'Little Prince' Soars Into Cannes

(MENAFN- Arab Times) A new animated film based on the best-selling French book "The Little Prince" premiered in Cannes on Friday, adding a touch of childhood magic to the red carpet of the movie festival. The $63-million (57-million-euro) cartoon is the most expensive France has made, and its choice of a US director, Mark Osborne, who made "Kung Fu Panda", aims it squarely at the family market dominated by Pixar and DreamWorks.

Jeff Bridges, Marion Cotillard, Rachel McAdams, James Franco and Benicio Del Toro head the English-language voice cast. The film is not a faithful adaptation of the book, which mixes swipes at selfish adults with accessible philosophising through the account of a stranded aviator conversing with a space-travelling boy-prince.

Rather it takes scenes and characters from the book and weaves them into a modern-day story that stresses the importance of imagination in a regimented world.

The main character is a studious young girl being brought up by her super-efficient single mother.

The child befriends a kooky next-door neighbour who spends his time star-gazing, trying to fix a tatty old airplane - and writing the tale that becomes "The Little Prince".

As the little girl reads the neighbour's story, she changes, learning to trust in childhood flights of fancy and whimsy.

"I thought this was a beautiful way to present the story in a different way," Osborne told a news conference ahead of the premiere.

"The aviator becomes an embodiment of the Little Prince - he's a very old man but he has all the wisdom of the Little Prince."

Making the nine-year-old girl a small adult who has to rediscover her inner child helped drive the story along while capturing one of the themes of the book, he said.

The original book, by writer-aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupery, is "tough to adapt," said Dimitri Rassam, one of the French co-producers who secured the rights for the movie.

"It is intimate and fragile, and Mark Osborne's genius was to insert the book into a larger story," he said.

Modern

The fact that a US director helmed it, and that the modern settings look more like America than France did not distract from the essence of the story, he said.

"It's really a universal work," Rassam said, adding that he had "cried each time" he saw the movie.

Around 250 people worked to make the picture, which relies on two animation techniques: the smooth, computer-generated 3D images familiar from Hollywood cartoons and stop-motion sequences for scenes taken from the book.

The movie, which is not in the race for Cannes's Palme d'Or prize, won warm applause at its press screening ahead of the premiere.

It is to get its wide French release in late July, and is to move on to other countries in the months following.

The creators of the animated film "The Little Prince" knew they had to take extra care in adapting one of the most cherished works of 20th-century French literature for the screen.

To that end, American director Mark Osborne ("The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie") has created a story within a story in which a Little Girl, voiced by Mackenzie Foy (the 10-year old Murph in "Interstellar") is introduced to poet and novelist Antoine de Saint-Exupery's classic by an elderly aviator (Jeff Bridges).

He lives in a rundown but fantastic mansion with a wrecked plane in the backyard, next door to the soulless modern home where the girl and her mother, who wants everything to be done on time and to perfection, have moved in.

He reads her The Little Prince, which he says he has written, and opens her mind to how she is missing out on the wonders and fantasies of childhood.

Other characters from the book, which has been translated into 250 languages and sells about 2 million copies a year, include The Fox voiced by James Franco and The Rose voiced by Marion Cotillard.

The film uses stop-motion animation to re-create and expand upon the watercolours that Saint-Exupery painter for his novella, a fantasy tracking the relationship between an aviator who crashes in the Sahara and a small boy, the "Little Prince", who says he is from an asteroid and tells the story of his life.

Computer-generated images are used for the story about the Little Girl's friendship with the aviator, and its consequences.

Returned

Saint-Exupery fled the Nazi occupation of France and wrote the book in New York in the early 1940s but returned to join the French Free Forces in North Africa to help fight Nazi Germany.

He disappeared while flying a reconnaissance mission over the Mediterranean in 1944, shortly after the book's publication.

Osborne said he had done everything in his power to retain the book's Gallic flavour, and said he had won plaudits from Saint-Exupery's family when he gave them a rundown of his plans.

"I pitched everything and they applauded it and they said, 'You have our full support' and I burst into tears," Osborne said after a media screening. "It was like a huge moment because for me it's really important for us to have that sort of seal of approval." The film will be released in France in July, with US plans as yet unannounced.

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LOS ANGELES: As the Cannes Film Festival draws to a close, The Orchard is in final negotiations for North American rights to the drama "Louder Than Bombs," starring Jesse Eisenberg, Variety has learned.

The film from Norwegian director Joachim Trier premiered in-competition on Monday night to strong reviews, and the Orchard beat out other distributors such as Magnolia, A24, Alchemy and Music Box, according to sources close to the talks. The movie will have a traditional theatrical release.

"Louder Than Bombs" focuses on a widower (Gabriel Byrne) and his sons (Eisenberg and Devin Druid), who are in grief after the loss of their mom (Isabelle Huppert) - a war photographer for The New York Times. Amy Ryan, David Strathairn and Rachel Brosnahan round out the cast.

Producers include Motlys' Thomas Robsahm; Memento Films' Alexandre Mallet-Guy; Animal Kingdom's Joshua Astrachan; Big Beach's Marc Turtletaub; and Bona Fide's Albert Berger and Ron Yerxa.

The Orchard, which until recently was mostly in the music distribution business, has made a big splash on the festival circuit this year. The company acquired the raunchy comedy "The Overnight" (which opens on June 19) at Sundance, as well as the doc "Cartel Land," and the SXSW drama "Lamb."

UTA Independent Film Group handled the negotiat