Hoodwinked Too! goes to court.

First the release date came and went. Then the Burger King promo came and went. But still there is no sign of the movie itself.

Now, reports the Los Angeles Times, the production company behind Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil and its 2005 predecessor has gone to court to force the distributor “to begin arbitration proceedings to resolve disputes between the two companies over the production and release of” the animated sequel.

Hoodwinked Too!, which has had a PG rating since July of last year (and is thus presumably more-or-less complete), was originally slated to come out January 15, but its release was delayed indefinitely in December, and the film was conspicuously absent from the list of upcoming films released by the Weinstein Company just last week.

However, the film was reportedly included in a DVD distribution deal that the Weinsteins signed with Sony last month.

Kanbar Entertainment, the company that got the first Hoodwinked! going before it even had a distributor, “charges that Weinstein is in breach of its joint-production agreement” for the sequel “because it never presented a plan to market and distribute the film or make a trailer for it, per the agreement,” reports the Times.

Presumably the film will be released to the public in some form or other eventually. But for now it’s an open question, even more so than before, as to when and how that will happen.

Incidentally, the original Hoodwinked! is currently the Weinstein Company’s third-highest-grossing movie ever, behind Inglourious Basterds (2009) and Scary Movie 4 (2006).

APR 3 UPDATE: Variety has some more details. And someone has posted an intriguing but anonymous comment at The Playlist to the effect that: “After the way Kanbar treated the creators of this franchise, a little phrase about karma comes to mind…”