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To that end, American director Mark Osborne ("The SpongeBob
SquarePants Movie") has created a story within a story in which
a Little Girl, voiced by Mackenzie Foy (the 10-year old Murph in
"Interstellar") is introduced to poet and novelist Antoine de
Saint-Exupery's classic by an elderly aviator (Jeff Bridges).
He lives in a rundown but fantastic mansion with a wrecked plane
in the backyard, next door to the soulless modern home where the
girl and her mother, who wants everything to be done on time and
to perfection, have moved in.
He reads her The Little Prince, which he says he has written,
and opens her mind to how she is missing out on the wonders and
fantasies of childhood.
Other characters from the book, which has been translated into
250 languages and sells about 2 million copies a year, include
The Fox voiced by James Franco and The Rose voiced by Marion
Cotillard.
The film uses stop-motion animation to re-create and expand upon
the watercolors that Saint-Exupery painted for his novella, a
fantasy tracking the relationship between an aviator who crashes
in the Sahara and a small boy, the "Little Prince", who says he
is from an asteroid and tells the story of his life.
Computer-generated images are used for the story about the
Little Girl's friendship with the aviator, and its consequences.
Saint-Exupery fled the Nazi occupation of France and wrote the
book in New York in the early 1940s but returned to join the
French Free Forces in North Africa to help fight Nazi Germany.
He disappeared while flying a reconnaissance mission over the
Mediterranean in 1944, shortly after the book's publication.
Osborne said he had done everything in his power to retain the
book's Gallic flavor, and said he had won plaudits from
Saint-Exupery's family when he gave them a rundown of his plans.
"I pitched everything and they applauded it and they said, 'You
have our full support' and I burst into tears," Osborne said
after a media screening.
"It was like a huge moment because for me it's really important
for us to have that sort of seal of approval."
The film will be released in France in July, with U.S. plans as
yet unannounced.
(Editing by Louise Ireland)
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