Wanting to get a piece of the lucrative animated feature pie, Miramax Filmshas announced their acquisition of worldwide distribution rights to theanimated musical fairy tale, "The Adventures of Tom Thumb and Thumbelina."The film is being produced at Hyperion Studios, known for other animatedworks such as "Life with Louie," "Bebe's Kids" and HBO's "Happily EverAfter: Fairy Tales for Every Child." The film features the voices of ElijahWood as Tom Thumb and Jennifer Love Hewitt as Thumbelina.The storyfollows the adventure of these two tiny people who are separated from theirfamilies when their tiny village is ravaged by a giant. When they findtheir way home fifteen years later, they discover that they are actually aprince and princess who were betrothed to each other in childhood. Theoriginal script by Willard Carroll, based on classic characters created byHans Christian Anderson, is being directed by Glenn Chaika. Will Finn,Tony-winning composer of "Falsettos," is writing the music for the film,which is being produced by Tom Wilhite and Hyperion. Other voices includeAlex Boyd, Peter Gallagher, Rachel Griffiths, Robert Guillaume, JaneLeeves, Esai Morales, Bebe Neuwirth, Emma Samms and Jon Stewart. "Hyperionhas a long history of quality animation and I'm happy that we're teaming upwith them on this extraordinary project," said Miramax Senior VicePresident for Acquisitions and Co-Productions, Jason Blum. No release dateshave yet been announced for the film. Miramax is also working on preparingan English-language version of Hayao Miyazaki's animated Japanese boxoffice phenom, "The Princess Mononoke."
