Chicken Little/Trivia


 * Hey, It's That Voice!: Patrick Stewart voiced Chicken Little's teacher and Adam West voiced the movie version of Chicken Little.
 * Don Knotts voiced the Mayor in one of his last roles ever.
 * The alien officer near the end is Kronk.
 * Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara, who have worked together frequently in other films, are revealed to voice the two alien parents by the end of the film.
 * And, of course, J.D. as Chicken Little.
 * In Spain and Denmark, Chicken Little is Ash Ketchum.

This movie came about during a tumultuous time at Disney but also brought about huge change in its wake. As something of a key part of the film's creation, here's a potted history of the situation at the time.

<1930's newsreel announcer>Dateline: 2004. Disney is in a quandary as lessening box office returns on their own in-house animated features hit their bottom line whilst their partner Pixar ride high on the hog with several critical and box office hits under their belt. With increasing pressure from their main rival Dreamworks Animation and a soon-ending deal with their pals in Emeryville, the guys at the Mouse House decide to make their own CGI works and show those guys who's boss. Go gettem boys!

Chicken Little came as the first fully 3D (no, not that 3D) computer animated feature for Disney Feature Animation after really bad turnouts for most of their films in the early 2000s and Pixar threatening to leave for a better deal on profit sharing with another studio once their partnership expired. Traditional animation production was being thrown out (very literally in some cases) and it seemed like Disney was gearing up for life post-Pixar. This was the first film to come out of Disney in the new raytraced light of CGI and existed purely to show it can do the pop culture skewering fractured fairytale too and as a statement of "lookit me now, bitch!" to Pixar. That was the intent anyway. After a barrage of advertising, the film ultimately got lukewarm reviews and performed poorly at the box office compared to the competition (though it did do much better than the previous four films they had released that decade). The film was often derided for its giant marketing push with the titular lead having two consecutive appearances in the Macy's Parade, advertisements parodying other popular films and trends along with a cameo in Kingdom Hearts II for the pint-sized star in hopes of ensuring the loyalty of Japanese filmgoers. The end result was one of defeat for Disney and and did nothing to convince Pixar or the filmgoing public that they were ready for this new game.

Luckily, 2005 was also a good year for switcheroos and with long-term CEO Michael Eisner stepping down to be replaced by Rob Iger, new shit was about to come to light, man. Iger sat down with the guys at Pixar and a year later announced the buyout of Pixar essentially making it their own. In exchange, Pixar's head honcho John Lassetter got the plum slot of Chief Creative Officer for Disney Animation Studios (as Disney Feature Animation became known) whilst keeping his other position at Pixar. All this due to the activities of one small fowl, awesome huh?