HOLLYWOOD – When George, the impetuous storybook monkey famous for his curiosity, finally reached the big screen Friday, there were few outward signs that his journey into theaters has been, perhaps, his most challenging saga.
In the short, simply drawn tales that have introduced him to children for 65 years, Curious George has traveled from Africa to an American zoo, gone up in a spaceship, even signed a movie contract and played himself in a biopic. But it’s been tough going for the little monkey in the real-life world of modern Hollywood.
It’s taken 16 years, 42 writers or writing teams, nine animation studios, a bevy of directors and millions of dollars to help him make his way to the multiplex.
In fact, the attempt to turn “Curious George” into a feature-length film marks one of the longest endeavors in the history of Hollywood animation. Over the years, the “Curious George” project, developed by Ron Howard’s Imagine Entertainment and Universal Pictures, has reflected almost every trend in animation except anime.
It’s been envisioned as a live action-drawn combination like “Osmosis Jones”; a live action-CG comedy like “Garfield”; and a computer-animated feature like “Toy Story.” Abandoning animation altogether, it’s also been conceived as a live-action film with costumed actors, as in “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”
Writers with credits including “Police Academy,” “Monsters, Inc.” and “Shrek” have brought their varying sensibilities to the story of George and his friend and protector, the Man in the Yellow Hat.
And today, “Curious George” reflects none of those once-tempting paths. Instead, its makers say, it’s a sweet, uncomplicated children’s film whose plot unfolds in song and traditional “2-D” drawn animation – a rarity in computer-happy Hollywood.
Universal Pictures rolled it out Friday in theaters nationwide. Perhaps unavoidably, after kicking around Hollywood for so long, this George has had a little work done – he now has eyeballs, for instance.
But studio officials say the new-look character will be more accessible to children, while not losing his appeal to the parents and grandparents who grew up reading their young ones the classic stories of H.A. and Margret Rey. If they’re right, they’ll have solved the daunting problem at the center of “Curious George’s” long, strange adventure.
The Curious George books are all variations on one basic scenario: George’s inquisitive nature leads him into trouble. His friend, the Man in the Yellow Hat, helps him get out of it. The end. No lessons, no real character development.
But once you try to take him off the page, a couple of potential problems come into bold relief: George doesn’t speak. And his stories, in Hollywood parlance, have no arc.
Legions of imaginations over the years struggled to make a movie that could blossom within those constraints. According to the Writers Guild of America, West, the list includes Brad Bird (“The Incredibles”), William Goldman (“The Princess Bride”), Pat Proft (“Police Academy”), Babaloo Mandel and Lowell Ganz (“A League of Their Own”), Joe Stillman (the two “Shrek” features), and Daniel Gerson and Rob Baird (“Monsters, Inc.”).
“I don’t think all of us wanted to go through all the writers we did,” said David Kirschner, one of the producers on the film. “… In the end, what we really wanted was the special relationship between this man and this little monkey.”
After more than a year of working on a script commissioned from Goldman, animation supervisor David Brewster says, Imagine and the studio brought in director Matthew O’Callaghan, who completely revamped the story, bringing it back to its original source material.
The final script, according to O’Callaghan, contains certain iconic moments from the books that people remember: George flying away with a bunch of balloons, George flying a kite, George painting the interior of an apartment to make it look like a jungle, George getting into a rocket ship, George at the zoo.
Will Ferrell was brought on board as the voice of the Man in the Yellow Hat – now called “Ted.” With that kind of star power, O’Callaghan says, he realized they couldn’t just “bookend” the movie with his appearances, as it is done in some of the books.
“So what I think we wanted to do was make kind of a buddy movie,” he said.
Story in place, the rush was on to animate it. Because so much time had been spent on previous versions, the final film had to be made at a breakneck pace to meet the release date. So Universal farmed out most of the work to eight studios on three continents. Animators from Canada, France, Taiwan and Korea contributed to the final product.
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