FILM FESTIVAL-CANNES/THE LITTLE PRINCE U.S. director's "The Little Prince" gets French premiere at Cannes

Record ID: 153870

  • Title: FILM FESTIVAL-CANNES/THE LITTLE PRINCE U.S. director's "The Little Prince" gets French premiere at Cannes
  • Date: 22nd May 2015
  • Summary: CANNES, FRANCE (MAY 22, 2015) (REUTERS) ****WARNING CONTAINS FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY*** DIRECTOR MARK OSBORNE ENTERING NEWS CONFERENCE ROOM HOLDING TOY FOX, CAST ARRIVING OSBORNE INSTALLING TOY FOX IN FRONT OF HIM PART OF FRENCH AND U.S. CAST AND OSBORNE AT NEWS CONFERENCE (SOUNDBITE) (English) DIRECTOR, MARK OSBORNE, SAYING: "I knew the book has a power and I know that the power of the book is that people either share it with someone else or someone else shares it with them and it becomes a part of your life. So that's what originally I said no, I said 'impossible, you can't make a movie that takes this book and put that on a screen'. And I didn't want the book to get hurt in any way. And that's when I realised that there was actually this other opportunity to pay tribute to the book and to tell a story about the way that the book affects us all."
  • Embargoed: 6th June 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA18HELT2H9QRBQXAM2HMXG5EP
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: The creators of the animated film "The Little Prince", which had its world premiere at the Cannes festival on Friday (May 22), 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.
    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 made for his novella.
    Computer-generated images are used for the story about the Little Girl's friendship with the Aviator, and its consequences.
    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 the resistance to 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'd 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 press 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 U.S. plans as yet unannounced.
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