Tai National Park (in Ivory Coast) is a humbling place." Technically, just getting footage of them is difficult. Ninety percent of the time, that's all you see - shadows.
"This is a very dark, thick forest with black animals in the shadows. Some critics are bashing the film's kid-friendly "Disney touches," with Slant magazine complaining about an overdose of "cuteness." But with Disney's long track record of aiming movies at and then reaching younger viewers, reviews like that may be irrelevant.ĭisney touches aside, it took a Disney-sized investment to make "Chimpanzee," which Fothergill says was four or five times as difficult as "African Cats," which he co-directed. And then today, when the audience roared, we realized how wrong we were."
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And Tim was rolling his eyes, 'Not THAT again.' He did it, we resisted putting it in the movie - slightly resisted it. "Disney execs were at the recording session, and they'd yell, 'Get Tim to do the 'power tool grunt' for this scene' (with the chimps using tools). We see him lose his mom, and we see him adopted by the group's alpha male, behavior almost unheard of by the researchers who helped create the film.ĭisney touches? Hiring Tim Allen as narrator, adding jokes to the script.
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We meet Oscar, a baby, and follow him as he learns from his fellow chimpanzees how to use tools to gather ants and crack nuts. Thus, "Chimpanzee" plays as a nature documentary with Disney touches. "Disney's input was far more oriented toward Hollywood storytelling, and that was incredibly helpful." Having Disney backing meant that the studio sent screenwriters from "Beauty and the Beast" and "Toy Story 2" to "rip our script to shreds, in a very constructive way," Linfield says. "The chimps never even looked at the script, much less read it." "'African Cats' played out close to the script," Fothergill said with a chuckle. But you need to have the money to be able to change directions, if that's what the animals do. "Story."Įven in a documentary, you start with a script, a part of the animal's lives you expect to be able to tell, Linfield said.
"That's what they're teaching us," Linfield adds. "We're trying to have a narrative, tell a story." "And Disney allows us not to make a documentary," Fothergill said. We had over 700 shooting days on 'Chimpanzee,' almost three times as much as say, 'African Cats.'" And money "translates into time in the field. "Of course, Disney provides us with a lot of money," Fothergill said after the Orlando world premiere of "Chimpanzee," the latest from the filmmakers who gave us "Earth" and "African Cats" between them. A few films into their Disneynature movie-making experience, producer-directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, veterans of the BBC's acclaimed "Planet Earth" series, figure they're finally getting the hang of Disney.
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