As a novella featuring adult themes like loneliness, despair, friendship, love, and loss, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s seminal book, “The Little Prince” — the most-read and most-translated book in the French language — is likely something you read when you were younger, though it’s not quite a children’s book. While Stanley Donen made a 1974 live-action family fantasy musical, that version is far from an all-time classic.
But Paramount Pictures France, and Paramount Vantage in the U.S., hope to change the story’s reputation in cinema with their new animated version. Directed by Mark Osborne ("Kung Fu Panda," "The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie"), this new iteration of the classic tale, about a little precocious girl who discovers the story of “The Little Prince,” a tale about pilot who crashes in the desert and meets a little boy from a distant planet, looks squarely aimed at kids and families (forget those notions of introspection and French existentialism).
“Interstellar” actress Mackenzie Foy voices the little girl, Rachel McAdams her mother, newcomer Riley Osborne voices the prince himself, and Jeff Bridges is the pilot. The animated fantasy movie also features the voices of James Franco, Marion Cotillard, Benicio Del Toro, Ricky Gervais, Paul Giamatti, and Albert Brooks.
Following a premiere earlier this year at the Cannes Film Festival, the movie open in the U.S. on March 18, 2016. Watch the new U.S. and Canadian trailers below.