Synopsis

Flik, an inventive but accident-prone ant, wants to improve life for his colony, which is forced to surrender food each year to a gang of domineering grasshoppers. After a mishap puts the colony in danger, Flik travels away and recruits what he believes are brave warriors. They are actually circus performers, but together they discover that courage, teamwork, and ingenuity may be enough to challenge the grasshoppers.

Factoids & Trivia

• The story was loosely inspired by Aesop's fable "The Ant and the Grasshopper." The filmmakers expanded the simple premise into a story about an entire society learning to resist exploitation.

• The basic idea emerged from a 1994 lunchtime conversation among Pixar's story team. That same discussion also helped generate early ideas for several later Pixar films, including Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and WALL-E.

• Pixar released A Bug's Life on November 25, 1998. It was accompanied by the short film Geri's Game, which later became notable for its connection to Pixar's developing tradition of pairing features with original shorts.

• The film was Pixar's first feature to include deliberately staged outtakes during the end credits. The fake bloopers presented the computer-animated insects as if they were performers on a live-action film set.

• Pixar's artists studied plants and insects closely to create the film's miniature world. Production designer Bill Cone reportedly photographed vegetation from a low, ground-level perspective to help shape the colony's environment.

• The film's production overlapped with DreamWorks' Antz, another computer-animated movie centered on ants. Their near-simultaneous development created a highly publicized rivalry between the two studios.

• The movie inspired the theme-park attraction It's Tough to Be a Bug!, which opened at Disney's Animal Kingdom in 1998 before the feature reached theaters. A Bug's Land, a larger themed area based on the film, later opened at Disney California Adventure.