Two ant movies in one autumn, and the feud that came with them
In 1998 two computer-animated films about a misfit worker ant winning a princess reached cinemas about a month apart. DreamWorks released Antz first; Pixar's A Bug's Life followed. Pixar's John Lasseter was convinced Jeffrey Katzenberg had taken the idea from a chat they had in 1995, and the row turned very public.
Katzenberg had left Disney after falling out with chief executive Michael Eisner, then co-founded DreamWorks with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen, aiming to challenge Disney in animation. DreamWorks hired Pacific Data Images in Palo Alto to make computer-animated features to rival Pixar's. Its ant story drew on a 1988 Disney pitch called Army Ants, about a pacifist ant in a militaristic colony, and borrowed ideas from a scrapped 1991 pitch about tiny machine-dismantling robots.
Lasseter's version of events began in October 1995, while he was finishing Toy Story. He dropped in on Katzenberg, who kept in touch after leaving Disney, and described his next film in detail. Later he recalled that he should have been wary, because Katzenberg kept asking about the release date. When trade papers revealed Antz, a furious Lasseter phoned him, rejected his explanation that the idea came from an old pitch, swore and hung up. Katzenberg felt he was the one under attack, since Eisner had denied him a promised bonus and scheduled the Pixar film against The Prince of Egypt, then planned as DreamWorks' first animated release.
The films differed in tone. A Bug's Life leaned on visual gags for children, while Antz was wordier and satirical, packed with adult references. Woody Allen voiced Z, a neurotic worker in a Central Park anthill having an existential crisis, reportedly as a favour to Katzenberg, and quietly rewrote lines to suit his timing. The cast also featured Sharon Stone, who replaced Sarah Jessica Parker as Princess Bala, plus Sylvester Stallone, Christopher Walken and Gene Hackman, several of whom had appeared in Allen's own films. Some characters even resembled the faces of their actors.
Antz grossed $171.8 million and won praise for its voice cast, humour and appeal to adults, but it is generally considered to have been overshadowed commercially by A Bug's Life.
Source: Antz
