The star recalls how he fought for his role in Chris Noonan's film, which earned seven Oscar noms and spawned a sequel.
Like its title character, Babe, released a quarter-century ago, is the story of an underestimated little thing that went on to stupendous achievements.
It began as the 1983 Dick King-Smith children's book The Sheep-Pig, about an orphaned piglet who demonstrates a knack for herding sheep. In 1986, director George Miller (Mad Max) was on a flight from Sydney to London when a woman next to him laughed as she read the book. Miller immediately began negotiating with King-Smith for the rights — a process that took nearly a decade, with one sticking point being Miller's determination to shoot in his native Australia. ("Pigs don't fly, and neither do I," said King-Smith, an Englishman who died at 88 in 2011.)
Also slowing things down was the fact that the animals in Babe were going to speak and behave in ways the movies had never seen — and the technology for that wasn't yet available. But by the time production got underway in 1995, with first-time feature helmer Chris Noonan shooting a script he'd co-written with Miller, it was. The four-legged denizens of Arthur Hoggett's farm — a mixture of 500 trained animals and Jim Henson's Creature Shop creations — moved their mouth........
Reaed more on The Hollywood Reporter
No comments:
Post a Comment