Chicken Little (2005 film)

Chicken Little is a 2005 American animated science fiction comedy film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released by Walt Disney Pictures. It was directed by Mark Dindal from a screenplay by Steve Bencich, Ron J. Friedman, and Ron Anderson, based on a story by Dindal and Mark Kennedy, loosely inspired on the European folk tale "Henny Penny", known in the United States as "Chicken Little". In this version, the title character is ridiculed by his town for causing a panic, thinking that the sky was "falling". A year later he attempts to fix his reputation, followed by an unexpected truth regarding his past being revealed. The film is dedicated to Disney artist and writer Joe Grant, who died before the film's release. This also marked the final film appearance of Don Knotts during his lifetime, as his next and final film, Air Buddies (another Disney-produced film that was released just over a year later), would be released posthumously.
Chicken Little was animated in-house at Walt Disney Feature Animation's main headquarters in Burbank, California. It is Disney Animation's first fully computer-animated feature film, as Dinosaur (2000) was a combination of live-action and computer animation which in turn was provided by Disney's The Secret Lab.
Chicken Little was Disney's second adaptation of the fable after a propaganda cartoon made during World War II, serving as a loose remake to the cartoon.[5] The film is also the last Disney animated film produced under the name Walt Disney Feature Animation before the studio was renamed Walt Disney Animation Studios.[6] Chicken Little premiered at the El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood, Los Angeles on October 30, 2005, and had its wide release on November 4, in Disney Digital 3-D (the first film to be released in this format) and 2D. It received mixed reviews from critics and grossed $314 million worldwide, making it the second-highest-grossing animated film of 2005 (behind Madagascar).[7]
== Plot ==
In the town of Oakey Oaks, "Chicken Little" Cluck rings the school bell and warns everyone to run for their lives. This sends the town into a panic. Eventually, the Head of the Fire Department calms down enough to ask him what is going on. He explains that the sky is falling because a piece of it had fallen on his head when he was sitting under the big oak tree in the town square; however, he cannot find the piece. His father, Buck "Ace" Cluck, who was once a high school baseball star, assumes that it was just an acorn that had fallen off the tree and had hit him on the head, making Chicken Little the laughingstock of the town.
A year later, Chicken Little has become infamous in the town for being prone to ruin everything accidentally. His only friends are other outcasts: Abby Mallard (nicknamed "Ugly Duckling"), Runt (a cowardly pig), and Fish Out of Water (who wears a helmet full of tap water). Chicken Little joins his school's baseball team to recover his reputation and his father's pride but is made last until the ninth inning of the last game. He hits the ball and makes it past first, second, and third bases but is met at home plate by the outfielders. He tries sliding onto the home plate but is touched by the ball. While it is presumed he lost the game, the umpire brushes away the dust to reveal Chicken Little's foot is touching home plate, thus declaring him safe and the game won; Chicken Little is hailed as a hero for winning the pennant.
Later that night back at home, Chicken Little is hit on the head yet again by the same "piece of the sky" — only to find out that it is not that, but rather a panel that blends into the background (which would thereby explain why Chicken Little could not find it last time). He calls his friends over to help figure out what it is.
When Fish pushes a button on the back of the hexagon, it flies into the sky, taking him with it. It turns out to be part of the camouflage of an invisible UFO piloted by two aliens. Chicken Little, Abby and Runt rescue Fish, and discover that the aliens are heading to Earth. The two aliens attack the group, chasing them through a cornfield. They rush back to the school, where Chicken Little rings the bell to warn everyone, but the aliens escape, leaving an orange alien child behind. No one believes the story of the alien invasion and Chicken Little's reputation is thus ruined. The next morning, he and his friends discover the orange alien named Kirby, and minutes later, a fleet of alien ships descend on the town and start what appears to be an invasion. The invasion, however, is actually a misunderstanding, as the two aliens are looking for their lost child and attack only out of concern. As the aliens rampage throughout Oakey Oaks, supposedly vaporizing everything in their path, Chicken Little realizes he must return Kirby to his parents to save the planet.
In the invasion, Buck, now regaining his pride and trust in his son, defends him from the aliens until they get "vaporized." The aliens, however, are not actually vaporizing people but teleporting them aboard the UFO. It turns out the aliens were touring Earth and came across the town for its acorns. Their ship has broken camo panels that fell and hit Chicken Little on the head. After everything is explained, the apologetic aliens return everything to normal, and everyone is grateful for Chicken Little's efforts to save the town.
Another year later, Chicken Little, Buck, his friends and the citizens of Oakey Oaks watch an in-universe movie depicting a fanciful retelling of the events that transpired, portraying Chicken Little as an action hero named Ace.
== Voice cast ==
* Zach Braff as "Chicken Little" Cluck, a young and diminutive rooster, who suffers from a reputation for being called crazy when he caused a panic when he thought that the sky was falling.
* Joan Cusack as Abigail "Abby" Mallard (also known as the Ugly Duckling), a female duck (implied swan) with buckteeth. She is Chicken Little's best friend, and by the end, his girlfriend.
* Dan Molina as Fish Out of Water, a goldfish who wears a scuba helmet filled with water and lives on the surface.
* Steve Zahn as Runt of the Litter, a large pig who is much larger than the other children but is far smaller than the other members of his family.
* Garry Marshall as Buck "Ace" Cluck, Chicken Little's widower father and a former high school baseball star.
** Mark Mitchell would later voice the character in the Australian release.
* Amy Sedaris as Foxy Loxy, a mean fox who is a baseball star and the "hometown hero". She is also a tomboy and one of the "popular kids" at school. In the original fable, as well as the 1943 short film, Foxy is a male fox.
* Mark Walton as Goosey Loosey, a dimwitted goose and Foxy Loxy's best friend and henchwoman.
* Don Knotts as Turkey Lurkey, a turkey and the mayor of Oakey Oaks, who is friendly and sensible but not very bright.
* Sean Elmore, Matthew Josten, and Evan Dunn as Kirby
* Fred Willard as Melvin
* Catherine O'Hara as Tina
* Mark Dindal as Morkubine Porcupine and the Coach
* Patrick Stewart as Mr. Woolensworth
* Wallace Shawn as Principal Fetchit
* Patrick Warburton as Alien Cop
* Adam West as Ace - Hollywood Chicken Little
* Harry Shearer as Don Bowowser
== Production ==
=== Writing ===
In September 2001, director Mark Dindal developed the idea for Chicken Little, with its title character envisioned as a paranoid female chicken with the voice of Holly Hunter that went to summer camp to reduce her anxiety, as well as repair her relationship with her father. At the summer camp, she would uncover a nefarious plot that her camp counselor, who was to be voiced by Penn Jillette, was planning against her hometown.[8] Dindal would later pitch his idea to Michael Eisner who suggested it would be better to change Chicken Little into a male because as Dindal recalled, "if you're a boy and you're short, you get picked on."[9] However, Dindal later clarified that the decision was made, in part, due to market research at the time stating, "I remember being told, 'Girls will go see a movie with a boy protagonist but boys won't see a movie with a girl protagonist,'... "That was the wisdom at the time, until Frozen comes out and makes $1 billion."[10]
In January 2003, when David Stainton became Disney's new president of Walt Disney Feature Animation, he decided the story needed a different approach. He told the director the script had to be revised, and during the next three months, it was rewritten into a tale of a boy trying to save his town from space aliens.[11]
During the rewriting process, Dindal, along with three credited writers and nine others, threw out twenty-five scenes to improve the character development and add more emotional resonance with the parent-child relationship. Dindal stated that "It took us about 2½ years to pretty much get back to where we started... But in the course of that, the story got stronger, more emotional, and Amazing, too."[11][12]
=== Casting ===
When originally envisioned as a female character, Holly Hunter provided the voice for the title character for eight months, until it was decided for Chicken Little to be a male.[8] Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick and David Spade were originally considered for the role.[13] Against forty actors competing for the title role, Zach Braff auditioned where Dindal noted he "pitched his voice slightly to sound like a junior high kid. Right there, that was really unique — and then he had such great energy."[14]
In April 2002, Variety reported that Sean Hayes was to voice a character named the Ugly Duckling,[15] but the character was rewritten into a female.[16] Now conceived as Abby Mallard, Hunter, Jamie Lee Curtis, Sarah Jessica Parker, Jodie Foster, Geena Davis, and Madonna were considered, but Joan Cusack won the role for her natural comedy.[17] In December 2003, it was announced Braff and Cusack were cast, along with other cast members including Steve Zahn, Amy Sedaris, Don Knotts, Katie Finneran, and Garry Marshall.[18]
Marshall was asked to provide a voice for Kingdom of the Sun, which was re-conceived into The Emperor's New Groove and directed by Dindal, but was removed from the project for being "too New York".[12] When he was approached to provide the voice for Buck Cluck, Marshall claimed "I said I don't do voices. You want a chicken that talks like me, fine. So they hired me and they didn't fire me, and it was like a closure on animation."[19]
Australian comedian Mark Mitchell was hired to dub the voice of Buck Cluck for the Australian release of the film, as a decision by Disney to get a national celebrity to publicize the film.[20]
=== Animation ===
To visualize this story, Disney selected 50 percent of its 2D animation staff to put them in a CGI animation team, and placed them through a rigorous eighteen-month training program with George Lucas' Industrial Light and Magic, which included an introductory to Alias's Maya that would serve as the main 3D animation software used on the project. This was due to Disney CEO Michael Eisner announcing that the studio would move to computer animation in response to a downturn caused by rising competition from Pixar and DreamWorks Animation computer animated features, as well as the unsatisfactory box office performances of The Emperor's New Groove, Atlantis: The Lost Empire, Treasure Planet (2002), and Home on the Range (2004). As some of the animators had worked on Dinosaur (2000), which used live-action backgrounds,[21] the animation team took inspiration for its staging, coloring, and theatrical lighting from Mary Blair's background designs featured in Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Peter Pan (1953).
For the aesthetics in the background designs, the background layout artists sparingly use digital matte paintings to render out the naturalistic elements, including the trees and the baseball diamond, but they were retouched using Adobe Photoshop as background cards featured in the film.[22] The lighting department would utilize the "Lumiere" software to enhance virtual lighting for the shading form and depth and geometric rendering for the characters' shadows,[23] as well as use real lighting to create cucaloris.[22]
For the characters' designs and animation style, Dindal sought to capture the "roundness" as seen in the Disney animated works from the 1940s to 1950s,[22] by which the characters' fluidity of motion was inspired from the Goofy cartoon How to Play Baseball (1942).[22] Under visual effects supervisor Steve Goldberg who spearheaded the department, the Maya software included the software program "Shelf Control" that provided an outline of characters that can be viewed on-screen and provided a direct link to the controls for specific autonomy, as well as new electronic tablet screens were produced that allowed for the artists to draw digital sketches of the characters to rough out their movements, which was then transferred to the 3D characters.[23]
All of the characters were constructed using geometric polygons.[22] For the title character, there were approximately fourteen to fifteen character designs before settling the design composed of an ovular egghead shape with oversized glasses. The final character was constructed of 5,600 polygons, 700 muscles, and more than 76,000 individual feathers, of which 55,000 are placed on his head.[19]
Following the casting of Braff, supervising animator Jason Ryan adapted Braff's facial features during recording sessions to better combine the dorkiness and adorability the filmmakers desired. "He's got this really appealing face and eye expressions," Ryan said, adding that he was amazed by Braff's natural vocal abilities.[14] Next, the animators would utilize the software program "Chicken Wire", where digital wire deformers were provided for the animators to manipulate the basic geometric shapes to get their desired facial features. Lastly, a software development team constructed XGen, a computer software program for grooming fur, feathers, and generating leaves.[23]
== Release ==
The film was originally scheduled for release on July 1, 2005,[24] but on December 7, 2004, its release date was pushed back to November 4, 2005, the release date that was originally slated for Disney/Pixar's Cars.[25][26] The release date change was also the day before DreamWorks Animation changed the release date of Shrek the Third, from November 2006 to May 2007.[27] Cars was later released on June 9, 2006.
At the time of the release of Chicken Little, the co-production deal between Disney and Pixar was set to expire with the release of Cars in 2006. The result of the contentious negotiations between Disney and Pixar was viewed to depend heavily on how Chicken Little performed at the box office. If successful, the film would have given Disney leverage in its negotiations for a new contract to distribute Pixar's films. A failure would have allowed Pixar to argue that Disney could not produce CGI films.[28]
On October 30, 2005, the film premiered at the El Capitan Theatre, with the cast and filmmakers as attendees, which was followed with a ballroom bash at the Hollywood and Highland Center.[29][30][31] Along with its standard theatrical release, the film was the first Disney in-house release to be rendered in Disney Digital 3D, that was produced by Industrial Light & Magic, and exhibited via Dolby Digital Cinema servers at approximately 100 selected theaters in twenty five top markets.[32] To describe the process, Dindal remembers that it was a last minute decision, as it was suggested just 11 months before its release. For the 3D conversion, Dindal had a specific way he wanted the film to look: he wanted it to feel like a moving View-Master. As he puts it,"When I was a kid, and I was really taken with something, my first thought was, Oh, I want to step into that… They felt like a window that you could step in. I remember showing those and saying, ‘Can you make it look like this? What is it about this that feels more 3D than most 3D films film like that?'"[10]
Category:2005 Cartoons
Category:Walt Disney Productions Cartoons