100 Facts About Chicken Little

Aloha my wonderful merfolk!

I’m not going to lie to you, I have been dreading this week since I started my weekly themes. Why have I been dreading it I hear you ask? Well, Chicken Little is the one Disney film I can hold my hands up and say I actually hated. I hate this movie. There is nothing in this movie I enjoyed and I feel like this should receive the hate that Home on the Range gets. I am going to try and make sure that my dislike of this movie does not reflect in my posts but at least you know that I dislike this movie intently.

Rant over. Sorry. Not sorry.

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1. Chicken Little premiered on October 3^rd 2005
2. It was released to theatres across the US on November 4^th 2005
3. The film was directed by Mark Dindal.
4. Chicken Little is the 46^th full length feature in the Disney Animated Canon.
5. There are 250, 000 feathers on Chicken Little.
6. This is the second fully computer-generated feature film produced in-house by Disney rather than being hand-drawn.
7. This would be the new style for every Disney animated feature film afterwards apart from Princess and the Frog and Winnie the Pooh.
8. Editor, Dan Molina performed the voice of Fish Out of Water by vocalizing through a tube into a water cooler tank full of water.
9. Chicken Little was originally going to be a girl.
10. This is the first movie in the Disney animated feature line-up to have a character voiced by Sir Patrick Stewart.
11. Stewart had previously tried out for characters in previous Disney animated feature films but wasn’t lucky enough, mainly due to his commitment with Star Trek: The Next Generation.
12. In the scene where Buck Cluck is driving Chicken Little to school, they stop at a red light and in the background we see a bird walking into a store front twice.
13. It is said that birds cannot see glass.
14. The store owner comes out of the store and it is revealed that he is a bull and the shop sells China.
15. It reflects the cliched ‘Bull in a China Shop’ saying.
16. Kirby, the little orange alien wants to ‘go home’ like ET and during the scene, the music from ET plays.
17. Chicken Little was Don Knott’s last theatrically released film as it was released a few months before his death.
18. During the opening sequence, when the water tower ball crushes three cars, their horns sound off the M-O-U-S-E portion of The Mickey Mouse Club theme.
19. This was the first film to be released in REAL D’s digital 3D format.
20. Chicken Little is loosely based on the myth, ‘the Sky is Falling’.
21. The story only bears minute similarities to the movie, such as the idea that the sky is falling.
22. The rhyming names are also a similarity between myth and movie.
23. In it’s opening weekend, Chicken Little debuted at #1 in the US.
24. It was the first Disney animated film to do so since Dinosaur in 2000.
25. It took $40 million, tying it with The Lion King as the largest opener for a Disney animated film.
26. The story was previously adapted by Disney in 1943 as Chicken Little.
27. This film had an exclusive trailer in the film The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
28. It starts out with the beginning of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy trailer and then turned into Chicken Little.
29. Michael J. Fox, Matthew Broderick and David Spade were considered for the role of Chicken Little.
30. All of these actor have previously provided voices of protagonists in Atlantis, Lion King and Emperor’s New Groove.
31. When the project began in 2001, the story was about a female chicken who went to summer camp to build confidence and thus decrease her tendency to overreact.
32. Abby Mollard was originally written as a male character.
33. The technical team built a digital tool called Chicken Wire, which is a geometric wire frame model of the characters that animators could squash, stretch and smear.
34. They wanted to get a 2D animation style in 3D animation.
35. Holly Hunter was originally going to be the voice of Chicken Little and had recorded all of her lines.
36. Zach Braff replaced her when the studio decided to make the character of Chicken Little a male.
37. Morkubine Porcupine says three words in the entire movie.
38. In order, these are ‘Yo’, ‘No’ and ‘Woah’.
39. The original plans were to have the beginning of the film, telling the establishing story of Chicken Little and the Acorn, in traditional animation.
40. Don Knotts, who provided the voice of Turkey Lurkey, the town Mayor, recorded the voice track as the narrator for this sequence.
41. The idea was abandoned and that part of the story was refashioned as a main part of the film and done in computer animation.
42. The technical team built a program called Shelf Control, which allowed the animators to see the whole model on screen, while having a direct access to any chosen area of the character.
43. The first motion picture made in the Dimensionalization process by ILM for the 3D version.
44. Chicken Little was the last Disney animated film to be released on VHS.
45. This film was dedicated to the memory of Joe Grant.
46. Jodie Foster, Sigourney Weaver, Gina Davis and Jamie Lee Curtis were considered for the role of Abby Mollard.
47. Mark Dindal was a huge fan of Dave the Barbarian and wanted Danny Cooksey to voice the character of Runt of the Litter.
48. Martin Sheen was considered for the role of Buck Cluck.
49. Raiders of the Lost Ark is the movie being shown in the cinema when the ball from the collapsed water tower crashed through the screen.
50. It is been shown in 3D and as the ball crashes through the screen, the scene being shown is the scene with the boulder.
51. One of the cards on Lurkey Turkey’s transcription of Chicken Littles muddled speech says ‘D’oh’, Homer Simpsons catchphrase.
52. Chicken Little was inserted into the video game, Kingdom Hearts II as a way of advertising the movie in Japan.
53. If you look into a spoon, the mirror-image would be upside down, but when Chicken Little does it, the mirror-image was the right way up.
54. When the aliens are chasing Chicken Little and friends through the corn field, they cut out a crop circle, part of which looks like the Mickey Mouse symbol.
55. This is the last Walt Disney animation film to be classified as Walt Disney Feature Animation.
56. The new name became Walt Disney Animation Studios.
57. This is the last Walt Disney animation film to us the original 1985 Walt Disney logo.
58. This is the second Disney themed film to star Joan Cusack and Wallace Shawn after Toy Story 2.
59. It is also the second time Wallace Shawn plays a principal in a Disney film.
60. The other was A Goofy Movie where he also plays a dog who is pretty strict.
61. Runt starts singing ‘Staying Alive’ and acting like John Travolta in a reference to Saturday Night Fever.
62. The actors who play the alien parents were also cast as husband and wife in the animated film, Monster House.
63. The aliens say that the chickens are in violation of galactic law 90210, in a little reference to the 90s television show, Beverly Hills 90210.
64. Chicken Little describes the piece of sky that falls as being shaped like a stop sign, implying that it is shaped like an octagon.
65. When another piece is shown, it is actually in the shape of a hexagon.
66. Right after the ‘foot popping’ kiss between Abby and Chicken Little, Abby pretty much quotes Rachel Greene from friends with her remark about closure.
67. When Chicken Little rings the bell for the aliens, his father is watching the weather on TV with the forecaster saying that cold fronts are moving towards the town, however, all the lines are red, indicating warm fronts.
68. This is meteorological standard, red half circles for warm fronts and blue triangles for cold.
69. During Star Wars: Episode IV – A New Hope, the line ‘Stay on target, stay on target’ is said when the X-Wing pilots are attempting to blow up the death star.
70. In Chicken Little, Ace repeats this line whilst navigating his ship through space to defeat the aliens.
71. Fish out of Water acts out the final battle between King Kong and the airplanes, falling dead from a model of the Empire State Building.
72. Runt says the famous, ‘It was beauty killed the beast’.
73. During the baseball game, Chicken Little hits the ball and it gets stuck on the right horn of the bull in centre field, however when Chicken Little gets to the home plate, the ball is on the bull’s left horn.
74. When Chicken Little, his father and Kirby run up the stairs to the top of the town hall building so that Kirby an be given back to his parents, they pass a sign in the stairwell indicating 10^th floor, however, when they entered the building the out of service elevator indicated there were only five floors.
75. From the exterior of the building it is also clear that there are no more than five floors.
76. When Chicken Little is running after the school bus, Foxy dumps out a bag of acorns to make him trip. When Chicken Little falls, the acorns are all around him, however when he gets back up, the acorns are gone.
77. After Chicken Little swings at the pitch, the Taters laugh at him and you can see their pitcher with the ball, however in the next scene, you see the ball being thrown to the pitcher.
78. During the first alien scene, the aliens create a crop circle in the corn field, however the corn field is unchanged in other scenes.
79. During the dodge-ball game you can see two balls on the ground behind Abby Mallard, however after she hits a warthog with a ball, you can see that the two balls behind her have disappeared.
80. After Kirby blows his nose, Chicken Little lays the handkerchief on the ground but in the next shot it is gone.
81. At the end of the movie, they all watch ‘Chicken Little – The Real Movie’ and when it ends the father lift up Chicken Little, the chair he was sitting on disappears.
82. When Chicken Little and Buck Cluck have climbed to the top of Town Hall and after Buck has knocked out all of the aliens that were around them, Chicken Little s holding Kirby however, after they are zapped by the spaceship above them and appear inside the ship, Buck is holding Kirby instead.
83. Chicken Little is drenched with a green sport drink when his teammates pour it on him, however in the next scene he is completely dry and normal coloured.
84. When the panel falls out at the end, Melvin’s wife pushes the button and send the panel back into the middle of the ships underside, howver when Fish’s glow-stick is spinning and the ship comes to a rest, the panel is the one from the outside edge.
85. When Chicken Little is called into the baseball game, the cat character sitting next to his father is identified in the subtitles as Cheetah and yet has no spots, but later on the movie, he does appear to have spots.
86. Chicken Little loses his pants on the way to school and has to wear makeshift paper pants which get destroyed during gym class however when he’s sitting in the principals office, his real pants are mysteriously back.
87. Chicken Little’s pants got stuck on the road on a piece of gum, however after he frees himself, the gum ended up at the other side of the road.
88. When Ace if flying at the end of the movie, his glasses reflection shows blue skies and fluffy clouds, however he is in space where the background is black.
89. The War of the Worlds is mentioned during one scene in the movie.
90. The start of the end credits feature the characters singing ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart’.
91. At the every end of the credits, Buck and Chicken Little appear, with Chicken Little asking if they can get some popcorn on the way out. Buck replies with ‘I think there’s some on the floor’.
92. This scene is missing from the DVD version.
93. The 3D version of the film has an extra scene at the end of the credits which makes use of the 3D process.
94. During one scene where alien-like pods are seen, someone refers to the face-hugger.
95. This is a type of alien from the 1979 film Alien.
96. Chicken Little reversed the slump that the company had been facing since 2000.
97. Rotten Tomatoes has given the film a rating of 36%.
98. According to the book, Chicken Little: the Essential Guide, there was going to be a sequel however this never came to fruition.
99. Names for the sequel included Chicken Little 2: The Ugly Duckling Story and Chicken Little 2: Mission to Mars.
100. It is rumoured that Chicken Little was set in the 1980s due to its early technologies and retro songs.

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a mermaid be waiting for you, in mysterious fathoms below