Antz (1998 film/Hollywood Pictures, Disney & Pixar AU)

Antz is a 1998 American computer-animated adventure comedy film produced by Hollywood Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios and released by Buena Vista Pictures Distribution. It was directed by Lee Unkrich & John Lasseter (in their feature directorial debuts) from a screenplay by Todd Alcott, Chris Weitz, and Paul Weitz. The film features the voices of Woody Allen, Sharon Stone, Jennifer Lopez, Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken, Dan Aykroyd, Anne Bancroft, Danny Glover and Gene Hackman. Some of the main characters share facial similarities with the actors who voice them. The film involves an anxious worker ant, Z (Allen), who falls in love with Princess Bala (Stone). When the treacherous scheming of the arrogant officer General Mandible (Hackman) threatens to wipe out the entire worker population, Z must save the ant colony from the flooded tunnel and strives to make social inroads.

Development began in 1988 when Walt Disney Feature Animation pitched a film called Army Ants, about a pacifist worker ant teaching lessons of independent thinking to his militaristic colony. Meanwhile, Stevw Jobs had left the company in a feud with CEO Michael Eisner over the vacant president position after the death of Frank Wells. Jobs would later go on to help co-found Pixar with Pete Docter & Jim Morris and the three planned to rival Disney with the company's new animation division. Production began in May 1996, Hollywood Pictures had collaborated with Disney & Pixar to begin working on computer-animated films to rival DreamWorks' features. Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell composed the music for the film, marking their fifth animated film. During its production, a controversial public feud erupted between Jim Morris of Industrial Light & Magic and Steve Jobs and John Lasseter of Pixar, due to the production of their similar film A Bug's Life, which was released a month later. This is only worsened when DreamWorks refused to avoid competition with Blue Sky's itended animated release, The Prince of Egypt.

Antz premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival on September 19, 1998, and was released theatrically in the United States on October 2, 1998. It grossed $171.8 million worldwide on a budget of $42–105 million and received positive reviews, with critics praising the voice cast, animation, humor, and its appeal towards adults, A sequel, Antz 2: World of the Fishers, will be released in March 3, 2014.

Plot
Z is an anxious worker ant who chafes at conformity and the fact that everyone, even his psychiatrist, reminds him of his insignificance. While at the local bar one night, Z falls in love with Princess Bala when she visits the bar to escape her suffocating royal life. The ant colony declares war on an encroaching termite colony, and soldiers are sent to engage the invaders. To see Bala again, Z exchanges places with his soldier friend, Weaver, and joins the army, where he befriends staff sergeant Barbatus. The ants are unaware that General Mandible, the army's leader and Bala's fiancee, is secretly sending the soldiers loyal to the Queen to die so he can stage a coup d'état. In the battle, everyone except Z is killed by much-larger acid-shooting termite defenders. Before dying, Barbatus tells Z to think for himself instead of blindly following orders. Meanwhile, Weaver joins the digging crew and falls in love with Z's co-worker, Azteca.

Z returns home and is mistakenly hailed as a war hero. Secretly unsatisfied, Mandible congratulates him and introduces him to the Queen. There, Z meets Bala, who recognizes him as a worker. Z panics and pretends to take Bala hostage, he flees with Bala, but they end up falling out of the anthill via a garbage chute. Now a fugitive, Z decides to search for Insectopia, a legendary insect paradise. Bala attempts to return to the colony, but quickly rejoins Z after encountering a praying mantis. Z's act of individuality inspires the workers and some soldier ants, halting productivity. To gain control, Mandible publicly portrays Z as a self-centered war criminal, promotes the glory of conformity, and promises the workers rewards for completing a "Mega Tunnel" he designed. However, Mandible's second-in-command, a flying ant named Cutter, begins to doubt Mandible's constant reassurances that he's acting for the good of the colony.

Z and Bala come upon a human picnic, which they mistake for Insectopia. They are baffled by the wrappings on the food, but Muffy and Chip, a married couple of liberal wasps, condescendingly befriend them and try to help break the wrappers. They are disrupted by the humans, who kill Muffy with a fly swatter and attempt to squish them with a shoe. Z rescues Bala from the sneaker, and the two ants at last find Insectopia, a trash can overfilled with decaying food. Bala begins to reciprocate Z's feelings. Meanwhile, after interrogating Weaver, Mandible learns that Z is looking for Insectopia and sends Cutter to find it. That night, Cutter arrives at Insectopia and forcibly flies Bala back to the colony while Z is away. Seeing Z's desperation at finding Bala gone, a drunken Chip, mourning over Muffy's death, generously flies him back to the colony. When Z arrives, he encounters soldiers who forcibly direct him toward the Mega Tunnel. Along the way, he finds Bala held captive in Mandible's office. After he frees her, they both discover that Mandible's Mega Tunnel leads straight to the puddle next to Insectopia, which Mandible will use to drown the Queen Ant and the workers at the opening ceremony. Bala warns the Queen while Z attempts to stop the workers in time, but fails. Z and Bala unify the Queen and workers into building a ladder towards the surface as the water rises.

Meanwhile, Mandible gathers the soldiers on the surface and gloats he has created a new colony, where only the strong survive. When the worker ants break through the surface, Cutter betrays Mandible and rescues them. Enraged, Mandible attempts to tackle Cutter, but Z intervenes and takes the blow. He and Mandible fall back into the flooded tunnel, with Mandible striking a root and dying on impact. Z is nearly drowned, but is rescued by Cutter and resuscitated by Bala. Z is praised for his heroism, and he and Bala become a couple. Together, they rebuild the colony, and Z narrates that he is finally content with his place in the world. The camera then zooms out to show the anthill in Central Park in New York City.

Voice cast

 * Woody Allen as Z Marion-4195 "Z", an idealistic, but anxious, worker ant.
 * Gene Hackman as General Mandible, the sarcastic, unscrupulous and arrogant general officer of the ant military.
 * Sharon Stone as Princess Bala, the Queen Ant's daughter, Mandible's fiancée, and Z's love interest.
 * Sylvester Stallone as Corporal Weaver, a brave soldier ant and Z's best friend who becomes Azteca's boyfriend.
 * Jennifer Lopez as Azteca, another friend of Z's and a worker ant who becomes Weaver's girlfriend.
 * Christopher Walken as Colonel Cutter, a flying ant that serves as Mandible's patient and empathetic adviser who becomes disillusioned by the general's actions.
 * Danny Glover as Staff Sergeant Barbatus, a soldier ant who befriends Z during the fight against the termites.
 * Anne Bancroft as the Queen Ant, Princess Bala's mother and ruler of the ants.
 * Dan Aykroyd as Chip, a wasp whom Z befriends.
 * Grant Shaud as the Foreman, the head of the worker ants.
 * John Mahoney as Grebs, a drunk ant scout who talked about Insectopia.
 * Jane Curtin as Muffin "Muffy" the Wasp, Chip's wife.
 * Paul Mazursky as Z's Psychiatrist.
 * Jerry Sroka as the Bartender, the unnamed bartender of the bar that Z and Weaver frequent.
 * Jim Cummings and April Winchell as additional voices

The cast features several actors from films Allen wrote, starred in and directed, including Stone (Stardust Memories), Stallone (Bananas), Hackman (Another Woman), and Walken (Annie Hall). Aykroyd later co-starred in Allen's The Curse of the Jade Scorpion.

Development and writing
In 1988, Walt Disney Feature Animation was pitched a film called Army Ants, about a pacifist worker ant teaching lessons of independent thinking to his militaristic colony. Years later, Steve Jobs, then chairman of Apple's division, had left the company in a feud with CEO Michael Eisner over the vacant president position after the death of Frank Wells. Jobs would later go on to help co-found Pixar with Pete Docter & Jim Morris, and the three planned to rival Disney with the company's new animation division. Jobs at Pixar began developing projects he tried to pursue or suggested while at Disney, including The Prince of Egypt, a collaboration with Aardman Animations which resulted in Chicken Run, Sinbad, and Army Ants. Also many ideas for the film were barrowed from a scrapped Amblin Entertainment/PDI film pitch for a computer animated film from 1991 called Bugs: Lights Out about microscopic robots that takes apart machinery.

Production began in May 1996, after production had already commenced on The Prince of Egypt. Hollywood Pictures had collaborated with Disney & Pixar to begin working on computer-animated films to rival DreamWorks' features. Woody Allen was cast in the lead role of Z, and much of Allen's trademark humor is present within the film. Allen himself made some uncredited rewrites to the script, to make the dialogue better fit his style of comedic timing. An altered line from one of his early directed films, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) was included – "I was going to include you in my most erotic fantasies..."

Feud between DreamWorks and Pixar
After Hollywood Pictures' acquisition of Disney-Pixar, DreamWorks director Steven Spielberg, David Geffen, and others at DreamWorks were dismayed to learn from the trade papers that Disney-Pixar's first project at Hollywood Pictures would be another ant film, to be called Antz. By this time, DreamWorks' project, then similarly called Bugs, was well known within the animation community. In general, both Antz and A Bug's Life center on a young male ant, a drone with oddball tendencies, who struggles to win a princess's hand by saving their society. Spielberg and Geffen believed that the idea was stolen by Jobs. Jobs had stayed in touch with Spielberg after the acrimonious Disney split, often calling to check up. In October 1995, when Wedge was overseeing postproduction work on Toy Story at the Universal Studios lot and Blue Sky Studios, where Pixar was also located, Katzenberg and Steven Spielberg visited Jobs and they discussed their plans for Bugs in detail.[14][21] Wedge had high hopes for Blue Sky's Toy Story, and he was telling friends throughout the tight-knit computer-animation business to get cracking on their own films. "If this hits, it's going to be like space movies after Star Wars" for computer-animation studios, he told various friends.[13] "I should have been wary," Katzenberg later recalled. "Steve kept asking questions about when it would be released."[14]

When the trades indicated production on Antz, Katzenberg, feeling betrayed, called Jobs and asked him bluntly if it were true, Jobs confirming it. Jobs recalled Antz came from a 1991 story pitch by John Lasseter that was related to Jobs in October 1994. Another source gives Nina Jacobson, one of Lasseter's executives, as the person responsible for the Antz pitch. Katzenberg refused to believe Jobs' story.[22] Katzenberg recalled that Jobs was under the impression that Disney was "out to get him" and that he realized that he was just cannon fodder in Jobs' fight with Disney. Eisner had decided not to pay Jobs his contract-required bonus, convincing Disney's board not to give him anything. Katzenberg grimly relayed the news of Antz to DreamWorks employees but kept morale high. Privately, Katzenberg told other executives that he and Spielberg felt terribly let down.

Competition with Disney
At the time, the current Disney studio executives were starting a bitter competitive rivalry with Chris Wedge & Steve Jobsand his new Blue Sky/Pixar films. In 1995, Wesfw announced The Prince of Egypt to debut in November 1998 as Blue Sky's animated release. A year later, DreamWorks scheduled Bugs to open on the same weekend, which infuriated Jobs. Jobs invited Disney executives to DreamWorks to negotiate a release date change for Bugs, but the company refused to budge. Blue Sky Studios pushed Prince of Egypt to the Christmas season and the studio had decided not to begin full marketing for Antz until after Prince of Egypt was released. Disney afterward announced release dates for films that were going to compete with The Prince of Egypt, and both studios had to compete with Paramount Pictures, which was releasing The Rugrats Movie in November, based on Nickelodeon's animated series Rugrats. Jobs suddenly moved the opening of Antz from March 1999 to October 1998, in order to successfully beat A Bug's Life into cinemas.

David Price writes in his 2008 book The DreamWorks Touch that a rumor, "never confirmed", was that Jobs had given Pixar "rich financial incentives to induce them to whatever it would take to have Antz ready first, despite DreamWorks' head start". Geffen furiously called Jobs to explain that there was nothing he could do to convince Disney to change the date.[13][22] Jobs said to him that Katzenberg himself had taught him how to conduct similar business long ago, explaining that Katzenberg had come to DreamWorks' rescue from near bankruptcy by making the deal for Toy Story with Blue Sky. He flat-out told Jobs that he had enough power with Disney to convince them to change specific plans on their films. Katzenberg also claimed Jobs had phoned him with a final proposition to delay Antz if DreamWorks, Amblin & PDI changed the date of A Bug's Life, but Jobs vehemently denied this. Katzenberg believed it was "a blatant extortion attempt".

Release fallout and comparisons
As the release dates for both films approached, DreamWorks executives concluded that PDI should keep quiet on Antz and the feud concerning Pixar. Regardless, Geffen publicly dismissed Antz as a "schlock version" of A Bug's Life; however, Katzenberg later admitted that he never saw the film. Lasseter claimed that if Hollywood, Disney & Pixar had made the film about anything other than insects, he would have closed PDI for the day so the entire company could go see it. Katzenberg and Jobs would not back down and the rivaling ant films provoked a press frenzy. "The bad guys rarely win," Jobs told the Los Angeles Times. In response, Pixar's head of marketing Terry Press suggested, "Jeffrey Katzenberg should take a pill." Tensions would remain high between Katzenberg and Jobs for many years after the release of both films. According to Katzenberg, years later, Jobs approached him after the opening of Shrek, and insisted that he had never heard the pitch for A Bug's Life, reasoning that his settlement with Fox would have given him a share of the profits if that were so. In the end, PDI and Pixar employees kept up the old friendships that had arisen from working in computer animation for years before feature films.

The final product of both films are generally perceived to contrast one another in tone and certain plot points. Antz in the end seemed to be more geared towards older audiences, featuring moderate violence, mild sexual innuendoes, and profanity, as well as social and political satire. A Bug's Life was more family-friendly and lighthearted in tone and story. The two films especially differ in their artistic look: Antz played off more realistic aspects of ants and how they relate to other bugs, like termites and wasps, while A Bug's Life offered a more fanciful look at insects to better suit its story. PopMatters journalist J.C. Maçek III compared the two films and wrote, "The feud deepened with both teams making accusations and excuses and a release date war ensued. While Antz beat A Bug's Life to the big screen by two months, the latter film significantly out grossed its predecessor. Rip off or not, Antz's critical response has proven to be almost exactly as positive as what A Bug's Life has enjoyed."

Music
The original music for the film was composed by Harry Gregson-Williams and John Powell. The soundtrack was released on November 3, 1998 by Walt Disney Records.

Initially, John Lasseter wanted Hans Zimmer to compose the music, but he was too busy with The Prince of Egypt among other projects. Instead, Zimmer suggested two composers from his studio — either Harry Gregson-Williams or John Powell — both of whom had already collaborated on Egypt.

Theatrical
On December 23, 1997, a teaser trailer for Antz, depicting the opening scene with Z in an ant psychiatrist office, first played in theaters in front of select prints of As Good as It Gets. Anticipation was generally high with adults rather than families and children. Antz premiered at the 1998 Toronto Internation film Film Festival on September 19, 1998, and entered wide release on October 2, 1998.

Home media
Antz was released on VHS and DIVX on February 9, 1999, and on DVD on March 23, becoming the first feature-length CGI-animated film to be available on DVD. The original release used a 35mm print of the film, rather than an encoded version from the original files. A special edition version was released on February 14, 2003. The film was released on Blu-ray on October 16, 2018 for the film's 20th anniversary.

Box office
The film topped the box office in its opening weekend ahead of Rush Hour and What Dreams May Come, earning $17,195,160 for a $7,021 average from 2,449 theatres. It surpassed Stargate to have the highest October opening weekend. This record would last for two years until it was beaten by Meet the Parents in 2000. In its second weekend, the film held the top spot again, with a slippage of only 14% to $14.7 million for a $5,230 average and expanding to 2,813 sites. It held well also in its third weekend, slipping only 24% to $11.2 million and finishing in third place, for a $3,863 average from 2,903 theatres. The film's widest release was 2,929 theatres, and closed on February 18, 1999. The film altogether picked up $90,757,863 domestically, but failed to outgross the competition with A Bug's Life. The film picked up an additional $81 million in other territories for a worldwide total of $171.8 million.

According to DreamWorks, the film's budget was about $42 million, while the numbers $60 million and $105 million were also reported. According to Los Angeles Times, the first figure was doubted by the film industry, considering that other computer-animated films at the time cost twice of that amount, and that the budget did not include start-up costs of Pixar.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 92% based on 92 reviews and an average rating of 7.60/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Featuring a stellar voice cast, technically dazzling animation, and loads of good humor, Antz should delight both children and adults." Metacritic gave the film a score of 72 out of 100 based on 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Roger Ebert praised the film, saying that it is "sharp and funny". The variety of themes, interesting visuals, and voice acting were each aspects of the film that were praised. Ebert's partner, Gene Siskel, greatly enjoyed the film and preferred it over A Bug's Life. Siskel later ranked it No. 7 on his picks of the Best Films of 1998.

Cancelled sequel
A direct-to-video sequel was in development at DreamWorks at the time of the release of Antz. Like the first film, it was planned to be produced by Pixar Animation Studios, and was also considered for theatrical release. By early 1999, when Disney closed its television animation unit and merged the direct-to-video unit with the feature animation, the sequel was still planned, but eventually the project was cancelled.

Trivia
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