Cast _* Story _* Interesting Facts

Music: Phil Collins & Mark Mancina
Written by: Tab Murphy, Ron Friedman and Steve Bencich
Directed by: Aaron Blaise & Bob Walker

Production Started on: Principal animation likely started in late 2001 or early 2002, on the heels of Home on the Range
Budget: Disney hopes the film can be made for significantly less than $90 million
Release Date: October 24, 2003 in NYC and L.A., wide release on November 1, 2003 (moved up from Fall 2004, then November 7, 2003)
 
 

CAST
 

Kenai... Joaquin Phoenix
Koda... Jeremy Suarez
Tuke... Rick Moranis
Rutt... Dave Thomas
Tanana... Joan Copeland
Tug... Michael Clarke Duncan (who previously voiced the cancelled character Griz)
Denahi... Jason Raize
Sitka... D.B. Sweeney
 
 

STORY

Official Storyline

Long ago, as the warming earth shrugged off the final frigid embraces of the Ice Age, there were three brothers.

After a tragic bear attack takes the life of the oldest brother, impulsive Kenai kills the bear in revenge, only to be magically transformed into a bear himself. The middle brother Denami comes upon this bear and, thinking it killed Kenai, vows his own revenge.

Now brother hunts brother and Kenai's only hope for survival is to befriend his own worst enemy, a grizzly cub named Koda. In the end Koda truly transforms Kenai by showing him the real meaning of brotherhood.
 
 

Hasbro Press Release (2/16/03)

"This holiday season, kids will be introduced to Walt Disney Pictures' Brother Bear, an epic animated tale about the true meaning of brotherhood. In a tiny village, when the Earth was young and ice still covered the land, a headstrong teenager, Kenai (Joaquin Phoenix), has an issue with bears. And why not--the bears compete for the same food and land, loot his village, and ruin his coming of age ceremony. When his oldest brother is lost in a perilous battle with a ferocious grizzly, Kenai ignores the village teachings of brotherhood, choosing instead to track down the bear and satisfy his thirst for vengeance. Kenai is changed into a bear by the Great Spirits, forcing him to examine the world through the eyes of his enemy. In his quest to regain his human form, Kenai enlists the help of an adorable, talkative and sometimes-pesky bear cub named Koda. Their journey propels them across the northern territory, through glacial caverns, frosty tundra, a valley of fire and treacherous gorges. Over the course of the journey with Koda, Kenai is forced to question everything he knows and learns many important lessons about the true meaning of brotherhood. Ultimately, he realizes that his physical transformation from a man to a bear is insignificant compared to the change that has occurred within him."
 

Earlier Rumors & Reports

A couple years ago, sources at Disney reported Michael Eisner was hell-bent on getting a cartoon feature in the works which he was only referring to by the rough working title of The Bear King. Based on whispers from the Disney story-folks, it was just what the title suggests, The Lion King with bears: set in a National Park, it concerned a bear cub who was driven away from his domain by a bigger, meaner bear. Later on the grown bear cub returned, challenged his bigger rival and deposed him, taking over his natural realm once again. Some say that this animated bear movie that Disney was actively developing a few years back may be surfacing in Brother Bear, especially if it turns out the cub is adopted by people (or other friendly creatures) as the title seems to indicate.

Set in the Pacific Northwest before the white man arrived in the New World, Bears now reportedly tells the somewhat mystical tale a young Native American. This 15-year-old is angered when his father -- the tribe's kindly and wise chief -- is accidentally killed by a mother bear trying to protect her cubs. Immediately wanting revenge, Phoenix urges his older brother -- the tribe's new chief -- to form a hunting party to kill the bear quickly. When his brother refuses, the rebellious teen rushes into the wilderness to act on his own. Wanting to teach this hot-headed young man a lesson, the spirits of the forest turn our hero into the very thing he wants to kill: a bear. To survive, he must befriend another bear. This wise old grizzly (not-so-originally named Griz) then tries to teach the adolescent the ways of the forest. Naturally the angry teen comes around, learning valuable lessons about the cycle of life that come in handy when the bewitched young man learns that his brother finally has formed a hunting party. Now determined to avenge their father's death, the new chief has ordered that all bears be killed. In order to keep himself and his new friend safe, Phoenix must tap all that he remembers from his days as a human as well as what he has learned as a bear.

'Boo' gave further details to Animated Movies in November 2002: the movie's story reportedly stars three Indian brothers (Sitka, Kenai, Dehani): "When the youngest (Dehani, voiced by Jason Reinze) is killed by a bear (Koda's mother), the oldest brother Sitka (voiced by D.B. Sweeney) orders Kenai (Joaquin Phoenix) to hunt down and kill the bear thats has killed Dehani. Kenai comfronts the bear on a mountain cliff and kills the bear in revenge.The Spirits of the forest [or of the animals, I can't remember that part] transform Kenai into a bear for the killing.He must now live and survive in the wildreness as his slain enemy did. Kenai as a bear crosses paths with Koda (a bear cub voiced by a Black kid with glasses whose last name was Suareze, best I could remember) and must look after him as he turns out to be the orphaned cub of the bear he had slained. Meanwhile Sitka, thinking the bear has gotten his other brother too, is now on the hunt to avenge his lost brothers."
 
 

INTERESTING FACTS

  Back in 1994 when The Lion King first roared, Disney chairman Michael Eisner decreed, More animal stories! But plans for an ursine King clone languished until first-time director Aaron Blaise came aboard around 1997. "I just wanted to be attached so that I could animate bears," he says. "I'm kind of an animal nut."

  Pre-production started in August 2000,  with the movie's actual production beginning in late 2001 for a tentative release date of 2004, as a follow-up to Home on the Range. The two movies' release dates were switched in December 2002.

  The "core group" of animators spent the summer of 2000 in Alaska for pre-production.

  To inspire animators, chairman and CEO Michael Eisner brought in his own painting by Albert Bierstadt, an American West landscape artist of the1800s.

  Production took place in Disney's Orlando animation branch, with quite a few of the crew from the movie Mulan: Aaron Blaise & Bob Walker directing, Chuck Williams producing, and supervising animator Broose Johnson (Ling & Chien Po).  This is the third project, after Lilo and Stitch, to be produced at Disney Feature Animation in Florida.

  The Native American humans are a sort of made-up mix of Inuit and aborigine. Says director Aaron Blaise, "That was because.we didn't want to follow the political correctness that Pocahontas had to follow."

  Phil Collins (Tarzan) wrote the songs and co-wrote the score with Mark Mancina.  Apparently disappointing sessions were held  for Disney execs in January 2001, to review the artist's first 6 creations for the film, with the first master song to be recorded two months later:

• a 3'30" introduction song that has yet to be titled
• a little over 1'30" song called Father’s Footsteps
• a long 4' innocuous whiney piece called Grizz's Song, which basically is an elevator music twist on ‘this can’t be my destiny’ really not very pleasant
• the next two were upbeat and fun, think montage sequence showing the pleasures of being a bear, and these were two parts of the Fishing Song, each about 1'30"
• and lastly there was the title song called Brother Bear a long 5'30" apologetic and learning to live with the past song.

  Walt Disney Records announced on July 24, 2003 that Tina Turner would perform Great Spirits as the opening song of the soundtrack, while Phil Collins would provide five new songs--the titles of which were still to be determined at the time.

  Originally titled Brother Bear, this project was re-titled Bears in early 2001 before reverting back to Brother Bear in January 2003. Since the Berenstain Bear books feature a character named Brother Bear, Disney had to license the phrase. "Our marketing guys really liked just plain Bears," says co-director Robert Walker. "But then we decided it was too generic."

  On March 14, 2001, actor Joaquin Phoenix revealed he would be part of the Bears cast: "Forget the Oscar nomination [for Gladiator]. The real pinnacle is that I'm playing an animated character in a Disney film. Isn't that the greatest? I play a native American transformed into a bear. Don't call me a leading man. I don't care about that. I'm a leading bear. I am content!"

  Jim Hill wrote for the Orlando Weekly on November 1, 2002 that "killed was the unit's followup project [to Dinosaur], Wild Life, a satirical version of Pygmalion built around a cross-dressing pachyderm called Ella Font. And just last week Disney announced that the Secret Lab will close its doors, barely two years after it officially opened. These days, all that cutting-edge technology is only being used to update animators' resumés. So the folks in Florida are nervous -- and more so because their already-in-production follow-up to Lilo & Stitch--titled Brother Bear-- is said to have story problems. Mind you, this project's had story problems since its inception in the mid-1990s. The movie tries to marry Native American folklore to elements borrowed from Disney's two biggest animated hits, Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. But at a test screening last month, studio execs found the first act too serious, the second act too comic and the third act just confusing. The production team was sent back to Orlando with orders to simplify their troubled storyline. The unsaid message: Do it quickly. Rumors are flying that, among its other cost reductions, Disney wants to cut back its current two-new-animated-films-per-year production schedule. If so, the problems would make Bears a candidate for cancellation, putting a few more Central Florida animators out on the street."

  Nevertheless, a Disney insider debunked this rumour in December 2001, indicating that there was "nothing true about the cancellation rumours, on the contrary." Production is reportedly going "rather well", which is good news!

  In spite of that denial, the same Orlando Weekly further confirmed a few weeks later that "Bears also has been penciled in for the direct-to-video sequel treatment. But, given all the story problems Bears continues to have, it's iffy whether the original film or its sequel will ever see the light of day. Given that the movie isn't due to hit theaters until at least 2004, animators still have years yet to fix that film's numerous problems."

  In November 2001, Ron Friedman and his writing partner Steve Bencich were hired by Walt Disney Feature Animation to rewrite the script. As part of the deal, negotiated by Ryan Saul, they have also received a blind script commitment from Disney Feature Animation for a future project.

  When asked about the current animated feature that he is working on for Disney, Phil Collins replied in May 2002, "Each time I do one of these kinds of things I’m stretching my envelope a bit, so I learn new things. Doing film score music is something I’d like to venture further into. They gave me the opportunity to get my feet wet with Tarzan and with this new one I’m able to take it a bit further and get involved with the score as well. With animated movies the music is constantly changing, constantly being shortened, sped up, slowed down, altered and edited."

  The Orlando Sentinel indicated in June 2002 that hiking boots, relics of one of the studio's famed "research trips," are sitting in a display case across the four floors of Feature Animation Florida. Comparative shots of the aurora borealis as seen in Alaska, Michigan and Finland are pasted on one wall, photographic studies of the wildlife they might want to include in the film are on another. Samples of work of artists they might want to suggest in the film's style--Frederic Remington, Al Hirschfeld, famous pieces of illustrated advertising from the '30s--are pasted up, in between cutouts of the late comic strip Calvin & Hobbes. "We even had bear cubs brought in here a few weeks ago," says Boyd. "That was fun." From the early drawings and paintings, it's plain that Bears will look nothing like Lilo. That's just the way Schumacher likes it. "We like to continue changing, challenging our artists, showing new looks," Schumacher says. "The style changes with the demands of the story," says veteran animator Andreas Deja, principal animator of The Lion King's Scar, Aladdin's Jafar and Stitch's Lilo.

  The film will reportedly be shot in Cinema Scope.

  'Sir Farticus' reports that Travis Blaise will be supervising animation the main character Kenai as a human, while Alex Kuperschmidt (The Lion King's hyenas, Stitch) will give life to Kenai as a bear; Brooke Johnson (Ling and Chien Po in Mulan) is in charge of Rutt and Tuke, and Byron Howard (John Henry and Lilo & Stitch's Cobra Bubbles) is animating the older brother character of Kenai, Koa. "The production has been through a lot of ups and downs, as all productions go through. unfortunately, this project hadn't brewed long enough in story. Some seem to be excited about it, others think it not to be much more than the typical modern Disney film. Time will tell! What I can tell you is that the look of the film is, unfortunately, very close to Pochahontas. Now, I saw designs about a year ago, but as far as I understand things haven't changed. So, the film looks just 'blahish', very bland... I haven't seen any work reels but from what I've heard from people who have it's nothing to gloat about. especially after working on Lilo. As i said before, the story didn't have the incubation time to cook that it needed."

  An Animated Movies spy, who saw a Moments sign at Disney's Feature Animation facility in Burbank, CA in August 2002, assumed that this was the movie's new title. The truth? It was just a "display board that was assembled by that film's producer, Chuck Williams," according to Jim Hill. "Williams put this animation art exhibit together so that the folks in Feature Animation Burbank would be familiar with what the people in Feature Animation Florida were up. This display revealed some of the key plot points for the project. The big memorable moments of Bears… if you will. Which is why this Bears display board had a label that said 'Moments' stuck to it." Why didn't Disney do anything to alleviate this confusion on the Net? "First of all, the folks at Feature Animation find this whole Bears hoax to be pretty damned funny. Which is why--as soon as these animators read the stories on the Web--they quickly created bogus posters and faux screen savers that hyped WDFA’s next big picture: Moments. But over in the Team Disney building, the suits were actually kind of relieved to have this pseudo-smoke screen suddenly pop into place, because even though this film has been in active production for over two years now, Disney execs still can’t come up with an official title for the project. The original Brother Bear isn’t currently available, and at last check, they have at least eight different titles under consideration for this made-mostly-in-Florida film." What our spy saw though he loved: "It's beautiful. Gorgeous. Many animals with Disney eyes, bear cubs and mooses."

  The story is set at the end of the Ice Age and "has some typical things like woolie mamoths" according to Sir Farticus, who adds that "Phil Collins' stuff on the film sounds a bit too similar to Tarzan."

  A screening of the work-in-progress film was held in the Burbank lot in September 2002. What made this screening particularly significant was that it was one of the first to feature the movie’s new Grizz-free storyline. The movie’s mentor character (the one that was supposed to be voiced by Michael Clarke Duncan) has supposedly been cut out of the picture. Studio insiders who had seen earlier versions of the movie complained that Bears lacked humor. Which is why, earlier this year, the folks in Florida decided to fold a few comic characters into the mix: Dave Thomas and Rick Moranis will be voicing Rutt & Tuke, two Canadian mooses who sound an awful lot like SCTV's signature characters, Doug & Bob McKenzie." Jim Hill also confirms that the film’s man-who-becomes-a-bear character, voiced by Joaquin Phoenix, will be called Kenoia [even though an official Disney article mentions the name of "Kenai"].

  Phil Collins confirmed in October 2002 that he is not only writing the songs but co-writing the score--a first for him--on the 2004 feature that takes place at the end of the Ice Age in Alaska, with action centering on Inuit Indians. "I thought Tarzan would be harder than it was. This one is more the nightmare I had originally anticipated." The fact that it's an original story rather than an adaptation "in itself creates hiccups and rewriting situations," says Phil, who also cautions that the film [which he still refers to as Brother Bear] might even get a title change. "But it's coming along."

  Contrary to rumors, Walt Disney Feature Animation's decision to swap the release dates of Home on the Range and Bears was not made because Home on the Range is still bedeviled with story problems, according to Jim Hill Media. But rather, because Disney thought that they saw a primo promotional opportunity for Bears in Fall 2003 with the upcoming release of the Platinum edition of The Lion King. See if you can follow this logic: Disney reportedly feels that it will be very easy to sell people on the idea of going out to their local theater to see Bears this coming November if they just tack a trailer for that film onto every copy of the home video and DVD version of The Lion King. Evidently, the thinking in Burbank seems to be: "Hey, if people liked The Lion King enough to buy the Platinum Edition of that film, they're the perfect target audience for Bears. So let's strike while the iron is hot."

  The outdoorsy Brother Bear marks the comeback of Disney's tradition of talking animals as star attractions. "We develop prejudices," vice chairman Roy E. Disney said in March 2003. " 'We can't do another one of those for a while.' But it takes four years for these films to be developed." Disney's new head of feature animation, David Stainton, sounds relieved when he says of the film's chatty wildlife, "It's what the audience really loves." In his first official interview since assuming the post two months ago after overseeing TV animation, Stainton also said that Brother Bear's rich hand-drawn vistas will prove that old-style 2-D cartooning hasn't gone the way of the film's woolly mammoths. "The look of the characters is more realistic than Lilo & Stitch. We're back to an oil-painting feel rather than watercolor." Disney says the film has a kinship with Lilo in that both were created at the Orlando animation facility, "out of the immediate eyesight of a lot of people. They had a chance to develop their own personalities." They also share similar price tags--more than a third less than Treasure Planet.

  Brother Bear footage premiered at the Drawn to Animation show inside the Disney Animation attraction at Disney's California Adventure in March 2003.  A teaser trailer debuted the following month on the Treasure Planet DVD.

  Disney CEO Michael Eisner commented at the Bernstein's Strategic Decisions Conference on June 3, 2003 that "Brother Bear is in the Lion King realm because it has talking animals, we shall see if it is in the Lion King realm in terms of talking bankers."

  According to the film's official website and various theater schedules, Disney's Brother Bear is slated for release on Friday, November 7, 2003. But according to a July 14, 2003 rumor started at Cinescape, Disney is thinking of changing their strategy and doing something unprecedented: releasing a major studio film on a Saturday. The move is reportedly to give the animated film a chance to breathe and establish its own foothold--a lesson likely learned from DreamWorks' mistake with Sinbad which opened against Terminator 3 and Legally Blonde 2. November 7 also sees the release of New Line's holiday comedy Elf starring Will Ferrell as well as Universal's Love Actually. And two days before that on November 5, Warner Bros. will release The Matrix Revolutions, the final chapter in the Matrix trilogy. It's going to be a crowded weekend, so why doesn't Disney bump Brother Bear back a week instead? In a word, the problem is "Halloween". Seven days prior to November 7 is October 31, and the last thing kids want to do on Halloween night is spend it inside a theater. This is why a Saturday, November 1 roll out for Brother Bear is starting to make sense to Disney brass. By opening their picture the night after Halloween, Disney might stand to gain additional exposure from the media alerted to the unusual release day. As well, it doesn't hurt that kids will be more inclined to watch a movie after they've gorged themselves on candy... and parents can rest for a couple of hours after running around after their tots the night before.

  Variety confirmed on July 16, 2003 that Disney is taking the unusual step of moving the animated Brother Bear to a Saturday opening. The studio is seeking benefits in getting the film out a bit sooner than its previously scheduled slot of November 7, and is about to move up the release date by one weekend. But the Friday of the preceding weekend is Halloween. So the studio will bow Bear on November 1 instead--placing it a few days ahead of The Matrix Revolutions and Elf. The only wide opener scheduled for Halloween on October 31 is 20th Century Fox's re-release of Alien in 1,000-plus theaters.

  Disney tentatively set the movie's DVD premiere for March 30, 2004.

  For Disney, the success of Brother Bear is all the more crucial since its own homegrown animated fare has stumbled in recent years, with the notable exception of last year's hit 2-D movie, Lilo & Stitch. Executives said in September 2003 that 2-D would remain an important part of the studio's future and express high hopes for Brother Bear. They say the movie evokes the luster and wide family appeal of Disney's 1994 Oscar-winning blockbuster, The Lion King, which came during a golden era when new animated characters became a driving force behind the company's theme parks, retail stores, movies and television shows. "It's a fantastic story with great characters," David Stainton said. "The idea of Disney doing talking animals is a real winner with audiences."

  "I absolutely stand firm that 2-D is not dead," said David Stainton in September 2003, noting the company has several ideas for future movies that may well end up as traditionally animated productions, or blends of various mediums. "It really depends on the filmmakers vision and story; the technique is a secondary consideration."