Over the years, the SXSW film festival has become known for its work-in-progress screenings, in which a major film that’s allegedly not finished is previewed, months ahead of its actual release date.

Past highlights have included Bridesmaids, Trainwreck and Furious 7 – but though they were billed as incomplete, they were basically finished products, save some color correcting and sound tinkering. But this was not the case for Sony’s R-rated animated comedy Sausage Party, from Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, who co-wrote This is the End.

“To the work-in-progress nature of this, I’ve heard people say: ‘Yeah, it’s a work in progress,’ and they haven’t like color timed it or some shit,” Rogen said when introducing the film to a packed house in Austin on Monday. “This is a fucking work in progress. You will very quickly see this is not semantical trickery – it’s not fucking done.”

He wasn’t kidding. The loony opening song number, which sees every food item in a grocery store spring to life to sing a profanity-laden song about the “great beyond” (the place they believe they go after the checkout counter), appeared scrappy, with unfinished computer visuals and the occasional still frame. The same went for the the film’s gonzo finale. But that in no way distracted from the inspired lunacy Rogen, Goldberg, and directors Conrad Vernon and Greg Tierana, have managed to conjure up in Sausage Party.

Rogen voices the aptly named hot-dog Frank, who eagerly awaits the day he’ll reach the “great beyond”, so he can be freed from his package to slip inside his sexy girlfriend hot-dog bun Brenda (Kristen Wiig). His dreams are thwarted following a brutally realized shopping-cart collision (picture the opening of Saving Private Ryan with food products instead of soldiers) that sees Frank separated from his fellow wieners, and thrust onto a quest to learn what really happens when food leaves the store.

This is distinctly non-Pixar territory, despite its core similarities to Toy Story. The lead villain is an actual douche (voiced by Nick Kroll), Salma Hayek features as a lesbian taco with the hots for Brenda and Edward Norton does his best Woody Allen impression to play a Jewish bagel who butts heads with an Arabic flatbread. As they did with their controversial comedy The Interview, Rogen and Goldberg upend racial and cultural stereotypes to deliver a film that delights in being as politically incorrect as the MPAA would allow. (“You can show food fuck!” Rogen gleefully said when asked how Sony got Sausage Party past the censors.)

Despite its provocative nature, Rogen insisted during an onstage Q&A that Sausage Party “honestly came from an innocent place”.



“People like to project their emotions on to the things around them – their toys, their cars, their pets,” said Rogen. “That’s what Pixar’s done for the last 20 years. So we thought: ‘What would it be like if our food had feelings?’ We very quickly realized that it would be fucked up.”

Sausage Party also offers food for thought amidst all the crude humor. In addition to being a film about our food, it is also a film that questions the existence of god – and the harm religion can breed.

Rogen said that the theological aspect of Sausage Party came into focus as he and Goldberg developed the project over eight years. “It’s so weird to say that about a movie where you just saw a turnip blow a radish,” said Rogen.

Vernon said the animation will be completed in a month, with lighting effects finished in May. Legendary composer Alan Menken (Aladdin) is set to handle the score. “He’s deeply ashamed of this,” Rogen joked.