Venturing for the first time into toon pic distribution, New Line Cinema has taken U.S. domestic rights to “
Planet 51,” one of Europe’s most ambitious CGI animation movies, penned by “Shrek” and “Shrek 2” screenwriter Joe Stillman.
It turns on a lantern-jawed U.S. astronaut, Capt. Charles “Chuck” Baker, whose shuttle touches down on a supposedly uninhabited planet. But he discovers a civilization whose banana-haired denizens live a 1950s lifestyle in a world that looks like “Pleasantville” meets Cuba’s Havana.