In Jack London’s “The Call of the Wild” you follow a large St. Bernard/Scotch Collie dog named Buck who is taken from his life as a domesticated pup in central California in the 1890s and sold to freight haulers in Alaska. From there he goes from owner to owner eventually learning to lead other dogs and animals and heed the call of the wild.
A new film uses the latest technology to make a hybrid live-action and cgi-animation retelling of the classic story. Directed by Chris Sanders (Lilo & Stitch) and starting Harrison Ford, Dan Stevens, Omar Sy, Karen Gillan, Bradley Whitford, and Colin Woodell, the first trailer and movie poster for the film is now available.
While now part of the Disney family, “The Call of the Wild” is one of the movies the Mouse House acquired with its purchase of 20th Century Fox. But if you didn’t know, I wouldn’t blame you for thinking this is one of Disney’s own films bult in the classic animal adventure genre.
Of course, that genre existed in the literary world long before Walt Disney imported it into his movies. London wrote “The Call of the Wild” in 1903, describing the events of the 1890s Klondike Gold Rush.
The book has been made into a movie a couple times before, but this will be the first with a lead character that’s mostly CGI-animation. Obviously with a big name like Harrison Ford in the cast, you focus on him in the movie marketing, but the film really is about the dog’s journey.
“The Call of the Wild” is distributed by 20th Century Fox and will be released on February 21, 2020.
About the movie:
Adapted from the beloved literary classic, The Call of the Wild vividly brings to the screen the story of Buck, a big-hearted dog whose blissful domestic life is turned upside down when he is suddenly uprooted from his California home and transplanted to the exotic wilds of the Alaskan Yukon during the Gold Rush of the 1890s. As the newest rookie on a mail delivery dog sled team–and later its leader–Buck experiences the adventure of a lifetime, ultimately finding his true place in the world and becoming his own master.
As a live-action/animation hybrid, The Call of the Wild employs cutting edge visual effects and animation technology in order to render the animals in the film as fully photorealistic–and emotionally authentic–characters.