Vancouver – Animation house Mainframe Entertainment is set to team with Hollywood heavyweight The Weinstein Company and comedian Jerry Lewis on an animated update of Lewis’ 1963 comedy The Nutty Professor.

The film will be less a remake and more a sequel, as a young nerd stumbles onto the same formula that once turned his grandfather Julius into the über-cool Buddy Love. Lewis will lend his voice to the project, and executive produce with Mainframe’s Rick Mischel and Gregory Little. Mischel says when Lewis’ producing partner George Paige brought the project to him, he was immediately interested.

‘[The Nutty Professor] is my favorite comedy film of all time,’ says Mischel. ‘I loved it as a kid. We took the project to the Weinsteins, and Harvey Weinstein felt the same way I did, and it went ahead.’

Mainframe will produce and animate the straight-to-DVD project, with the Weinsteins distributing. Evan Spiliotopoulos (The Jungle Book 2) is writing the script. Mischel says the project will go into preproduction in the next month for a fall 2007 delivery.