Directors Chair- Andrew Stanton

18 July 2008

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Animation director Andrew Stanton is a major driving force behind studio Pixar working on movies such as Toy Story and Finding Nemo.

This week sees the release of the latest Pixar project WALL-E, which Stanton has directed.

Born in Rockport Massachusetts Stanton studied animation at the California Institute of the Arts before going on to work as an animator at Kroyer Films in the eighties.

In 1990 he became just the second animator, behind John Lasseter, at the newly formed Pixar Animation Studio and went on to be a writer and character designer on their first picture Toy Story in 1995.

Mixing traditional animation with new techniques, in particular CGI animation, the film was praised for it's technical innovation going on to gross over $354 million at the international box office.

As well as writing the screenplay Stanton joined Lasseter in the director's chair for the 1998 release A Bug's Life. A parody of Aesop's fable The Ant and the Grasshopper it grossed over $363 million, easily surpassing the competition from Dreamworks' movie Antz.

For both Toy Story 2 and Monsters, Inc Stanton had many roles including working on the scripts, providing additional voices and was executive producer on the latter.

By this point Pixar movies were leading the way with animation at the box office as Toy Story 2 broke the $400 million barrier and Monsters, Inc taking in excess of $500 million.

Stanton returned to the director's chair in 2003 with the popular Finding Nemo, he also wrote the screenplay.

Upon release the film set the record for the highest opening weekend for an animation picture taking $70 million, it has since been overtaken by Shrek 2.

Finding Nemo still remains as Pixar's highest grossing movie taking more than $864.6 million worldwide and went on to win Best Animated Film at the Academy Awards.

After being executive producer on last year's Ratatouille Stanton is once again on directing duties with new release WALL-E.

After hundreds of lonely years of doing what he was built for, WALL-E (short for Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class) discovers a new purpose in life (besides collecting knick-knacks) when he meets a sleek search robot named Eve.

Eve comes to realize that WALL-E has inadvertently stumbled upon the key to the planet’s future, and races back to space to report her findings to the humans (who have been eagerly awaiting word that it is safe to return home).

Meanwhile, WALL-E chases Eve across the galaxy and sets into motion one of the most exciting and imaginative comedy adventures ever brought to the big screen.

The film has already grossed in excess of $165 million and was a former U.S. box office number one.

Stanton's next project is titled John Carter of mars and is based on John Carter the lead character in Edgar Rice Burrough's Barsoom series.

The film is expected to be released in 2012.

WALL-E is released nationwide 18th July.

FemamelFirst Helen Earnshaw

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