Even though computer-animated "ant" movies had been done before with such hits as "Antz" and "A Bugs Life," filmmaker John A. Davis says selling the idea of "The Ant Bully" to a big studio like Warner Bros. wasn't as difficult as it would seem.

For one, Davis had a solid track record (he earned a Best Animated Feature Oscar nomination for "Jimmy Neutron: Boy Genius") and one of the producers on the project was film giant Tom Hanks. And besides, Davis pointed out to me in a recent @ The Movies interview, having similar characters in films isn't all that uncommon of a notion.

"There are plenty of movies with cowboys in them and plenty of movies with aliens in them," Davis said, laughing. "It really depends on whether the story is worth telling and how we can make it different and unique for the audience. That was the challenge for me. But Warners loved the script. I think it has more in common with 'Honey, I Shrunk the Kids' and 'The Incredible Shrinking Man' than it does the other bug movies."

Based on John Nickle's children's book of the same name, "The Ant Bully" tells the story of Lucas Nickle (Zach Tyler Eisen), a new kid on the block and bully target who takes out his frustrations on the innocent anthill in his back yard.

The tables are turned, however, when the ants use a magical potion to shrink Lucas down to their size and sentence him to live in their colony. But that's only the beginning of a strange new journey where Lucas learns about the values of friendship and the importance of sticking up for himself.

While it was important for Davis to connect with younger audiences, he said he definitely strived to make sure that adults weren't left in the dust of "The Ant Bully."

"I'm always cognizant of the audience and want to make sure that they're satisfied," Davis explained. "But I also want to make sure that I'm satisfied. I like to keep the thing moving. I want to keep going to different places to play up the adventure aspect of it and have a lot of spectacle, scope and scale. Yet, I want to have quiet and intimate moments so that there's an emotional resonance to it -- something to hang all this imagery on.

"At the end of the day, it's a story about something -- it's got a lesson," Davis added. "We see our characters grow and change. It's a story that you feel like you can take something away from it."

Making A Feature Film Out Of An Anthill
Davis said the idea for "The Ant Bully" movie actually gestated in Hanks' son, Truman, who brought the book home one day while he was attending kindergarten.

"Tom was reading it to him one night and that's what started things rolling," Davis said. "As he was reading it, he thought, 'Hey, this might make a good movie.'"

From there, Hanks, who assumed a producer's hat for the project, sent the book to Davis in hopes of getting the filmmaker to direct.

"'Jimmy Neutron' had just come out and Tom was a fan of it as it turned out," Davis recalled. "I had never talked to or met Tom before, so when this book showed up, I was blown away. I was very flattered that he sent this to me."

And while Davis has attracted a fair share of talented actors to voice roles in his previous films, he makes no arguments against the fact that Hanks had a walloping impact on the project. After all, it's not every day that you see names like Julia Roberts, Meryl Streep and Nicolas Cage (who all voice ants) all together on the same marquee.

"I would love to flatter myself and say that they always wanted to do 'a John Davis movie,'" enthused the filmmaker, who also wrote the script. "But I think the answer is that it's closer to the fact that Tom Hanks was producing it and it helped validate the project and opened some doors for us. It at least allowed us to get the script to them. I was really, really excited that they liked it and decided to sign on."

Another pivotal player in the project was Paul Giamatti, who Davis snared just before "Sideways" put the already-celebrated actor on the A-list road.

"He was just starting to go and do press for 'Sideways' when we did our first recording session with him," Davis recalled. "He was perfectly cast and did an amazing job. He was really fun to work with and is just a really cool guy."

Unlike his bug-eyed co-stars, Giamatti voices a nasty bug exterminator named Stan Beals.

"It's a very wild movie. It's whacky, almost kind-of psychedelic," Giamatti told me in a recent @ The Movies interview. "It's a really trippy movie. In the end, they have to battle this horrible guy that I play that's trying to wipe out the ant colony. It's got all kinds of fascinating stuff in it."

The strange coincidence about the role is that his "Sideways" co-star Thomas Haden Church voiced the role of an exterminator earlier this year in the animated hit "Over the Hedge."

"How weird is that? His character kind of even looks like the character I play," Giamatti mused.

Another One For Ray
Fans of Ray Harryhausen are certain to revel in the look of "The Ant Bully." The legendary stop-motion filmmaker has been honored in such films as "Monsters, Inc." and Tim Burton's "Corpse Bride" before -- and Davis didn't squander the opportunity to reveal the impact of one of his biggest inspirations.

"I keyed into some of the things of Harryhausen that I loved as a kid," Davis explained. "That's how I envisioned and approached some of the set pieces. I was trying not to mimic anything that's been done before, but wanted to capture the general feel and vibe that comes with fighting giants, battling wasps and getting eaten by frogs, and discovering this sort of alien civilization underground in your back yard."

But that's not to say the creative force behind such gems as "Jason and the Argonauts" isn't directly referenced in some way in "The Ant Bully." Davis said there are a couple of nods if you keep your eyes peeled.

"When Lucas goes back into his house, there's a hang gliding scene -- it's really brief -- but he flies past a bowling trophy that has more than a passing resemblance to Talos," Davis laughed.

Davis said the biggest satisfaction came, however, when he invited Harryhausen to screen parts of the movie at Davis' DNA Studio in Dallas.

"Since we did the film in IMAX 3D and have an IMAX theater on-site, I brought him in and put on the 3D glasses," Davis recalled. "When we watched it, he was really blown away. He was saying things like, 'My God, that's incredible! How did you do this?' It was so funny because I was saying the same things about his work years before. It was so gratifying. I said to him, 'Well, Ray, you inspired my career. This is partially due to you."