In the first Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs, overeager mad scientist Flint Lockwood's machine designed to end world hunger instead visited the town of Swallow Falls with a plague of gigantic, mutant food. In its upcoming sequel, Flint returns to his island home to track down his still-operational machine – only to find that it has created an entire ecosystem of food-animal hybrids.

Let the puns commence.

Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 will be directed by Cody Cameron (Open Season 3) and Kris Pearn (Surf's Up). The movie will feature the voice talents of Bill Hader (Men in Black 3), Anna Faris (The Dictator), James Caan (That's My Boy),  Neil Patrick Harris (The Smurfs), and Terry Crews (The Expendables 2), among others.

The original Cloudy... was a surprisingly, and delightfully, bizarre animated film devoted wholeheartedly to the absurdity of its premise. From the looks of this trailer, it seems like its sequel will similarly pursue a borderline-surreal concept all the way to the edge of comedy ostensibly aimed at kids.

It's only when one looks under the hood that any worries about Cloudy 2 commence. Much of the original film's quirky aesthetic can be attributed to Clone High creators Phil Lord and Chris Miller (both recently of 21 Jump Street). With their complete absence from the sequel, one has to wonder whether it will be able to capture the manic energy and wry comic timing of its predecessor.

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Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2 will drop into theaters in September of 2013.