Fox Sets ‘Leafmen’ Release for May, 2013

Fox has scheduled its next big animated film, Leafmen, for a May 17, 2013 wide release. The 3D feature is being directed by Chris Wedge, who also directed Ice Age and Robots for Fox Animation.

Blue Sky Studios, which also produced Horton Hears a Who!, Rio and the forthcoming Ice Age: Continental Drift, is producing the action-adventure about a colony of doodle bugs who summon the mythical Leaf Men to help them vanquish the evil Spider Queen and save an old woman’s garden. The film is based on the 1996 picture book The Leaf Men and the Brave Good Bugs by William Joyce.

Joyce has contributed artwork to the Pixar movies Toy Story and A Bug’s Life, and his books have been the inspiration for Robots and Meet the Robinsons, which Disney released in 2007. He is also co-directing the DreamWorks Animation feature Rise of the Guardians, which is based on one of his books, for a November 2012 release.

The mid-May date gives the Fox Animation film three weeks before DreamWorks Animation’s bug-themed 3D pic Turbo speeds into theaters and more than a month before Pixar’s Monsters University opens.