I’m not exactly sure why I’m so worried about this animated adaptation of The Little Prince. It’s not like Antoine de Saint-Exupery‘s classic children’s novella is untouched by the hands of film and TV. And there’s nothing wrong with adaptation on a basic level. There’s just something about the notion of a star-filled version of the notoriously sad book that puts me on high alert. Don’t happi-fy this one, Hollywood.
That said, the actors involved give me no small bit of hope.
Jeff Bridges will voice the narrator of the film, a pilot who crashes in the Sahara desert and meets a young prince from a far-off asteroid. Benicio Del Toro, Paul Giamatti, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, and James Franco have all signed on as well, though it’s unknown who any of them will voice. (If Cotillard isn’t playing the Prince’s beloved rose, whom he left behind when he went exploring, I will eat my hat.) That’s some quality right there.
The film will be directed by Mark Osborne, who helmed Kung Fu Panda in addition to working on several episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants. I haven’t seen Kung Fu Panda, but I’ve heard it’s one of those that’s better than you might think it is.
Also giving me hope: The film’s being produced by Aton Soumache, who’s been trying to get the film off the ground for years. He previously directed the 2006 animated bit o’ weirdness Renaissance, which I wasn’t a huge fan of, but having a producer with a demonstrated interest in taking animation in unconventional directions can’t be a bad thing, right? And the company behind the movie is Onyx Films, not some huge studio, which might mean the film is a passion project without a huge budget, which in turn might mean that the awesome actors it’s gotten chose it for quality reasons rather than paycheck reasons.
Don’t mind me, I’m just frantically trying to reassure myself that this movie might do right by one of my favorite books when I was a kid.
(via: The Hollywood Reporter)
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