The answer, if the reaction at the European premiere is anything to go by, would appear to be: very nicely indeed. On the day on which some US critics are proclaiming that Disney has hatched a turkey rather than a chicken, hundreds of nippers in the audience at Disneyland Paris are giggling helplessly, cooing at their hero’s blunders and cheerfully keeping up with editing that borders on the stroboscopic. For the rest of the weekend, those same children wander around the theme park sporting souvenir Chicken Little glasses, staring in mild astonishment at one another, as though they have just encountered fellow members of an obscure cult. It’s somehow fitting that the vast, bespectacled face of Chicken Little gazes out across the park, like Dr TJ Eckleburg from The Great Gatsby, lending proceedings an eerie quality.
Until recently, the strain on Chicken Little’s puny shoulders seemed immense, for reasons that had nothing to do with the sky falling in. It was the first computer-generated feature to be produced at Disney without those wizards from Pixar, and everything was riding on its commercial success, especially as the studio’s relationship with Pixar, decidedly rocky following a rift between the former Disney boss Michael Eisner and Pixar’s chief, Steve Jobs, was due to end with the release this summer of the co-production Cars.
Disney has delivered a string of flops such as Treasure Planet and Brother Bear, while anything bearing the Pixar stamp has been an instant smash. Of course, the makers of Chicken Little denied they were competing with Pixar. “The only pressure we felt was to make the movie as entertaining as we could,” insists the film’s producer, Randy Fullmer. “We’re all friends with the people at Pixar. We were constantly calling them up and saying, ‘How did you do that effect?’” But nobody at Disney will have failed to notice that Chicken Little made $30m less in its opening weekend than Pixar’s last two hits, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles. So, it’s official: the mouse is no match for the Anglepoise lamp.
Or so it seemed. Now a surprise in the third act has altered everything: Disney bought Pixar outright last week. The details were still being finalised at the time of writing, but discussions between Jobs and Bob Iger, Eisner’s more amenable successor, have apparently been fruitful. This is good news for both companies. But does it leave Chicken Little out on a wing?
It is, after all, very much Eisner’s baby. It was he, for example, who insisted the main character undergo drastic surgery almost halfway into the picture’s five-year production. “Chicken Little was actually a girl for the first two years,” admits the director, Mark Dindal, somewhat sheepishly. “But Michael said he thought we were missing an opportunity by not making the character male — that the flaws and shortcomings would be funnier that way. He said this at the very beginning. And when we had completed all the character designs and storyboarded the entire film, he said, ‘You know what? I still think it should be a boy.’”
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So, Chicken Little became the first Disney character to undergo gender reassignment. As if that weren’t traumatic enough, his mother was killed off. “When the mother was there, she’d smooth things out. We needed some conflict,” Dindal explains.
“Part of you wants to be mad and say, ‘Oh, come on,’” says Fullmer of the changes. “Mark has daughters, and I think Michael Eisner has sons, so maybe personal feelings came in. But, ultimately, Michael was the boss, and by staying open, we probably made a better movie.” Jason Ryan, who animated the title character, still smarts at the volte-face. “I fell in love with that chicken,” he says fondly. “She was so adorable: this fluffy yellow chick with a cute fringe and a bow in her hair, wearing a little dress. Though I understand the decision now, I was devastated at the time.”
He wasn’t the only one. All the voices had been recorded before a frame of animation was completed, which was bad news for the lead actress. (“I can’t reveal who she is,” says Ryan, “but she’s definitely someone you know.”) And perhaps bad, too, for the audience, for whom children’s films featuring heroic female characters are rarer than hen’s teeth.
With Chicken Little changing sex, Zach Braff, star of the TV comedy Scrubs, was hired to provide the needy, nerdy vocal tones, while Joan Cusack stepped up to the mike as his ugly-duckling sweetheart, Abby Mallard. “Zach talks so fast, but so clearly,” enthuses Ryan, “and he gave Chicken Little this nervous energy. He even enunciates his breaths.” Cusack was a huge inspiration for Tony Smeed, who animated Abby. “I stole Joan’s movements,” he says. “She’s unique. Most people move their hands in front of them when they talk; Joan somehow moves her hands behind her.” But there’s a bit of Smeed in the character, too. “All the animators have a little cubicle with a camera, so we can video ourselves acting out scenes we’re having trouble animating, then use our own actions as a guide.” Does that mean there’s a video of Smeed doing a galumphing Spice Girls dance routine, as Abby does? “All my energies were concentrated on stopping that tape leaking out to the rest of the department.”
Regardless of the Disney-Pixar merger, the studio already has three other non-Pixar computer- animated movies in production — Meet the Robinsons, American Dog and a fresh take on Rapunzel. So, has Disney really bid farewell to 2-D animation, as was mooted on the release of Home on the Range in 2004? “There’ll always be a place in my heart for 2-D,” says Dindal, whose first job was on Disney’s The Fox and the Hound. “But for now, I enjoy this technology, these tools.” “When electric guitars came along, the acoustic didn’t go away,” Fullmer points out. “And there are plenty of people doing great 2-D animation. Look at Hayao Miyazaki.”
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Indeed, but perhaps it’s best not to speak of Chicken Little in the same breath as Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. Instead, enjoy it for what it is: a tasty comic nugget guaranteed to have your youngest chicks clucking with delight.
Chicken Little opens on Feb 10