NEWS
Giving Birth to the Horton movie
09 Mar 2008 By TNPihl (JCO Editor-In-Chief)
Horton began his new journey to the big screen in 2003, when executive producer Christopher Meledandri, then president of Twentieth Century Fox Animation, which supervises the East Coast-based Blue Sky Studios, approached Dr. Seuss Enterprises and the author�s wife Audrey Geisel, about creating a 3-D animated movie based on "Horton Hears a Who!" Meledandri�s proposal to Audrey went far beyond simple business interests. �Ted Geisel had one of the greatest imaginations of the twentieth century,� he says. �His books were a seminal part of my childhood and I have always wanted to find a way to make a digitally animated Dr. Seuss movie.�
The book�s narrative structure was of particular interest to Meledandri and Fox Animation. �It�s one of the few Dr. Seuss books with three acts � a great beginning, middle and end. And of course, �a person�s a person no matter how small� is a wonderful theme.�
Audrey Geisel wanted to make sure that the film adaptation be respectful of her late husband�s book. Meledandri assuaged her concerns, pointing out to her the considerable merits of CG animation and the proven successes of Blue Sky Studios, whose �Ice Age� and �Ice Age: The Meltdown� created fantastical characters; and whose �Robots� depicted a fantastical world. The films� artistry enveloped audiences in their environments and characters, suspending disbelief that they weren�t �real.� That same magic, Meledandri told Audrey, would do the same for DR. SEUSS� HORTON HEARS A WHO!
To help close the deal, Meledandri asked Mike De Feo, head of Blue Sky�s sculpting department, to sculpt a pivotal scene from the book, in which the Mayor holds his son Jo-Jo above his head. As it turned out, the scene was one of Audrey�s favorites, and she loved the sculpture. Some time later, development commenced on the first CG animated feature film based on a work by Dr. Seuss. Horton, the Mayor, Jo-Jo, the Kangaroo � and all the beloved characters in the jungle of Nool and in the city of Whoville � were on their way to movie stardom.
© 20th Century Fox
To guide their journey, the studio tapped Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino to direct. They were a perfectly matched duo to bring Horton to digital life. Hayward was an animator on the groundbreaking Pixar films �Toy Story,� �Toy Story 2,� �A Bug�s Life,� �Monsters Inc.� and �Finding Nemo�; and a story consultant and director of additional scenes on �Robots.� Martino, as art director on �Robots,� helped create the first animated feature that presented a totally imagined world � a wondrously clanky universe populated solely by mechanical beings.
Hayward and Martino�s mandate was to stay true to Seuss� themes, characters and visuals. They based much of the look on Seuss art taken directly from the book, while other designs in the film are extrapolated from the author�s drawings or notes. Additionally, the filmmakers strove to push the medium of CG animation as far as possible, mixing old and new techniques to provide a look never before experienced in a motion picture, yet reminiscent of the era � the 1950s � the book was published. �We pushed everything, creating weird, fun Seussian colors and shapes, but with real textures,� says Hayward.
In previous live action movies based on Seuss� works, the filmmakers had to try and get around real-world constraints in design, movement and anatomy. �We didn�t have that problem,� says Hayward, �because this is a CG movie. For the first time in my career, we could push the animation to all kinds of crazy places just as Seuss pushed his work into some wildly imaginative areas.�
-- Source: Twentieth Century Fox Animation.
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