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hot in Texas: 'Neutron' creators animate 'Ant Bully'
10:42 AM CST on Friday, November 11, 2005
JOE O'CONNELL / Special Contributor
The Jimmy Neutron colony has officially bullied its
way to the top of the animation mound. Now make way
for Ant Bully.
Honchos John Davis and Keith Alcorn and some 220
employees of DNA Productions in Irving are working 12-
to 14-hour days to complete the animated film. The
big-league project comes just as the third and last
season of TV's The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron: Boy
Genius wrapped this summer.
"We rode that rocket ship as long as we could," Mr.
Davis says. "Sixty-two episodes and one feature film."
And now Ant Bully has thrust DNA to a higher level.
The high-profile cast includes Julia Roberts, Nicolas
Cage, Meryl Streep, Paul Giamatti, Lily Tomlin, Larry
Miller, Cheri Oteri, Alan Cumming, Regina King and
even Ricardo Montalban.
Mr. Davis goes to the actors to record their parts for
the film, for which animation is about half complete.
"I sort of chase everybody around," he says, often to
far-flung locations where the stars are filming other
projects.
The film is based on John Nickle's children's picture
book about a boy (played by newcomer Zach Tyler) who
is victimized by a bully and takes his anger out by
spraying water on an ant mound. The boy then
mysteriously shrinks to ant size and must do hard
labor to atone. Mr. Davis, who tackled the project at
the suggestion of Tom Hanks, began writing the script
four years ago. In the process, he has seen it expand
both the look, which is much more detailed than
Neutron, and the computer animation toolbox used by
DNA.
The completed film is expected to hit theaters in
August, when it will also be released in 3-D to IMAX
theaters. The first trailers are out now, paired with
showings of Chicken Little and Harry Potter and the
Goblet of Fire. The movie will also be the basis for a
video game from Midway Games.
Next up, Mr. Davis will direct a hush-hush live-action
project he is also penning and prepare an IMAX
special. And he's already working on visuals for
another animated feature.
"The odd thing is there are not that many places in
the country that do long-form feature animation," he
says. "There are maybe five or six of them, and here
we are right here near Dallas."
Bonus footage: Look for Neil Jordan and his Breakfast
at Pluto to open the Deep Ellum Film Festival on Nov.
17 at the Landmark Inwood Theatre. On Sunday, the fest
bestows the Texas Avery Animation Award on Brad Bird
(The Incredibles) at North Dallas High School. More at
Def2.org. ... ABC recently shot Fun in the Sun, a
program promoting its soap-opera lineup, in Dallas.
... La Academia, the Latin mixture of American Idol
and Big Brother, has stopped construction at Las
Colinas and scrapped plans for a series of weekly
concerts there. ... George Clooney's upcoming
political thriller Syriana, set for a Dec. 9 release,
was shot partially at the 777 Ranch near Hondo.
E-mail filmnewsbyjoe@...

Dan

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