Dreamworks Animation SKG is banking on the performance of Over the Hedge, a computer animated feature film based on the comic strip by Michael Fry and T. Lewis, to vault the studio over the financial hump created by the lethargic performance of the Oscar-winning Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Wererabbit on DVD. The studio's hope for a stronger second half of 2006 depends in large part on the performance of its Over the Hedge feature, which debuts in theaters on May 19th and which should be out on DVD well before the end of the year. But making big bucks on increasingly costly CGI animated features isn't getting any easier--one Wall Street analyst opined that Over the Hedge would have to earn at least $310 million worldwide before Dreamworks starts making a profit.
But the good news for Dreamworks (and perhaps for pop culture retailers as well) is that Fry and Lewis' comic strip in which a band of forest creatures learn to forage in an ever encroaching suburbia is prime fodder for the movies thanks to a bevy of superior animal characters such as RJ, the enterprising raccoon (voiced by Bruce Willis), Verne, the cautious turtle (Gary Shandling), Hammy, the hyperactive squirrel (Steve Carell), Ozzie, the overly dramatic possum (William Shatner), and Penny & Lou, a porcupine couple with a prickly brood to feed (Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara). The vocal cast, which also includes Nick Nolte, Alison Janney and Wanda Sykes, is superb, but so is the material -- Over the Hedge, which is reminiscent of Bloom County, Calvin & Hobbes, and Pogo, combines richly developed characters with humorous situations and also manages to provide some social commentary along the way.
Andrews McMeel currently has three Over the Hedge cartoon collections in print with another volume (Stuffed Animals) due out on March 1. With any luck the Dreamworks film will introduce a whole new audience to the joys of Twinkie Fishing.