney and Pixar films, the film centers on an anthropomorphic sausage named Frank who tries to discover the truth about his existence and goes on a journey with his friends to escape their fate while also facing his own nemesis, a psychopathic douche who wants to kill him and his friends.

It is the first American fully computer-animated film to be rated R by the MPAA. The film's rough cut premiered on March 14, 2016, at South by Southwest and the film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016, by Columbia Pictures.

The film received positive reviews from critics, with many particularly praising the humor, animation design, voice acting, screenplay and direction. It also became a box office success, grossing more than $140 million and topping South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999) as the highest grossing R-rated animated film of all time.

Plot
Unbeknownst to humans, a supermarket called Shopwell's is filled with anthropomorphic grocery items that believe that the human shoppers are gods, who take groceries they have purchased to a utopia known as the Great Beyond. Among the groceries in the store is a sausage named Frank, who dreams of living in the Great Beyond with his hot dog bun girlfriend Brenda and of finally consummating their relationship.

Frank and Brenda's packages are chosen by a woman named Camille Toh to leave Shopwell's. A returned jar of Bickle's honey mustard tries to warn the groceries that the Great Beyond is a lie; nobody listens except for Frank. Honey Mustard tells Frank to seek out a bottle of liquor named Firewater, and then commits suicide by falling on the store floor. This creates an accidental cart collision that causes Frank, Brenda and several groceries to fall out of the cart, including an aggressive douche whose nozzle is bent on impact. Douche swears revenge against Frank and Brenda.

Seeking to verify Honey Mustard's warning, Frank leads Brenda to the store's liquor aisle. There, as he smokes marijuana from a kazoo pipe, he learns from Firewater that he and other non-perishable foods invented the story of the Great Beyond as a noble lie to assuage past foods' fears of being eaten by shoppers. Frank, vowing to reveal the truth to the groceries, is encouraged to travel beyond the store's freezer section to find proof. Meanwhile, Frank's friends Carl and Barry are horrified as they witness the brutal murder of other purchased foods being cooked and eaten by Camille. Carl is sliced in half, but Barry escapes the house and encounters a human drug addict, who injects himself with bath salts and becomes able to communicate with his groceries. While attempting to cook Barry, the addict is decapitated in a freak domestic accident.

After Frank separates from his friends, who disapprove of his skepticism of the Great Beyond, he discovers a cookbook behind the freezer section and reveals its contents to the rest of Shopwell's groceries. Initially panicking, the groceries choose not to believe Frank out of fear of losing their sense of purpose. Barry and the groceries from the addict's home return to the store with his severed head, proving that the humans are not gods, but are mortal. The groceries drug the human shoppers and employees using toothpicks laced with bath salts, and several humans are gruesomely killed in the ensuing battle. Douche takes control of Darren, the store manager, by inserting himself into his anus and yanking on his scrotum to puppeteer his actions, but Barry and the other foods defeat them with an improvised rocket. The groceries celebrate their victory with a store-wide orgy.

Afterwards, the gang meets Firewater and Gum, a wad of chewing gum. They have had a psychedelic experience and discovered that their world is not real, and they are merely cartoons voiced by famous actors in another dimension. Gum has constructed a portal to this dimension, and the groceries decide to travel there to meet their creators.

Voice cast

 * Seth Rogen as Frank, a sausage who sets out to discover and expose the truth of his and his fellow groceries' existence.
 * Kristen Wiig as Brenda, a hot dog bun from an 8-bun package of Glamour Buns who is Frank's girlfriend.
 * Jonah Hill as Carl, a sausage who is friends with Frank and Barry.
 * Bill Hader as Firewater, an old Native American bottle of liquor and the leader of the immortal Non-Perishables.
 * Michael Cera as Barry, a deformed sausage who is one of Frank's friends.
 * James Franco as the Druggie, the first human to see the foods as sentient beings after injecting himself with bath salts.
 * Danny McBride as a jar of Bickle's Honey Mustard who is returned to his Shopwell's shelf upon the shopper mistaking him for regular mustard, and tries to warn Frank and the other products of the reality of the "Great Beyond" before committing suicide by falling onto the store floor. (He was credited as ‘’Honey Mustard’’)
 * Craig Robinson as Mr. Grits, an African-American box of grits who is one of the immortal Non-Perishables. He has a grudge against crackers (a pun on the pejorative term).
 * Paul Rudd as Darren, the manager of Shopwell's who is nicknamed the "Dark Lord" as he disposes of expired food and spilled items.
 * Nick Kroll as Douche, a vulgar feminine hygiene product who seeks revenge on Frank for breaking his nozzle and preventing him from reaching the "Great Beyond".
 * David Krumholtz as Kareem Abdul Lavash, a Middle Eastern lavash who has a rivalry with Sammy Bagel Jr.
 * Edward Norton as Sammy Bagel Jr., a Jewish bagel who has an on and off rivalry with Lavash.
 * Salma Hayek as Teresa del Taco, a Mexican lesbian taco shell who has a crush on Brenda.

Rogen has an additional minor role in the film as Sgt. Pepper, a red pepper sergeant. Hader similarly has two additional roles as a bottle of tequila and a guacamole gangster named El Guaco. Rogen and Norton also appear as the uncredited live-action faces of themselves at the end of the film. Anders Holm voices Troy, one of the sausages who picks on Barry. Rogen's wife Lauren Miller voices Camille Toh, a woman who purchases Frank and Brenda's packages, and a tampon who absorbs Darren's spilled blood. Harland Williams voices Baba Ganoush, a drug dealer that the Druggie gets the bath salts from, and a bottle of ketchup that tries to comfort Honey Mustard upon his return. Directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tiernan have various cameo appearances throughout the film: Vernon as a roll of toilet paper, an Adolf Hitler-like sauerkraut, Ralph, a catcalling sausage who does the jackrabbit in front of Brenda, a grape, a beer can, and a pop bottle, and Tiernan as an Irish potato and a can of noodle soup. Storyboard artist Scott Underwood plays Gum, a Stephen Hawking-like wad of chewing gum; Twink, a homosexual Twinkie who is one of the Non-Perishables; and two groceries owned by the druggie: a bag of Krinkler's chips and a half-eaten slice of pizza.

Production
Rogen has stated that he worked for eight years to get the film made; however, the content worried most film studios and they did not pick it up. Noting that the film came from "an innocent place", Rogen stated "'What would it be like if our food had feelings?' We very quickly realized that it would be fucked up." Goldberg revealed the project to Indiewire in July 2010, stating it was a "top secret super project". Initially, Indiewire was skeptical that the project was real and not a hoax on Goldberg's part, but after vetting, it did confirm that it was in the works. In November 2010, Hill independently confirmed to MTV News that he was working on an R-rated 3D animated film.

The film was formally announced in September 2013 as a partnership between Sony Pictures Entertainment, Annapurna Pictures and Point Grey Pictures. On May 29, 2014, it was announced that the film would be released on June 3, 2016, but in early 2016, the release date was revised to August 12, 2016. In January 2014, Rogen, Hill, James Franco and Kristen Wiig were announced as the leads in the film. The other cast includes Edward Norton, Michael Cera, David Krumholtz and Nick Kroll. On April 9, 2014, Salma Hayek was set to lend her voice to the film as Teresa the Taco. It was also announced that Paul Rudd, Danny McBride and Anders Holm would voice characters in the film.

The film received an R rating for strong crude sexual content, pervasive language and drug use. However, when Rogen first submitted the film to the MPAA, they assigned it with an NC-17 rating due to the visibility of pubic hair on Lavash's scrotum during the food orgy scene. In order for the film to grant an R rating, the pubic hair was removed.

Soundtrack
The film's score was composed by Alan Menken and Christopher Lennertz. The soundtrack was released on August 5, 2016, by Madison Gate Records and Sony Music Masterworks.

Premiere and theatrical release
A rough cut of the film was shown at the South by Southwest Film Festival on March 14, 2016. The final cut of the film screened at Just for Laughs on July 30, 2016. The film was theatrically released in the United States and Canada on August 12, 2016. The film was released in the United Kingdom on September 2, 2016.

Home media
Sausage Party was released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment on Blu-ray, DVD and digital download on November 8, 2016.

Box office
Sausage Party grossed $97.7 million in North America and $42.8 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $140.4 million, against a budget of $19 million. The film is the most commercially successful R-rated animated film of all time, replacing South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (which held the record for 17 years), and made a net profit of $47.06 million, when factoring together all expenses and revenues.

In the United States and Canada, Sausage Party was released on August 12, 2016, alongside Pete's Dragon and Florence Foster Jenkins, and was initially projected to gross $15–20 million from 2,805 theaters in its opening weekend. However, after grossing $3.3 million from Thursday night previews (more than the $1.7 million made by Rogen's Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising in May) and $13.5 million on its first day, weekend projections were increased to $30–35 million. The film ended up grossing $33.6 million in its opening weekend, finishing second at the box office, behind Suicide Squad.

Outside North America, the biggest markets are the United Kingdom, Australia, Spain, Germany, Russia and Israel, where the film grossed $10.2 million, $6.8 million, $4.1 million, $3.5 million $2.6 million and $2 million respectively.

Critical response
On review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes the film has an approval rating of 82% based on 208 reviews, with an average rating of 6.8/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Sausage Party is definitely offensive, but backs up its enthusiastic profanity with an impressively high laugh-to-gag ratio – and a surprisingly thought-provoking storyline." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 66 out of 100, based on 39 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.

Vince Mancini of Uproxx wrote "Sausage Party's most charming quality is that it feels exactly like a group of 13-year-olds trying to entertain themselves, with excessive C-bombs and constant groan-worthy food puns." Richard Roeper gave the film three out of four stars, saying, "Despite all the cursing and envelope-pushing and bat-bleep crazy sexual stuff, Sausage Party isn't mean-spirited. It's just … stupid. But also pretty smart. And funny as hell." Lindsey Bahr of Associated Press gave the film a positive review and wrote: "There is no one out there making comedies quite like Rogen and Goldberg. They are putting their definitive stamp on the modern American comedy one decency-smashing double entendre at a time."

Work conditions
After release, controversy emerged after anonymous comments attributed to the animators on a Cartoon Brew article suggested that the animators at Nitrogen Studios worked under poor conditions and were forced by director Greg Tiernan to work overtime without pay. A total of 36 of the 83 animators were blacklisted and went uncredited in the film, believed to be due to their complaints; comments made in anonymous interviews by some of the animators involved in the project by Variety, The Washington Post, and The Hollywood Reporter alleged that the comments were accurate. All the animators in the film were reportedly told outright that they would be blacklisted if they did not work overtime without pay. ''

Rating in France
The film was granted a −12 certificate by France's classification commission. Jean-Frédéric Poisson, the President of the Christian Democratic Party, criticized the decision and said, "An orgy scene for 12-year-olds! Everything remains to be done to combat early exposure to pornography".

Possible sequel
Rogen expressed interest in making a Sausage Party 2 and more animated films aimed for adults. When asked about the possibility of a sequel, Rogen stated, "It's something we talk about, yeah. That's one of the reasons why we took away the [original] ending because we thought, well, if that was the first scene of the next movie it's probably not what you would want it to be, with them just seeing us and finding us basically. But the idea of a live-action/animated movie, like a Who Framed Roger Rabbit-style hybrid, is also very exciting, mostly because Who Framed Roger Rabbit is one of my favorite movies of all time."

Video game
Frank and Brenda, two main characters from the film, make guest appearances in the mobile fighting game Sausage Legend, released by Milkcorp for iOS and Android, as part of a limited special event, running from March 6 through July 31, 2017. As this game involves dueling with sausages, players in this game can unlock and control Brenda, who swings Frank around to battle other sausages.