The untold story behind The Ant Bully

Who is Truman Hanks?. If you watch Warner Bros.’ latest animated family adventure The Ant Bully and stay until the end credits, you notice that the film reserved a special "thank you" to a certain Truman Hanks.

Last Monday, The Philippine Star got an exclusive invitation to the premiere of The Ant Bully at IMAX Bridge Theater near the Santa Monica Pier. This writer saw the film in its 3D IMAX format and was blown away by the experience. Imagine all the characters leaping out of the screen and hovering as if they are within your reach. Amazing!

The screening was graced by several of the stars who provided voices to the characters including Larry Miller, the hyper-paranoid dad in the teen classic 10 Things I Hate About You; Regina King, who starred in Ray and Ms. Congeniality 2; former Saturday Night Live comic Cheri Oteri and co-producer Tom Hanks, who "moderated" the post-screening Q & A.

Hanks attributed the film’s conception to his son, Truman, who, five years ago, brought home from his kindergarten library a popular children’s book by writer-illustrator John Nickle called The Ant Bully.

"We read it and before we were done, we realized we could make a very delightful movie out of it," Hanks said when he introduced the film.

The Ant Bully tells the story of hapless little 10-year-old boy Lucas Nickle, who just couldn’t get a break.

Impressively voiced by talented child actor Zach Tyler Eisen (a relative veteran in the field who has been voicing cartoon characters since he was four), poor Lucas seems to be in a world of his own. His big sister hates him. His parents ignore him as they plan their big vacation in Mexico. His grandmother is busy preparing for imaginary alien attacks. To top it all, he couldn’t make friends in his new neighborhood. In fact, he is the primary target of Steve, the neighborhood bully who revels in pushing him around and/or tearing off his briefs in front of other kids who are equally afraid of Steve.

Alone and friendless, Lucas vents his frustrations on the poor little ants in his backyard. His particular nemesis is a colony headed by the Ant Queen (voiced by Meryl Streep), and her loyal soldiers led by the Wizard Ant Zoc (Nicolas Cage), Nurse Ant Hova (Julia Roberts) and Forager Ant Kreela (Regina King). The colony calls him Lucas the Destroyer.

Apart from the star-studded voice cast, the film also features fantastic art direction by director John Davis (who also helmed the hit Jimmy Neutron). The vibrant world of ants comes alive with detailed colony design and perceptible culture which the director admitted was inspired by preserved aboriginal culture.

The movie’s painstaking design took five years to complete at the Texas studio of DNA Animation. "This is a long process over the course of five years. There have been many variations of the story. It’s been a long work-in-progress," Hanks said.

"What we discussed at the very beginning was Lucas’ journey from his bed to the abyss of the ant colony – which was going to be a fabulous sequence. But the idea of taking a little boy and trimming him down and putting him into the ant colony – that concept alone – was enough to make a full-length movie version of the storybook," he added.

The next step was to get the star-studded actors who expressed willingness to work on the project immediately. One of them was Julia Roberts, who was still nursing her twins at the time she recorded her dialogues in her New Mexico ranch.

The rest of the actors had to record their parts individually in various locations as far as New York, Oregon and California.

Oscar-nominated actors Paul Giamatti and Lily Tomlin also provide their voices as the hideous exterminator who almost wiped out the entire colony and the alien-fighting grandma, respectively.

A film that will surely delight everyone, The Ant Bully is now showing in theaters.