Bambi | |
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![]() Theatrical release poster | |
Directed by | Supervising Director David D. Hand Sequence Director
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Story by | Perce Pearce Larry Morey George Stallings Melvin Shaw Carl Fallberg Chuck Couch Ralph Wright |
Based on | Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Felix Salten |
Produced by | Walt Disney |
Music by | Frank Churchill Edward Plumb |
Production company | |
Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
Release dates | |
Running time | 70 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $858,000[2] |
Box office | $267.4 million[3] |
Bambi is a 1942 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Productions and released by RKO Radio Pictures. Loosely based on Felix Salten's 1923 novel Bambi, a Life in the Woods, the production was supervised by David D. Hand, and was directed by a team of sequence directors, including James Algar, Bill Roberts, Norman Wright, Sam Armstrong, Paul Satterfield, and Graham Heid.
The main characters are Bambi, a white-tailed deer; his parents (the Great Prince of the forest and his unnamed mother); his friends Thumper (a pink-nosed rabbit); and Flower (a skunk); and his childhood friend and future mate, Faline. In the original book, Bambi was a roe deer, a species native to Europe; but Disney decided to base the character on a mule deer from Arrowhead, California.[4][5][6] Illustrator Maurice "Jake" Day convinced Disney that the mule deer had large "mule-like" ears and were more common to western North America; but that the white-tail deer was more recognized throughout the United States.[7]
The film received three Academy Award nominations: Best Sound (Sam Slyfield), Best Song (for "Love Is a Song" sung by Donald Novis) and Original Music Score.[8]
In June 2008, the American Film Institute presented a list of its "10 Top 10"—the best ten films in each of ten classic American film genres—after polling over 1,500 people from the creative community. Bambi placed third in animation.[9] In December 2011, the film was added to the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant".[10][11][12]
In January 2020, it was announced that a photorealistic computer-animated remake was in development.[13]
Remake
was invoked but never defined (see the help page).