Warner Bros. hopes to sink Disney’s Pirates sequel and shutter Sony’s Monster House with its latest CG-animated feature, The Ant Bully. Opening across North America today, the pic is the latest in a steady stream of animated releases that has no end in sight. With mixed reviews and subdued buzz, the film should prove to be a good indicator of whether or not toon fatigue has begun to set in. There was a time when we were lucky to get two animated features a year, but Ant Bully is the sixth to open in theaters since April. Paramount/Nickelodeon’s Barnyard keeps the ball rolling with its debut next Friday.
Directed by John A. Davis (Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius, Santa Vs. the Snowman 3-D) amd produced by Tom Hanks, The Ant Bully is a fable about a young boy who floods an ant colony and later finds himself shrunken down to the size of an ant. Living among the ants, Nickie is forced to help repair the damage he caused and learns some important lessons about cooperation and community. The film’s voice cast includes Nicolas Cage, Julia Roberts, Zach Tyler, Paul Giamatti and Bruce Campbell.
Also opening this week are Universal’s big-screen treatment of the hit 1980s television series Miami Vice and Fox’s teen-targeted revenge comedy, John Tucker Must Die. However, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest is still the most widely distributed film this week. Running in 3,834 theaters in the U.S., the action-adventure yarn has earned more than $334 million domestically since opening on July 7 is going for its fourth week at No.1.
Warner Independent Pictures A Scanner Darkly continues to open on more screens, but Ant Bully‘s main toon competition is Sony’s Monster House, which opened to a respectable $22 million last weekend and will sink or swim this week based on word-of-mouth. With Pirates‘ receipts slowly trailing off, it’s anybody’s game as moviegoers seek to escape the summer heat by ducking into an air-conditioned theater. Let’s just hope they’re chewing popcorn to something animated.
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