One of the most cherished books of 20th century French literature, The Little Prince, has been adapted for the first time into the silver screen. The animated film The Little Prince premiered at the 68th Cannes Film Festival on May 22.
American director Mark Osborne, known for directing The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie and Kung Fu Panda, has formed a story within a story.
The film starts with the story of a little girl, voiced by Mackenzie Foy, famous for playing Renesmee Cullen in the Twilight franchise. She is presented Antoine de Saint-Exupery's beloved classic story by an elderly aviator performed by Jeff Bridges.
The pilot lives in a somewhat deprived but eccentric mansion with a worn-out airplane in the backyard, next door to a modern house where a perfectionist mother grooms her daughter to live in a controlled, unblemished world. The little girl somehow encounters the aviator's paper plane, and that marks the beginning of a new friendship.
She returns the paper plane to her neighbor pilot after reading a story written on it. The pilot then narrates the story of The Little Prince to the little girl, which he claims he has written and tries to open her mind about how she is missing out on the wonders of her childhood.
The book, which distributes about 2 million copies every year and has been translated into 250 languages, has other characters in the animated movie. The Rose is performed by Marion Cotillard and The Fox by James Franco.
The film adaptation was created through stop-motion animation to reinvent the watercolor illustrations of the iconic Saint-Exupery classic.
The Little Prince in the original tells the story of a boy, known as the "little prince," and a pilot who happens to make a crash landing in the Sahara.
Saint-Exupery's family praised the director when he laid out the breakdown of his ideas for the animated version of the beloved children's story.
There is no release date yet for the U.S., but the film will be launched in France by July. In the meantime, relive this classic with the official trailer of The Little Prince animated film.
Photo: Deirdreamer | Flickr
