 Starring: Dave Foley, Kevin Spacey, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Hayden Panettiere, Phyllis Diller
Director: John Lasseter
Year Of Release: 1998
Plot: A colony of ants lives in fear of a group of grasshoppers who come every year, demanding the payment of huge amounts of food in return for ‘protecting’ the insects. Free-thinking ant Flik accidentally drops all the offering food into the river just before the grasshoppers are due to arrive. As a result Flik goes off to find help, but the circus insects he returns with might not be as good as they seem, or are they? |
Pixar really has been an astonishing success story. 1998's A Bug’s Life was their second feature length CG movie, following Toy Story, and helped launch an almost unprecedented run of hits at the cinema.
Indeed it’s difficult to think of any other company that’s released 10 movies and never had a film that could even vaguely be considered a flop, and certainly no other company can say its least successful movie – which is, believe it or not, their first film, Toy Story – still grossed $361 million around the world.
This impressive box office success means that every single Pixar movie is amongst the 150 highest grossing movies of all time at the worldwide. Although Pixar lost the crown of the highest grossing animated movie ever (which used to be Finding Nemo’s $864 million) to Dreamworks Animation’s Shrek 2, which took $919 million (and now 2009’s Ice Age 3 has also made more money than any Pixar movie, with $884 million), the company’s hit rate is still incredible.
Indeed, if you look at the top 50 films ever at the worldwide box office, amongst the animated entries there’s one Disney non-Pixar effort (The Lion King), two from Fox (Ice Age 2 and 3), three from Dreamworks Animation (Shrek 2, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa), but Pixar has a very impressive four (Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Up).
In fact, if you treated Pixar as a franchise rather than thinking of each of the company’s movies separately, it would be the highest grossing franchise in history, having made more money at the box office – a worldwide grand total of $5.5 billion – than any of three current highest grossing film series, Harry Potter, James Bond and Star Wars (although to be fair, Pixar has had 10 films, while Harry Potter and Star Wars have only had six apiece).
However Pixar isn’t just impressive at the box office. It’s also amazingly popular with critics and award voters, who are notoriously difficult to please when it comes to animated fare. RottenTomatoes rates every Pixar movie as Fresh, which is something else that pretty much no other company can boast.
Since the Best Animated Feature Film Oscar was added to the Academy Awards in 2001, Pixar has won four of the eight given out do far (for Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Ratatouille and Wall.E), while every film they’ve released since 2001 has been nominated. They’ve also won three Oscars in the Best Animated Short category, as well as a Special Achievement gong for Toy Story, Monster’s Inc picked up best Original Song and The Incredibles won Best Sound Editing.
It really is a company like no other, especially as the likes of Ratatouille, Wall.E and Up were all so unusual that they had critics wondering if the company was going to have its first flop – until they actually saw the films, that is. There’s also been an astonishingly positive reaction from audiences, with the result that over at IMDB, eight of Pixar’s ten feature length movies are in the site’s Top 250 films ever.
Pixar has now become so trusted for its quality, that its name alone can guarantee one of its films will open strongly, and it’s almost certainly the only the company in Hollywood that can claim that.
If you wanna see just how successful Pixar has been, take a look at the graphic we’ve put together below (you can click on it to see a larger version). Pixar is arguably the most successful company in the history of Hollywood in terms of its hit rate, and with Toy Story 3 due in cinemas this July, it’s not likely to have a strikeout any time soon.
TIM ISAAC
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