“Frozen” head animator and longtime Disney veteran Lino DiSalvo is developing an animated feature that tells the coming-of-age story of an Italian teenager who teams up with a mythical beast to save her hometown from an evil curse.

Written by Kissy Dugan and produced by Emmanuel Jacomet for Mediawan Kids & Family with Italy’s Palomar Animation, “Twisted” is among the buzzy projects being pitched this week at Rome’s MIA Market, which runs Oct. 14 – 18.

Inspired by the tall tales DiSalvo heard growing up in an Italian American household in Brooklyn, the story is based on a holiday ritual in the Italian town of Andrista, where villagers perform an annual rite to mark the Feast of the Epiphany by hunting and capturing a mythical beast known as the Badalisc.

Describing what he hopes will be “a fun, big movie” as “super silly with tons of heart,” DiSalvo said: “I just want to bring my awesome, superstitious, loving, wonderful, rich history of growing up Italian to the big screen.”

“Twisted” begins in a small town in the Valcamonica valley in Lombardy, where for centuries the villagers have gathered on the eve of the Epiphany to hunt the Badalisc, a mythical, horned creature dwelling in the forests of the Alpine region. Once captured, the beast is paraded through the town, where he exposes secrets, gossip and petty grievances — a ritual that returns the community to peace and harmony for another year.

In DiSalvo’s telling, however, the tradition takes an unexpected turn. “Our movie picks up where everyone has gotten so sick of this guy revealing everyone’s secrets every year that they kick him out of the town,” he said. “This poor creature! He’s been the star of the show for hundreds of years, and…they banish him from the town.”

The Badalisc’s only crime is doing the one thing that comes naturally to him: telling the truth. “In his heart, all he wants to do…is be part of the community.”

Enter Angelina, a smooth-talking teen who works in the family pizzeria. “Her family has this expectation [that] she’s going to be the next prime minister, she’s going to be a fashion designer — things that Italian families want for you to ‘succeed,’” said DiSalvo. “The irony is that all she wants to do is make pizza.”

Unlike the truth-telling Badalisc, Angelina proceeds from the “flawed philosophy” that “it’s just easier to tell people what they want to hear.” “She basically lies to everybody,” said DiSalvo. As the plot kicks into motion, the young hero — with some help from the banished beast — will eventually be called upon to save the people of Andrista, a quest that gives rise to the central tension of the film: “Is it ever right to lie? Should you always be truthful, even if it means hurting someone?”

Now based in Montreal, the Brooklyn native drew heavily on memories from his childhood while developing “Twisted.” “I grew up in a family that had a pizzeria. All my life experiences took place in that pizzeria. It’s the lens that I viewed the world through,” he said. “Being a first-generation Italian American and belonging to a family that was traditional but also interestingly modern in their take, they had expectations for me. I was going to be the first DiSalvo not to make pizza.”

His success since then would do any Italian grandma proud. Recruited at the age of 20, DiSalvo spent 16 years at Walt Disney Animation Studios, where he served as head of animation on the Academy Award-winning film “Frozen” and worked as a supervising animator on projects including “Tangled” and “Bolt.” After leaving Disney, he served as creative director for Paramount Animation and later as the head of creative at ON Animation Studios in Paris. More recently, he directed and produced the Emmy-nominated Christmas special “Reindeer in Here” for CBS Studios and Paramount+.

For “Twisted,” he’ll join forces with Paris-based powerhouse Mediawan Kids & Family, which in the past year has been growing its slate of prestige animation.

“Ever since I mentioned it to them, Emmanuel Jacomet, the producer there, he’s been championing the project,” said DiSalvo. “He’s believed in it. The leadership there believes in it. Then they started giving me resources to put together writers and…bring my wish list to fruition.”

Early returns have been encouraging, with the animator and his Mediawan partners presenting “Twisted” earlier this year to industry audiences at Annecy and Cartoon Movie in Bordeaux.

“After we showed this proof of concept, the response from the industry has been awesome,” DiSalvo said. “It really warms my heart that theatrical distribution in Europe and South America, there’s a hunger for these personal stories that still feel fantastical and silly and comedic and action-based, told with a very specific point of view.”

Israeli authorities said four Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers were killed and nearly 60 people were wounded in a drone strike on a military base in Binyamina, Israel, which the Lebanon-based Hezbollah militant group has claimed responsibility for, according to reports.

“Yesterday, a UAV launched by the Hezbollah terrorist organization hit an army base,” the IDF said in a post on X. “[Four] IDF soldiers were killed in the incident. The IDF shares in the grief of the bereaved families and will continue to accompany them.”

Earlier on Sunday, rescue services in Israel reported that nearly 60 people were wounded in the strike, some of them critically.

Israeli media reported that two drones were launched from Lebanon, one of which was intercepted.

US TO DEPLOY MISSILE DEFENSE SYSTEM, MILITARY PERSONNEL TO ISRAEL

Who was hurt – whether military members or civilians – or what was struck was not immediately clear.

On Thursday, Israel conducted two strikes in Beirut that killed 22 people, and Hezbollah said it was retaliating for the strikes by targeting an Israeli military training camp.

This was the second time in two days that a drone struck Israel.

IDF MEETS LITTLE RESISTANCE FROM HEZBOLLAH AFTER WEEKS OF HITTING TERROR TARGETS, OFFICIALS SAY

Rescue workers at the scene on Sunday night’s UAV/drone strike on Benyamina, Israel. (credit: Tsuriya Zeevi/TPS-IL)

On Sunday, as Israelis were celebrating Yom Kippur, there was a drone strike in a Tel Aviv suburb that damaged the area but did not cause any injuries.

Iran and its proxy terrorist groups launched massive waves of missiles against Israel earlier this year in April and again on Oct. 1. Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) has previously been deployed to Israel in 2019, but only for an exercise, Pentagon officials say.

AMERICAN FATHER OF HAMAS HOSTAGE ITAY CHEN PUSHES US, ISRAEL ON ‘PLAN B’ AS NEGOTIATIONS FALTER

Rescue workers at the scene on Sunday night’s UAV/drone strike on Benyamina, Israel. (credit: Tsuriya Zeevi/TPS-IL)

Sunday’s strike came the same day the U.S. said it would send a new air-defense system to Israel to increase protection from missiles.

“The THAAD Battery will augment Israel’s integrated air defense system. This action underscores the United States’ ironclad commitment to the defense of Israel, and to defend Americans in Israel, from any further ballistic missile attacks by Iran. It is part of the broader adjustments the U.S. military has made in recent months, to support the defense of Israel and protect Americans from attacks by Iran and Iranian-aligned militias,” the Pentagon said in a statement.

Iran’s massive Oct. 1 missile barrage displayed the threat Iran poses to Israel as a regional power. While debris from hundreds of rockets and missiles rained down on Israeli territory, there were no Israeli fatalities reported.

Fox News’ Lucas Tomlinson and Anders Hagstrom, along with The Associated Press contributed to this report.

The Prime Minister of Iceland, Bjarni Benediktsson, has announced the dissolution of the country’s governing coalition at a surprise press conference in the capital Reykjavik.

Benediktsson cited growing disagreements between the three political parties that make up the ruling coalition as his reason for ending it.

“There are disagreements about policy regarding asylum seekers that have been public. The government has disagreed for quite a while on a vision for the future of energy efficiency. Motions from the Minister of Environment and Energy have been stuck within the government for a while,” he told reporters.

He said fresh parliamentary elections are slated to take place on 30 November, if President Halla Tómasdóttir accepts the motion to dissolve parliament.

National broadcaster RUV said elections must take place no later than 45 days after the dissolution of parliament.

Benediktsson is scheduled to meet Tómasdóttir on Monday.

Iceland’s coalition government is made up of Benediktsson’s conservative Independence Party, the centre-right Progressive Party and the leftist Greens.

Surprise announcement

Svandis Svavarsdottir, the infrastructure minister and chairman of the Greens, said the decision to dissolve parliament came as a surprise and had not been mooted in talks she had had with Benediktsson on Saturday.

“I assumed that the meeting was convened with integrity and we were discussing the situation and perhaps we could come back and see if there is a chance in specific issues,” she said.

“I thought that was our mutual understanding that the most important issue was the economy. Housing and issues regular people are facing like making ends meet. I thought that was our most pressing issue but now we can see that other issues are more important for the prime minister.”

The ruling coalition, in power since November 2021, has faltered under a raft of problems, particularly after a series of volcanic eruptions in the country forced thousands to evacuate their homes, putting more pressure on an economy already dealing with high inflation and rising interest rates.