Finding Nemo
Original theatrical poster
Directed by	Andrew Stanton Lee Unkrich
Produced by	Graham Walters
Written by	Story: Andrew Stanton Screenplay: Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds
Starring	Albert Brooks Ellen DeGeneres Alexander Gould Willem Dafoe Brad Garrett Allison Janney Austin Pendleton Stephen Root Geoffrey Rush Nicolas Bird Erica Beck LuLu Ebeling
Music by	Thomas Newman Robbie Williams (end credits song, "Wax My Cheeks")
Cinematography	Sharon Calahan Jeremy Lasky
Editing by	David Ian Salter
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures
Release date(s)	May 30, 2003 July 1, 2003 August 27, 2003 October 10, 2003
Running time	104 min
Country	United States  Philippines
Language	English
Budget	$94 million
Gross revenue	Domestic: $339,714,978 Worldwide: $864,625,978
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Ratings
United Kingdom:	U
United States:	G

Finding Nemo is an Academy Award-winning computer-animated film produced by Pixar Animation Studios and released to theaters by Walt Disney Pictures and Buena Vista Distribution. It was released in the United States/Canada on May 30, 2003, in Australia on August 27, 2003 and in the UK on 10 October, 2003. The movie is the fifth Disney/Pixar feature film and the first to be released during the summer season.

The movie was released on a 2-disc DVD on November 4, 2003 in the United States and Canada, in Australia on January 16, 2004, and the UK on February 27, 2004. It went on to become the best selling DVD of all time, with 28 million copies sold.^[1] Time magazine listed it #10 as one of the top best 100 films ever made.^[2]

Plot summary

In the beginning of the film Marlin (Albert Brooks), a clownfish, loses his wife, Coral (Elizabeth Perkins), and all but one of his unborn children to a marauding barracuda. He promises that he will never let anything happen to the remaining egg which he names Nemo, because that was one of Coral's favorite names.

Years later, Nemo (Alexander Gould) -- born with a deformed fin -- begins his first day at school and is frustrated and embarrassed by his overprotective father. This is taken to such an extreme that Nemo deliberately disobeys his father by swimming out into open water. In the process he is captured by a diver, who immediately leaves on a speedboat.

Marlin chases after the speedboat, but soon loses it. Asking for directions, he meets Dory (Ellen DeGeneres), a blue tang with "short-term memory loss". She helps him find out Nemo has been taken to Sydney and the two of them travel there on the East Australian Current. During their time together Dory teaches Marlin to be more carefree.

Meanwhile Nemo is placed in a fish tank in a dentist surgeon's office. He discovers that he is to be the birthday present of the dentist's niece Darla (LuLu Ebeling) who is "a fish killer" according to the other fish in the tank. It appears that she simply gets over-excited and shakes the fish bag too much. Gill (Willem Dafoe), one of the fish in the tank, proposes an escape plan involving Nemo jamming the filter in the tanks, which Nemo attempts, but initially fails at.

Meanwhile, Marlin and Dory encounter several adventures during the journey. On the way, Marlin meets fish-friendly sharks, escapes an anglerfish, charges through a school of jellyfish, travels with sea turtles on the East Australian Current and gets swallowed by a whale. The tale travels faster than Marlin by way of gossip among the sea creatures and eventually Nemo hears it from Nigel a brown pelican (Geoffrey Rush) who occasionally comes to visit the fish in the tank. Upon hearing all of his Dad's adventures, Nemo is inspired to attempt to jam the filter again. This time he is successful. The tank begins to "get really really dirty." At this point in Gill's plan, the dentist would take the fish out of the tank and into small plastic bags. The fish would then roll out the window, onto an awning, across the street and into the convienently situated harbour. However, the dentist installs a laser filter which cleans the tank while the fish are sleeping.

Marlin and Dory meet Nigel who agrees to take them to the dentist's office. While they are en route, the dentist puts Nemo in a bag to give to his niece, but Nemo gets the idea to pretend to be dead so that the dentist will flush him down the toilet, which will take Nemo to the ocean. Marlin, Dory and Nigel arrive at the office and, seeing Nemo dead, believe that it is true. Gill saves Nemo from getting thrown in the trash can instead of the toilet, and helps Nemo escape via the dentist's sink.

Marlin and Nemo find each other, but moments later they find that Dory is caught in a fishing net. Nemo has a plan to save her, but Marlin is reluctant to let him go for fear that he will lose him again. Marlin realizes he must let him go, and Nemo's plan succeeds. They return home and Nemo leaves for school, with Marlin telling him to "go have an adventure".

As an epilogue, the fish in the dentist's tank are shown to succeed -- after a fashion -- in their last escape attempt. However, they are still in their plastic bags, floating in the water. During the credits, it is shown they have left their bags.

Production

The movie was dedicated to Glenn McQueen, a Pixar Animator who died of melanoma in October 2002, seven months before the film was released.

Characters

See List of Finding Nemo characters

Reception

Finding Nemo set a record as the highest grossing opening weekend for an animated feature, making $70 million (surpassed in 2007 by Shrek the Third). With a total domestic gross of $339.7 million, Nemo was, for a time, the highest grossing animated film of all time, eclipsing the record set by The Lion King. However, about a year later, Shrek 2 surpassed Finding Nemo's domestic gross. By March 2004, Finding Nemo was one of the top ten highest-grossing films ever, having earned over $850 million worldwide.

The film's prominent use of clownfish prompted mass purchase of the animals for children's pets in the United States, even though the movie portrayed the use of fish as pets negatively and that saltwater aquariums are notably tricky and expensive to maintain.^[3] As of 2004, in Vanuatu, clownfish were being caught on a large scale for sale as pets, motivated by the demand.^[4]

At the same time, the film had a central theme that "all drains lead back to the ocean" (Nemo escapes from the aquarium by going down a sink drain, ending up in the sea.) Since water typically undergoes treatment before leading to the ocean, the JWC Environmental company quipped that a more realistic title for the movie might be Grinding Nemo.^[5] However, in Sydney, much of the sewer system does pass directly to outfall pipes deep offshore, without a high level of treatment (although pumping and some filtering occurs.)^[6] Additionally, according to the DVD, there was a cut sequence with Nemo going through a treatment plant's mechanisms before ending up in the ocean pipes.

Tourism in Australia strongly increased during the summer and autumn of 2003, with many tourists wanting to swim off the coast of Eastern Australia to "find Nemo." The Australian Tourism Commission (ATC) launched several marketing campaigns in China and the USA in order to improve tourism in Australia many of them using Finding Nemo movie clips. [1]^[7] Queensland, Australia also used Finding Nemo to draw tourists to promote its state for vacationers.^[8]

Legal challenges

In late 2003, the French children's book author Franck Le Calvez claimed that Finding Nemo's story and characters were stolen from his book Pierrot Le Poisson-Clown (Pierrot the Clownfish). The idea of Pierrot was protected in 1995 and the book was released in France in November 2002.^[9] Franck Le Calvez and his lawyer, Pascal Kamina, demanded from Disney a share of the profits from merchandising articles sold in France. In March 2004, Le Calvez and Kamina lost the lawsuit.^[10] Two years later, in February 2005, a New Jersey dentist named Dennis G. Sternberg filed suit against Disney/Pixar, alleging they had plagiarised his concept for a film entitled Peanut Butter the Jelly Fish, which he had discussed with Andrew Stanton in the 1990s.^[11] Sternberg soon dropped the lawsuit, saying he could not afford to lose.

The Little Black Fish

The story ' The Little Black Fish ' by Persian writer Samad Behrangi (1939-1967), also has elements in common. The little black fish questioned the culture and traditions of the pond he lived in. To find an answer to his questions and doubts he moves out of the pond with the aim of reaching the ocean. During his journey he meets different animals with different points of view, some of them try to stop him and others try to help him fulfil his dream, including the heron, pelican and fishing net. Finally, he reaches his dream, the vast sea which holds no restrictions. This story represents anyone who lacked freedom and attempted to reach it, especially in the Middle East that has long standing traditions and cultural ties.

Awards

Award	Category	Winner/nominee	Won
Academy Awards	Best Animated Film		Yes
	Best Original Score	Thomas Newman	No
	Best Sound Editing
	Best Screenplay - Original	Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds
Saturn Awards	Best Animated Film		Yes
	Best DVD Special Edition Release		No
	Best Music	Thomas Newman
	Best Screenplay	Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds
	Best Supporting Actress	Ellen DeGeneres	Yes
Annie Awards	Outstanding Animated Film		Yes
	Outstanding Character Animation	David Devan	No
	Outstanding Character Animation	Gini Santos
	Outstanding Character Animation	Doug Sweetland	Yes
	Outstanding Character Design	Ricky Nierva
	Outstanding Directing	Andrew Stanton Lee Unkrich
	Outstanding Effects Animation	Martin Nguyen
	Outstanding Effects Animation	Justin Paul Ritter	No
	Outstanding Music	Thomas Newman	Yes
	Outstanding Production Design	Ralph Eggleston
	Outstanding Voice Acting	Ellen DeGeneres (as the voice of Dory)
	Outstanding Writing	Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds
BAFTA Film Awards	Best Screenplay - Original	Andrew Stanton Bob Peterson David Reynolds	No
Broadcast Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
	Best Film		No
Dallas-Fort Worth Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
Florida Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
Golden Globe Awards	Best Film - Musical or Comedy		No
Kansas City Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
Las Vegas Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
National Board of Review	Best Animated Film		Yes
Online Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
Phoenix Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
	Best Film		No
Toronto Film Critics	Best Animated Film		Yes
Visual Effects Society	Outstanding Character Animation	Andrew Gordon Brett Coderre	Yes
	Outstanding Character Animation	David DeVan Gini Santos	No
Washington DC Area Film Critics	Outstanding Character Animation	Bob Peterson David Reynolds Andrew Stanton	No

The film received many awards, including:

• Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards for Favorite Movie and Favorite Voice from an Animated Movie, Ellen Degeneres.

Finding Nemo was also nominated for:

• Two Chicago Film Critics Association Awards for Best Picture and Best Supporting Actress, Ellen DeGeneres
• A Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy
• Two MTV Movie Awards

Finding Nemo - The Musical

The stage musical Tarzan Rocks! occupied the Theater in the Wild at Disney's Animal Kingdom in Orlando, Florida from 1999 to 2006. When, in January 2006, it closed, it was rumored that a musical adaptation of Finding Nemo would replace it.^[12] This was confirmed in April 2006, when Disney announced that the adaptation, with new songs written by Tony Award-winning Avenue Q composer Robert Lopez and his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, would "combine puppets, dancers, acrobats and animated backdrops" and open in late 2006.^[13] Tony Award-winning director Peter Brosius signed on to direct the show, with Michael Curry, who designed puppets for Disney's successful stage version of The Lion King, serving as leading puppet and production designer.

Anderson-Lopez said that the couple agreed to write the adaptation of "one of their favorite movies of all time" after considering "[T]he idea of people coming in [to see the musical] at 4, 5 or 6 and saying, 'I want to do that'....So we want to take it as seriously as we would a Broadway show."^[14] To condense the feature-length film to thirty minutes, she said she and Lopez focused on a single theme from the movie, the idea that "The world's dangerous and beautiful."^[14]

The half-hour show (which is performed four times daily) went into previews at the Theater in the Wild on November 5, 2006, and opened on January 24, 2007. Several musical numbers took direct inspiration from lines in the film, including "(In The) Big Blue World," "Fish Are Friends, Not Food," "Just Keep Swimming," and "Go With the Flow." In January 2007, a New York studio recording of the show was released on iTunes, with Lopez and Anderson-Lopez providing the voices for Marlin and Dory, respectively. Avenue Q star Stephanie D'Abruzzo also appeared on the recording, as Sheldon/Deb.

It is unknown whether the show will be expanded and transfer to Broadway, though Walt Disney Parks & Resorts executive Ann Hamburger has said that "she would love for that to happen."^[14] Nemo is notable for being the first non-musical animated film to which Disney has added songs to produce a stage musical.

Attractions

• Epcot: The Seas with Nemo & Friends (2007) containing Turtle Talk with Crush (2004)
• Disney's California Adventure: Turtle Talk with Crush (2005)
• Disney's Animal Kingdom: Finding Nemo - The Musical (2007)
• Disneyland: Finding Nemo Submarine Voyage (2007)
• Walt Disney Studios Park: Crush's Coaster (2007)

See also

• List of animated feature-length films
• List of computer-animated films

References

External links

• Official Disney site
• Pixar's Finding Nemo site
• Finding Nemo The Musical Documentary
• Finding Nemo at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• Finding Nemo at Rotten Tomatoes
• Finding Nemo at Metacritic
• Finding Nemo at Box Office Mojo
• Finding Nemo Sound Clips
• What Kind of Creature Is It? Finding Nemo - Cast of Characters

Preceded by Bruce Almighty	List of 2003 Box Office #1 Movies 2003-06-01	Succeeded by 2 Fast 2 Furious

Preceded by 2 Fast 2 Furious	List of 2003 Box Office #1 Movies 2003-06-15	Succeeded by Hulk

•  • [ e] Academy Award for Best Animated Feature: Winners
2001: Shrek • 2002: Spirited Away • 2003: Finding Nemo • 2004: The Incredibles • 2005: • 2006: Happy Feet

•  • [ e] Pixar Animation Studios
Feature films	Toy Story (1995) • A Bug's Life (1998) • Toy Story 2 (1999) • Monsters, Inc. (2001) • Finding Nemo (2003) • The Incredibles (2004) •Cars (2006) • Ratatouille (2007) • WALL-E (2008) • Up (2009) • Toy Story 3 (2010)
Short films	Luxo Jr. (1986) • Red's Dream (1987) • Tin Toy (1988) • Knick Knack (1989) • Geri's Game (1997) • For the Birds (2000) • Mike's New Car (2002) • Boundin' (2003) • Jack-Jack Attack (2005) • One Man Band (2005) • Mater and the Ghostlight (2006) • Lifted (2006) • Your Friend the Rat (2007)
People	John Lasseter • Ed Catmull • Steve Jobs • Pete Docter • Andrew Stanton • Brad Bird • Lee Unkrich
See also	The Adventures of Andr and Wally B. • Pixar Image Computer • List of notable Pixar staff • List of awards won or nominated by Pixar • List of Disney theatrical animated features