The industry and moviegoers today get a sense of how Disney will survive without Pixar as the studio’s first completely CG-animated feature comes to roost in a whipping 3,645 theaters. Chicken Little arrives to challenge the DreamWorks releases Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit and Dreamer for the family audience before the better-reviewed Zathura: A Space Adventure enters the picture next week.
Directed by Mark Dindal (Cats Don’t Dance, The Emperor’s New Groove), this new take on the time-honored tale of a chicken confused by gravity was written by Steve Benchich and Ron J. Friedman, who collaborated on the scripts for Disney’s Brother Bear and the Sony Pictures Animation’s upcoming Open Season. Whereas the original story has the title character inducing panic when an acorn drops from a tree, Disney’s Chicken Little involves an alien invasion a la War of the Worlds and it’s up to our hatchling hero and a handful of fellow social outcasts to save the day.
Zach Braff (Garden State, TV’s Scrubs) stars as the voice of Chicken Little, leading an all-star cast that includes Garry Marshal, John Cusack, Steve Zahn, Amy Sedaris, Patrick Stewart, Don Knotts, Patrick Warburton and Adam West.
Backed by Disney’s pervasive marketing machine, Chicken Little is poised claim the top spot at the box office considering the only other major release is Universal’s Gulf War drama, Jarhead. And while initial box office may be promising, time will tell if Disney is heading in the right direction after abandoning traditional animation for an all-CG pipeline.
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